The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of our winter talks on spiritual science, we have already dealt with some unpopular and only tolerated issues. However, one can say that no issue is less popular and tolerated than the object of our today's consideration: the initiation.

If one speaks of the spiritual, higher worlds, the thought will also appear of course: how does the human being come to the knowledge of these higher worlds? The today's consideration on initiation can only give a preliminary answer—only all talks of this winter can give a complete answer. We must assume two principles of any spiritual science that we have already touched in the first talk. The first principle is the knowledge that there is another or even a number of other supersensible worlds behind the sense-perceptible one. The second knowledge is that to the human being these supersensible worlds can become accessible gradually, so that he can recognise them by his own development.

Of course, with it, spiritual science causes the opposition of all those people who speak about such matters and say, “we” or “one” cannot recognise. With it from the start, the speaker concerned who wants to make himself the standard measure of any human knowledge postulates a kind of knowledge monopoly, of infallibility.

Spiritual science stands exactly on the opposite point of view. It has the point of view that the human being has abilities and cognitive forces that are embryonic in him and can be developed higher and higher. One has to admit that it is quite right if anybody says, he cannot recognise certain higher worlds. However, at the same time, one has to say that these higher worlds are not to be penetrated just only with those cognitive forces that he means, and that logically nobody has a right to say: my cognitive forces are the absolute only ones; what I recognise signifies the limit of any possible knowledge.—For one rejects the human ability of development with it, denies from the start that the human being can ascend to higher and higher stages. However, it is the basic conviction of any human being who looks impartially at the world, and especially within our German education, it is easy to acknowledge this principle.

Goethe repeatedly pronounced and emphasised in the most various, wonderful sentences what founds a way of thinking leading to initiation. I would like to place some words of Goethe's deep-thought fragment The Secrets (The Mysteries) at the head of our considerations today. He points there to the inner human force that strives on and on and higher and higher, indeed, that is hindered by that what surrounds us at every moment what is forced upon us from the outside, from the sensuous as the inhibiting force. However, the inner force has still a means to come to the inner, to the world knowledge.

Goethe says in this poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) in which he speaks of a special initiation of the Rosicrucians and indicates the principle of initiation with the profound words:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

It completely complies with Goethe's way of thinking to search this force of the human being that can be developed to higher cognitive forces, to look for means and ways to an objective knowledge and wisdom beholding into the inside, into the spiritual of the things. It complies with his way of thinking if we eavesdrop on him where he expresses his level of knowledge most intimately. There we find many tips, which pronounce this clearly.

At the beginning of his Theory of Colours, Goethe says that the eye is created “by the light for the light.” The time has not yet come to understand this work of Goethe; perhaps, in some time if the perspectives prevail which I have mentioned in my talk The Natural Sciences Facing a Crucial Decision. He says, it was an indifferent, not photosensitive organ. The light caused the organ to see the light, to perceive the illumined objects. One has to think in the sense of Goethe what I have said in the sense of spiritual science: the human being had no eyes in primeval times, which could perceive light; the eyes arose from quite different organs. Which force accomplished this change? The light! It conjured up the eye that had become photosensitive. At the same time, Goethe indicates that there are other, unknown and misjudged abilities in the human being which—if they are developed—just open a new world as the eye opens the world of light and colours if it is elicited. In no other sense, we speak in spiritual science of the higher, extrasensory worlds.

Exactly in the sense of the dictum of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great thinker, we speak of such extrasensory perception. Fichte says, if a sighted man goes among blind people and tells them about light and colours, they regard him probably as a daydreamer. Also is that what he, Fichte, had to say to his listeners in those days only for an organ which has to originate only, and this—only on a higher stage—can be compared to the organ of the blind-born who has recognised the world only touching before the operation and sees it lighting up in colours and light afterward. Thus, it is also possible to elicit abilities by the development of forces slumbering in the human being to perceive new forces and objects in the surroundings that one can only perceive with spiritual abilities. In this logical sense, one speaks in spiritual science of higher worlds.

He who doubts the higher worlds is on the same level of the power of judgement as someone who is born blind and says, there is no world of light and colours because I do not see them. Nobody can really assess the possibility. However, someone can decide on the reality who knows it. Not anybody has to decide on a matter who knows nothing about it, but only someone who knows something of it. Indeed, only the principle of experience has to decide on initiation.

However, is it unnecessary to talk about these matters? No, it is necessary; for in which sense does anybody talk who informs about such higher worlds? He talks about them because he knows that merely by these communications, merely by this report the abilities and forces slumbering in all human beings can be woken up to penetrate to these worlds. Someone who is reluctant to receive information about these worlds resembles someone who was once reluctant to take part in the development of the eyes with which the human being can see the sun. He could also have said, why shall I develop anything, so that I can recognise the sun and the light? He did not know the sun and the light before. Only by a foreign power approaching us, the inner disposition can develop in the human being. Only if we can open the soul freely to the communications about the higher worlds, we get the first impulse to develop the higher forces which make us sighted, initiated finally.

One spoke of the principle of initiation at all times of the human development. Only the relation to the public working was different from that in our age. If we go back to the ancient Indian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Egyptian, or Greek-Roman culture-epochs, if we go up then to the Middle Ages, to the 16th, 17th centuries and our time, initiates and disciples of the initiates always existed. However, one did not speak about that publicly. What meant to be initiated? One differentiates an initiate, a clairvoyant, and somebody who applies the higher forces in the service of the physical world.

However, we do not want to get involved in these finer differences. Somebody is a clairvoyant who is able to behold into the extrasensory worlds to whom the worlds that are concealed to the usual human being are obvious, discernible worlds. Why was the introduction to such higher worlds pursued, so to speak, secretly? Why did one not speak of it publicly in former times? We speak of the dangers of initiation next time. I would like today to draw your attention only to the fact that on the border between the sensuous-visible world and the invisible-extrasensory world, indeed, a certain danger lies in wait for the human being, and that someone who wants to become an initiate has to overcome this danger at first. It consists in the fact that it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish illusion from reality, dreams from reality, vision from the real view at the border of the physical and the supraphysical worlds. In this area, it is very easy to confuse own fantastic things of the soul with the objective reality. One needs different qualities that are explained in the following: keeping cool, retaining certainty of the soul, courage, perseverance and energy at the border. If the human being lost the clearness about that which is appearance and what is reality at this border, he would have lost his mind, then he would be a fool instead of an initiate.

Nowadays an immense greed, a true fury exists with most people indeed, if they hear of such matters to behold something of the higher worlds. However, with most human beings the perseverance and the will and above all the strength to overcome everything that must remove the indicated dangers do not exist. Hence, at all times it was necessary that one examined the people whom one admitted to initiation concerning their intellect, their spiritual and moral abilities and their feelings. Only those who could stand the test before the pervasive view of the initiate could be admitted to initiation. There were such persons who were able because of their living conditions to submit to that, which enabled them to distinguish appearance and truth, vision and reality on the border between the physical and the spiritual worlds.

The question may now arise: why are those not quiet also today who know something about these matters after one could be quiet so long? Why does one not carry out the principle of the strict seclusion also today concerning the introduction to the higher worlds? Why is it broken? This has good reasons. Humanity advances. It is different in the different epochs of its development. History is also much more different in its organisation and developmental stages than the nonprofessional believes it. Someone who does not know the matters imagines that the human beings are the same today as they were centuries ago. Those who studied history and anthropology also have the same idea tacitly. The human beings of different centuries differ really very much who are apparently the same to the external anatomy and physiology. The differences are not obvious at first sight, and the external anatomy and physiology know nothing at all about them. Humanity progresses, and the human mind and the human soul have advanced so far that one needs the knowledge of the world secrets, the views, concepts, and ideas that lead us into the depth of the things, which were always preserved in the so-called secret schools to the general welfare and progress of humanity.

I present the further details in the following talks. We need only to point to the immense difference that took place in humanity in the course of a few centuries. We need only to mention one thing that deeply intervened in the human development: the art of printing.

Imagine once how the human beings lived concerning their soul, their spiritual education before the invention of the art of printing, how the communication was between those who knew something, and those who wanted to learn something, before there were books. Compare how today the communications of science and scholarship penetrate to any soul by thousands and thousands means, by popular writings and newspaper articles. If you go on imagining, you can get the idea that today it looks different in the souls, and you do not think that the sensations, thoughts, and impulses in the souls have no influence on life as a whole. Someone who believes that everything obvious is an imprint of the spiritual says to himself that the human beings have other physical and social needs today than in past times. Once it was possible that single persons knew something of certain events, of truth and wisdom. Today, however, the principle of initiation must be made accessible to everybody. Because of a duty towards humanity the strict secrecy and seclusion of former times was broken through. That is why today not only about that is spoken which is to be said about the higher worlds from the viewpoint of the spiritual research, but one also speaks in a certain way at least in the elements how the human being ascends even to these worlds, how he can accomplish the first steps of initiation. However, from the start one has to call attention to the fact that nobody should believe that the principle of initiation is to be taken easily and less seriously because the first steps of initiation are accessible to everybody today. Everybody can accomplish these first steps in every situation, as you will hear. Then higher and higher stages begin up to that of an initiate in the true sense of the word.

I have to characterise this concept first. What is an initiate? If I assume that there are higher and higher worlds behind our sensuous world, an initiate would be someone who has an insight into these higher worlds. The training for the initiation gives the human being the means and instructions how he can develop his spiritual eyes and ears to be able to behold into this spiritual world as he looks with his physical organs at the physical world.

Strictly speaking, all that is only a preparation for the real initiation. He who becomes a pupil of initiation receives certain instructions from his teacher how he can develop the abilities slumbering in him. All that aims to a point that leads him into a preliminary depth of the world to the highest degree, to a centre from which the rays of world creation and world principles go out. Such a thing does exist. This secret would be pronounceable even in words and, nevertheless, it is not pronounced. Allow me this indication from the start, because even if it sounds apparently mysterious, someone who thinks a little bit about it will find that even the kind in which such a thing is pronounced is very significant for the sensation that one should appropriate to understand the principle of initiation.

One prepares the pupil for the acceptance of the world secret that would be pronounceable if one is allowed to pronounce it. The initiate is somebody who knows a certain secret that is significant to the highest degree, for the life of the human beings. A secret, because if it were pronounced in the everyday life it would appear mad, brainless, paradoxical. Now, this would still be the less. However, there are other reasons why, nevertheless, someone who could pronounce the secret is not allowed to pronounce it. The reason is so deep that the secret that finishes certain stages of initiation cannot be wrested from anybody who knows it even not if one tormented and tortured him. He can never wrest this secret from himself. For this secret is not informed in words from human being to human being. The essentials consist of the fact that one brings the pupil to the point where he gets around by the imparted development of his own abilities and forces to solving the riddle by himself which is behind the matter, so that, so to speak, the pupil faces the teacher with that luminous eye which announces: I have found it!

Training means leading to finding oneself. A big part of that what the human being has to gain for the penetration into the higher worlds lies just in that big and immense sensation of the soul when it awakes and feels as newborn, after it was led to the higher capabilities and stages of development. One can compare that feeling on a lower level with that of a blind-born who could only touch the things up to now, and to whom after the operation light, colours, and forms appear from the darkness. Only if this relationship exists between teacher and pupil, the relationship is a healthy one. It is built on the highest that there can be between human being and human being: on freedom. That relationship must be there in which nothing at all of an unjustified influence from the teacher is there, because everything that should be developed is got out from the pupil himself.

After we have characterised the mood that should control the principle of initiation, we want to go somewhat more precisely into the development of the abilities slumbering in the human being. We start from the obvious matters and advance to the more distant ones. Three abilities are already there for the usual observation: thinking, feeling and willing, thought, feeling and will. This is the level of the average human being. All three abilities are developable. At first the thinking: it cannot lead the human being beyond the physical world, even if it is developed ever so subtle, ever so intimate. However, the thinking is still the first stage of development if it is a matter of getting beyond the physical world. We shall solve this ostensible contradiction, however, straight away. I have to speak immediately of those principles of initiation which were usual in the course of the last centuries in the secret schools and which are informed initially today to the public by those who know something of them.

First, the pupil has to develop the thinking free from sensuousness. What does one call thinking free from sensuousness? If the human being looks at the world around himself by his senses, he creates mental pictures and ideas of the world. These mental pictures and ideas make the world comprehensible to him. However, all that is no thinking free from sensuousness. The modern science, because of a certain inner weakness, often does not want to accept another thinking. Nevertheless, another thinking has its origin solely in the human inside, in the human soul. The modern human being only knows very little of the big extent of this thinking that is free from sensuousness and if anybody hears anything of it, he rejects it, and does not want to accept it.

The human being cannot only have thoughts referring to the sense-perceptible world; he can also have thoughts that arise from an inner power that the senses can never stimulate. Even philosophers do not see that today. I can produce evidence. Mathematics, geometry, can deliver it. Nobody can outdoors see a real cycle; nobody can outdoors see the principle that two times two are four.

However, one can get out by inner meditation without counting beans that two times two are four, or one can construct the circle by inner view, so that the circle line is always equidistant to the centre. What did the great Plato write above his school? He wrote that nobody could be accepted without knowledge of geometry. That does not mean that he had to know the entire geometry, but that he had a suitable sense for it. If we reproduced the external circle in concepts only, we would never be able to form a true circle. However, we can form a circle and its principles in our mind that way. Thus, we must work out the circle from own mind. This is thinking free from sensuousness. Mathematics is not popular, and, nevertheless, it is the only thinking free from sensuousness that is done in our schools. However, most people laugh at someone if he says that there are still other concepts that one can find wholly spiritually, as those of space and number and figures. One ignores and despises the philosophers and thinkers who asserted that the human being is able to put up a building of ideas that harmonises with the world.

Someone who has put up such ideas free from sensuousness within our German education and culture for other fields than geometry is Goethe again. It is a wonderful great achievement of the spiritual life of humanity what Goethe performed with the type of the plants, with the archetypical plant, and the type of the animal, the archetypical animal. What sort of thoughts are these? Goethe himself tries to make clear them his way. Many people wrote about that. However, the most is nonsense because most people are not able to understand how a spiritually constructed circle whose principles we can see relates to the circle drawn on the board which is nothing but a number of little chalk particles. However, Goethe's archetypical plant relates to the external sense-perceptible plant. Outdoors are the different plants—Goethe thought—, the one looks this way, the other that way. However, an inner spiritual strength lives in us with which we are able to find the concept of the archetypical plant out of inner production. The botanists thought that Goethe meant an imperfect plant. This is nonsense! He meant the spiritually beheld plant! I tried in one of my books to reconstruct this archetypical plant, as one also constructs the circle in mind. Goethe's archetypical plant contains possible plants if one is able to conjure up all possibilities out of it. His archetypical animal contains all possible animals. Goethe created a spiritual biology there. It enables us to create in spirit what cannot appear to our senses. However, there we start from a profound, significant spiritual fact. Goethe started from this fact, from which he got what he found as archetypical plant. This was no mere idea to him, but it was the creating force in all plants. The archetypical animal was the creative in any animal to him.

I have often cited a famous conversation about the plants that immediately at the beginning of their acquaintance Goethe and Schiller had with each other. They came from a talk of the society of naturalists in Jena. Schiller said that it is unsatisfactory to look at the creatures in such a way that one cannot see their coherence. Goethe answered that there could be also another method where one can see the common, the spiritual tie, which holds everything together. Goethe describes the conversation to us, and that he took his pencil then and drew the picture of the archetypical plant with some characteristic lines.

There Schiller, the speculative poet, said, this is no fact; this is an idea, no reality. Goethe answered, if this is an idea I see the ideas outdoors with my eyes. In the plant is the force creating life. Because of the deep view that the Goethean mind had of such a being it was possible that in his mind that was awoken which creates in all animals and plants. A mysterious tie exists between the human inside and that which is spread out in the animal and plant realms. If the human being conjures up the archetypical plant in himself, he conjures up that form after which the plants have been created. We regard ourselves in this way as spiritual participants in the productions of nature. Goethe as it were immerses in the things and conjures up in his mind the spirit living in the things. Goethe presents this to the human being.

One can try the same in higher fields. A German philosopher did it, not sufficiently but fundamentally and profoundly, but one did not understand him. If an anecdote were true, it would prove this fact in its depth. For Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770–1831) should have said: “Only one understood me, and also he misunderstood me.” Hegel tried to create concepts free from sensuousness of the surroundings and history of the human beings. His Philosophy of History has now appeared in Reclam's Universal Library in which he gives a great survey of the whole world history. Many things in it are not right, unfortunately. Many things are as one-sided as just only Hegel could be one-sided, so that the book can serve only as suggestion. However, it may serve to find the principle. Hegel cared about thinking free from sensuousness, so that he lets everything appear in its own spirit, which is the same spirit that led humanity. He, who wants to do this, needs a more intimate knowledge of the human spirit and that of the peoples than Hegel could possess. Hence, everything seems abstract, grey, and logical in the bad sense; however, the things are ingenious and stimulating. One has to say, what is wrong there can be even more useful to humanity than many right but trivial things.

Just as one can think in mathematics free from sensuousness and create as one can do it also in history, my The Philosophy of Freedom should give a picture of the inner development of the human being with his entire cognitive faculties as one can grasp this from the thinking free from sensuousness. This is a book like an organism where a sentence follows the other, a book of a thinking that moves in itself and is self-contained. I wanted to show in it how the human being who wants to go from sensuousness to the extrasensory has to cultivate his thinking.

However, there are easier means, namely those about which spiritual science informs. What we can read in the spiritual-scientific books about the different human members, about reincarnation and karma, the life after death, the development of the human races and cultures and about what we shall still speak you cannot see with senses, but it is something that you can understand if you generally get involved with human understanding. Spiritual science gives the human beings a thinking free from sensuousness as it was given in the secret schools once, and as the human being must have it, before he is able to behold into the spiritual worlds. Clairvoyance and initiation are necessary for that. However, he who has got the possibility to inform in a certain way can form a bridge. Then everybody can convince himself by enclosing logical thinking and a healthy power of judgement that the things are right. Clairvoyance is necessary to find the higher profundities, only a healthy mind and logic to understand them.

Indeed, today many people are possessed by a more or less materialistic thinking or by that arrogance of infallibility that is due to the positivistic science. This is a real pipe dream. If the people only know that they live, strictly speaking, under suggestions, that they do not know what is real and what is not real! Indeed, they do not want to acknowledge the infallibility of the pope; however, they regard themselves as infallible. That who stands on the viewpoint of science is the most intolerable one. He regards the spiritual scientist as a fool and himself as an infallible man! One can inform about the world that is not accessible to the senses only with a thinking free from sensuousness. Hence, the first training is the training of thinking which only makes it possible to develop the thinking and to lead to a real beholding into the spiritual worlds.

The second is the development of feeling. Nobody should train the feeling, before he has not brought the thinking free from sensuousness to a certain level. That who knows how it looks in these higher worlds tells you: if you ascend to the higher worlds, you come to the astral world and then to the spiritual or devachanic one. The impressions are completely different there than the human being can imagine who knows the physical world only. Even if all experiences are different, one thing remains: the logic, the healthy thinking. The human being who appropriates the healthy thinking who is a reasonable person firmly standing on his legs cannot go astray if he ascends to the worlds that offer many surprises. That who develops this self-assured thinking working from the origin of the soul has a sure leader also beyond that border where one can hard distinguish between the physical and the supraphysical.

With healthy thinking one gets over the abyss which opens there. If anyone lives without healthy thinking and says, you give me thoughts only; however, a divine power lives in me, why should I not be able to ascend to the higher worlds?—Then I can only answer: those who speak in such a way have no idea of the conditions of the higher worlds where the outer world does not correct us where we must have the leader in ourselves if we should not go astray.

The development of the feeling happens with the help of Imagination at the school of those to be initiated. The pupil creates a figurative notion of the world at first; then he has to carry out his world consideration rather quietly under the Goethean saying: “All that is transitory is only a symbol.” I would like to give you an example that I have given several times how one leads someone who aims at a spiritual development into the depths of the things, how one teaches the development of the feeling by Imagination (anthroposophic concepts of initiation are capitalised). If you want to understand the development of the beings and stop at the thinking, you never can go fairly beyond this sensory world. You can appropriate the most different concepts how subordinated beings develop higher and higher up to the human being, you can take even the spiritual-scientific evolutionary theory how the logos poured forth and formed more and more complex forms and worlds: plants, animals, human beings, how all differentiations formed, evolutions and involutions and so on. These are teachings that you find in theosophical books, nice and interesting concepts. However, you cannot come into the higher worlds this way. You can thereby form ideas, which are analogies of higher worlds, but you never can come with them into these worlds. You need Imagination. This is not anything that one imagines.

It is something that is produced with a productive power and amounts to nothing more than concepts only, so that these concepts, like Goethe's archetypical plant and archetypical animal, correspond to the outer realities; but pictures are formed corresponding to the spirit that creates behind these things. I would like to explain in the form of a dialog what one said always in such secret schools to the pupils. I say this to you to make clear the principle, the method of initiation. What I speak in a few words takes a long period of training. The dialog that I describe never did take place, but that what it shows has always taken place in any spiritual school. One says to the pupil, look at the plant, which points with its root to the earth, which lets grow its stalk, its leaves, and blossoms upwards, and compare it to the human being. You would compare wrongly if you wanted to compare the head to the blossom and the foot to the root.—I would like to remark that also that who founded the newer natural sciences so greatly gets to this view. He compares the root to the head of the human being and regards the plant as the reverse human being and the human being as the reverse plant.—The root is the head that the plant sticks toward the centre of the earth, just as the human being sticks his head that he holds in the opposite direction toward the sun or the heavenly forces. The plant turns its reproductive organ, the blossom, virginally to the sunbeam that one called the “holy lance of love” in the medieval secret schools. The human being is the exact opposite. He sticks his organs of conceptions toward the centre of the earth, the head toward the space. In between, one says to the pupil, is the animal who does half a turn, so that the spine is horizontal. Look at plant, animal, and human being and you understand the dictum of Plato that the world soul is crucified on the cross of the world. Plato understands plant, animal, and human being by the world. The plant stands vertically, the human being reversely to it so that he looks with the head at the free world ether, and the crossbar is the animal. This is the prototype of the cross, as one knew it in ancient times and in all secret schools.

Then one says the following to the pupil: imagine the plant and its pure, chaste substance. The human being is on a higher level than the plant. The plant resembles the sleeping human being. It has physical body and etheric body as the sleeping human being has physical body and etheric body. The human being is, actually, beyond the physical and etheric body. That what thinks in him and feels desire and pain has been cut off in the sleeping state. The plant has a consciousness that we know as sleep consciousness.

What does the development from the horizontal line up to the entire turn mean? It means that be the human being has attained his present bright day consciousness. With the transition from the animals, the human being has become a being with bright day consciousness. He had to lose something else for it. Look at the plant: a body of desires, an astral body does penetrate it. The plant has physical body and etheric body. The human being must go through the animal and integrate instincts, desires, and passions. He has higher risen integrating the astral body into the plant body.

Now spiritual science puts a great Imagination before him. This spiritual science shows how he can gradually develop the strength that leads him back again to the purification of his desire nature that leads him up to that point where he lives again in the pure, chaste body on higher developmental stages while retaining his current state of consciousness. There he has overcome what he had necessarily to absorb in himself with the transition to the higher stages. What the teacher put before the pupil was a future ideal: you will have the plant nature again! One gave him the means to attain it. One said to him, the entire humanity comes again to this stage once when the human beings have developed the purely spiritual strength. Then he is no longer tied to the desire nature, he no longer sticks his organs of conception toward the spiritual sunbeam. In the initiatory training, one calls this organ the Holy Grail, which then the human being has attained, and which is a spiritual organ.

Imagine the difference between the dry abstractions that one puts in mathematics or in idealistic writings before you and this idea where we go up through the animal state to the human being and again up to other future stages of humanity. If we visualise that, we accompany this Imagination with our sensations and feelings if we are generally able not only to think the spirit but also to feel it. We shall see this development not only in spirit, but we shall feel it. The evolution in the universe appears immense and big to us if we visualise it that way, not in abstractions. The whole universe with all world riddles was presented to the pupils. They claim not only his thinking, but also his feeling and sensing. It was to him, as if his whole soul went out and lived in everything that was round him. As with the Goethean archetype something is created in us that lives in all plants and animals, it is also, if the developed feeling rises from us, as if we felt the world soul which flows as power through all beings.

Thus, everything came to life that was around the pupil, it became Imagination. Where he went through woods and meadows, everywhere the pictures worked in his soul. This loosened the inner power in him and he looked behind the beings and behind the things gradually. If one tells this in such a way, it seems almost unbelievable. If the pupil was introduced under the guidance of the teacher in the Imaginative of the world, he was guided not only to the thinking, but also to the feeling and the impulses that have gushed out from the soul of the world creator. He was introduced in an essential world. Then the development continues from the feeling to the willing.

As well as the feeling develops by pictures, the will develops by the occult letters. This will is the deepest of the concealed power. This will becomes something like a skeleton that the human being squeezes out by the will into the outer world. If you remember the pictures of the Munich congress, of the columns and seals, they are there to train the will. In the portfolio, which we edited as Pictures of Occult Seals and Columns, they are reproduced. I want to discuss the principle of these occult seals and columns once and give their meaning for the initiation. Any seal explains what you can find in the Apocalypse or The Revelation of John. In this portfolio, you find signs. Any sign has an immense, stimulating effect on the human being.

You find a human figure on the first seal. The feet are like from liquid brass, a fiery sword goes out from the mouth. I do not want to describe the remainder. He who becomes engrossed in this seal sees that just this seal gives him something marvellous in particular by this contrast. We shall hear in the last talk of this winter on Sun, Moon and Stars that we are led back by spiritual science also to states of the earth where the earth was in a fiery-liquid state and that—in contrast to the materialistic science—the human being already existed. Spiritual science can make the objection to itself that the human being could not live in a fiery-liquid state. At that time, the human being was formed from fiery liquid mass. This beginning of the earth is shown in the fiery-liquid metal feet. A later future state is shown with the fiery sword that comes out of the mouth, and appears in all myths again. I can only indicate what it concerns here. You will see how spiritual science is connected deeply with the innermost essence of the world.

How does the mediation happen, if I speak to you? What I speak are my thoughts at first. These accept tones that make the air vibrate. The air is thereby set in motion in this hall. The oscillations of the air come to your ear, come to your soul, and impart themselves to your soul. My words live here in the room in certain forms of oscillation. If you could see them, you would see particular oscillations if I pronounce the word “soul.” As well as the human being is able today to form the air and make arise that what lives in his soul in the oscillating air, he will also be able to form organs. There are organs in the human being, which are at the beginning, and other organs are at the end of their development. The larynx and the heart are at the beginning of development. I know that I assert something scandalous for the positive science, because one regards these two organs as mechanical apparatuses, the heart like a pump. However, just the theories of the heart and the blood circulation will experience reorganisations in the not too distant future. One will find that the circulation of the blood is due to something quite different from the heart, and that the heart moves only by the blood circulation. If the human being feels abashed, he blushes. This is an influence of the blood. The heart will be in future a voluntary muscle, and it prepares itself to become one.

Here something is given that will almost coin the future of the human being externally-physically. The heart is a crux to the usual anatomy and physics. It has the configuration of a voluntary muscle, while it is no voluntary muscle today. A voluntary muscle has striated muscle fibers. The heart has such striated fibers, although it is not voluntary even today. However, it is on the way of becoming a voluntary muscle.

The larynx will also have another function. It will be the reproductive organ of the human being. The larynx that produces words of the soul will undertake the reproduction. The fire principle is the speech, and the fire principle of the speech will be a creative principle; hence, the sword in the mouth. This fiery sword is intimately related to the world forces. If the human being becomes engrossed in its picture, this strengthens his willpower. One can say that only that way. He who does it experiences it. Then he anticipates, thinks, and feels not only, but he penetrates with his willpower into the things. This is the way through the occult writing. One can state quite concretely, in which way one should develop thinking, feeling, and willing. If one has woken the forces slumbering in the human being, thinking, feeling, and willing become particular organs, which one calls spiritual eyes. From them the spiritual eyes originate which show the world of the flooding spiritual light and its colours and the spiritual forces behind our physical world. The trained willpower becomes the spiritual ears of which also Goethe speaks who was deeply initiated into these matters:

In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres
the sun still sings its glorious song,
and it completes with tread of thunder
the journey it has been assigned.

Goethe remains in the right picture. If one is introduced in the higher spiritual world, one is introduced by the ear. If one comes in the spiritual realm, it is immediately said: “In these sounds the new day is already born for spiritual ears.” Those who believe to understand Goethe but say, this is nonsense, and need an explanation of it, which one cannot expect the poet to accept, one has to answer: no, one cannot expect that Goethe wrote nonsense: “the sun still sings ...” is nonsense only if one applies it to the physical world.

Thus, we have seen that the principle of initiation is based on the fact that one gets out particular forces slumbering in the human being, so that these forces guide the human beings into the spiritual world surrounding him. What gets out these forces of the human being? We have to explain the matter completely in the sense of Goethe. Once there was a sense organ, an indifferent organ in his sensuous body, which was flooded from light. The light made it the eye, so that the human being could see the colours and forms round himself with the eyes. The eye originated that way. Unknown and unrecognised organs which one does not want to recognise slumber in the human being. In addition, other worlds are round us, except the world of light and colours. As well as with the blind human being the eye was woken for seeing, the spiritual ears and eyes are trained with the clairvoyance and clairaudience, so that the human being can behold into the surrounding spiritual world.

The human being has gained self-consciousness. He has become in such a way that he can relate everything to himself. However, because he develops the spiritual eyes and ears following the principle of initiation he immerses again in the outer world. He finds his higher self in this world. We are not allowed to say that we find the divine and spiritual in ourselves. This is a wrong expression. Recognise yourself! Is an old saying. However, one has to understand it in such a way as Adam recognised his woman. He fertilised her. Thus, that applies also to the organs. Fertilise yourself, be fertilised by the world.—Thus, the human being should develop the forces slumbering in him. It is true what Goethe says:

Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own strength were in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Indeed, the sun force is in us, and the eye does not create the divine being, does not create the sun, but it sees it, after it has been created.

We can develop higher forces and penetrate deeper and deeper into the world this way. Then the outer world does no longer appear to us as something that restrains and restricts us, but as that which brings true and spiritual reality. Harmony is created between the human being and the world. Thereby we overcome the lower self that looks out into the sensuous world. We attain the higher ego of the human being that is spread out in the whole universe. Goethe means this indicating the principle of initiation in his poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) with the words with which we want to close. They show how the human being flows out by self-conquest and into the feeling permeating the world, into the spiritual of the world, into the will of the cosmic spirits pulsating through the world:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

The title of today's lecture no doubt reminds you of a passage in Goethe's Faust, when Faust, representing striving man, enters into a pact with evil powers, represented by the emissary from hell, Mephistopheles. Faust is to sign the pact in blood. At first he regards this as a joke, but Goethe undoubtedly meant the words spoken by Mephistopheles at this point to be taken seriously: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

Goethe¹ commentators usually provide curious interpretations of this passage. You will be aware that so much has been written about Goethe's Faust that it can fill libraries. I naturally cannot go into what every commentator has said about this particular passage, but it all amounts more or less to what is said by a recent commentator, Professor Jacob Minor.² Like others, he regards Mephistopheles' remark to be ironic, but Minor adds a curious sentence. I quote it in order to illustrate the amazing things said about Goethe's Faust. Minor states: “The devil is an enemy of blood.” He goes on to point out that as blood invigorates and sustains human life, the devil, being an enemy of the human race, must of necessity be also an enemy of blood. Minor is quite right when he further demonstrates that in sagas and legends blood always plays the kind of role it plays in Goethe's Faust. The oldest version of the Faust legend clearly describes how Faust makes a slight cut in his left hand with a penknife, dips a quill in the blood in order to sign the agreement, and as he does so, the blood, flowing from the wound, forms the words: “Oh man, escape!”

This is all quite correct, but what about the remark that the devil is an enemy of blood and for that reason demands the signature written in blood? Can you imagine anyone wishing to possess the very thing he abhors? The only reasonable interpretation of the passage is that Goethe, as well as earlier writers of Faust legends, wishes to show that the devil regards blood as especially valuable, and that to him it is important that the deed is signed in blood rather than in neutral ink. The supposition must be that the representative of the powers of evil believes, or rather is convinced, that he will gain a special power over Faust by possessing at least a drop of his blood. It is quite obvious that Faust must sign in blood, not because the devil is his enemy, but because he wants to have power over him. The reason behind this passage is a strange premonition that if someone gains power over an individual's blood, one gains power over the person. In short, the feeling is that blood is a very special fluid and it is the real issue in the fight for an individual's soul between good and evil.

A radical change must come about in our modern understanding and evaluation of the sagas and myths handed down since ancient times. We cannot go on regarding legends, fables and myths as childlike folklore or pretentiously declare them to be poetical expressions of a nation's soul. The poetic soul of a nation is nothing but a fantasy product of donnish officialdom. Anyone with true insight into the soul of a people knows with certainty that the contents of fables and myths, depicting powerful beings and wonderful happenings, is something very much more profound than mere invention. When with knowledge provided by spiritual research we delve into sagas and myths, allowing the mighty primordial pictures to act on us, we begin to recognize the profound ancient wisdom they reveal.

To begin with, one naturally wonders how it was possible for primitive man, with his unsophisticated views, to depict in the form of fables and myths, cosmic riddles that are unveiled and described in exact terms by means of modern spiritual research. This at first seems very surprising. However, as further research reveals how these ancient fables and myths came into existence, one ceases to be amazed, and all doubt vanishes. One discovers that myths and fables, far from containing naive views, are filled with primordial wisdom. A thorough study of myths and fables yields infinitely more insight than today's intellectual, experimental sciences. Admittedly the approach to such a study must be with spiritual scientific methods. Whatever legends have to say about blood is important, because in earlier times an individual's inherent wisdom made him aware of the true significance of blood, this special fluid that in human beings is a stream of flowing life.

Whence this wisdom came in ancient times is not our concern today; it will be the subject of a later lecture, though an indication will be given at the close of this one. Today we shall look at the significance of blood in human evolution and its role in cultural life. However, our discussion will not be from a physiological, or any other natural scientific point of view, but from that of spiritual science. It will be a help if before pursuing our subject we remind ourselves of a maxim that originated within the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of Hermes held sway. This maxim, which expresses a fundamental truth, is known as the Hermetic maxim and runs as follows: As above, so below.

All kinds of trivial explanations of this saying are to be found, but the one that concerns us today is the following. It is obvious to spiritual science that the world accessible to our five senses, far from being complete in itself, is a manifestation of a spiritual world hidden behind it. This hidden world is called, according to the Hermetic axiom, the “world above, or the upper world.” The sense world spread all about us, perceptible to our senses and accessible to our intellect, is called the “world below,” and is an expression of the spiritual world above it. The physical world is therefore not complete to the spiritual researcher, but is a kind of physiognomic expression of the soul and spirit world behind it, just as when looking at a human face one does not stop short at its shape and features, but recognizes them as an expression of the soul and spirit behind them.

What everyone does instinctively when faced with an ensouled being, the spiritual researcher does in regard to the whole world. The axiom, As above, so below, when applied to a human being, means that a person's soul impulses come to expression on the face. A hard, coarse face denotes coarseness of soul, a smile inner joy, and tears inner suffering.

Let us now apply the Hermetic axiom to the question: What is wisdom? Spiritual science has often pointed to the fact that human wisdom is related to experience, particularly to painful experience. For someone actually in the throes of pain and suffering, the immediate experience will no doubt be inner discord. But when pain and suffering have been conquered, when only their fruits remain, a person will say that from the experience a measure of wisdom is gained. The happiness, enjoyment and contentment life brings one gratefully accepts; but more valuable by far, once it is overcome, is the pain and suffering, for to that people owe what wisdom they possess. Spiritual science recognizes in wisdom something like crystallized pain; pain transformed into its opposite.

It is interesting that modern research, with its more materialistic approach, has come to the same conclusion. A book well worth reading was published recently about the mimicry of thought. The writer is not an anthroposophist, but a natural scientist and psychologist. He sets out to show that a person's thought life reveals itself in the physiognomy, and draws attention to the fact that a thinker's facial expression always suggest assimilated pain.

Thus, you see emerging, interspersed with more materialistic views, a confirmation of an ancient maxim that originated from spiritual knowledge. This will happen more and more frequently; you will find ancient wisdom gradually reappearing within the framework of modern science.

Spiritual research confirms that everything that surrounds us in the world: the configuration of minerals, the covering of vegetation, the world of animals, is the physiognomic expression of the life of spirit behind it. It is the “below” reflecting the “above.” Spiritual science maintains that what thus surrounds us can be properly understood only when one has knowledge of the “above,” that is, knowledge of the prototypes, the primordial beings from whom it all originated. Today we shall turn our attention to that which creates on earth its physiognomic expression in the blood. Once the spiritual background of blood is understood, it will be recognized that such knowledge must of necessity influence our spiritual and cultural life.

The problems human beings are facing today are momentous and pressing—especially educational problems involving not only the young but also entire populations. These particular problems are bound to increase as time goes on. The great social upheavals taking place make this evident to anyone. Demands causing anxiety are continually made, whether in the guise of the woman question, the labor question or the peace question. These are all problems that become understandable once insight is gained into the spiritual nature of blood.

Another question, similar in nature, which is again coming to the fore, is that of race. The racial problem cannot be understood unless one understands the mysterious effect when blood of different races is mingled. And finally, there is the problem of colonization that also belongs in this category. This problem has become even more pressing since attempts have been made to tackle it more consistently than was formerly the case. It arises when cultivated people are to share their lives with uncultivated people. Certain questions ought to be asked when attempts are made to tackle the problem: To what extent is it possible for a primitive people to assimilate a strange culture? Can a savage become civilized? What here comes under consideration are vital and far-reaching questions of existence, not just concern about doubtful morality. It is unlikely that one will find the right way of introducing a strange culture to a people if it is not known whether it is on an ascending or descending line of evolution; whether this or that aspect of its life is ruled by its blood. When the significance of blood is discussed, all these things come under scrutiny.

The physical composition of blood will be known to you from science in general. In humans, and also in the higher animals, blood is truly the stream of life. Our inner bodily nature is in contact with the external world through the fact that we absorb into the blood the life-giving oxygen from the air, a process by which the blood is renewed. The blood that meets the instreaming oxygen acts as a kind of poison, as a kind of destroyer within the organism. This blue-red blood, by absorbing the oxygen, is transformed into red, life-giving blood through a process of combustion. This red blood that penetrates all parts of the organism has the task to absorb directly into itself substances from the outer world, and deposit them as nourishment along the shortest route within the body. Humans and the higher animals must of necessity first absorb nutritive substances into the blood, then, having formed the blood, absorb into it oxygen from the air and finally build up and sustain the body by means of the blood.

A knowledgeable psychologist once remarked that the blood circulating through the body is not unlike a second person who, in relation to the one made of bone, muscle and nerve, constitutes a kind of outer world. And indeed our entire being constantly takes from the blood what sustains it, and gives back what it cannot use. One could say that a person carries in his or her blood a double (Doppelgänger) who, as a constant companion, furnishes him or her with renewed strength and relieves a person of what is useless. It is entirely justified to refer to blood as a stream of life and compare its importance with that of fibre. What fibre is for the lower organism. blood is for the human being as a whole.

The distinguished scientist Ernst Haeckel³ has probed deeply into nature's workshop, and in his popular works he quite rightly points out that blood is the last to develop in an organism. When tracing the stages of development in a human embryo, one finds rudiments of bone and muscle long before there is any indication of blood formation. Only late in embryonic development does formation of blood and blood vessels become apparent. This leads natural science to rightly conclude that blood made its appearance only late in world evolution, and that forces already in existence had first to reach a stage of development comparable to that of blood before they could accomplish what was necessary in the human organism. When as embryos human beings repeat once more the earlier stages of human evolution, they adapt to what existed before blood first made its appearance, This a person must do in order to achieve the crowning glory of evolution: the enhancement and transmutation of all that went before into that special fluid that is blood.

If we are to enter into the mysterious laws of the spiritual realm that hold sway behind blood, we must first take a brief look at some of the basic ideas of spiritual science. You will come to see that these basic ideas are the “above,” and that this “above” comes to expression in the laws that govern blood, as it does in all other laws, as if in a physiognomy.

There are in the audience some who are acquainted with the basics of spiritual science; they will allow a brief repetition for the sake of others who are present for the first time. In any case, repetitions help to make these basic ideas clearer, as light will be thrown on them from a different aspect. In fact, what I am going to say may well appear as just a string of words to those who as yet know nothing about spiritual science, and are therefore unfamiliar with this outlook on life. However, when ideas behind words seem to have no meaning, it is not always the ideas that are at fault. In this context a witty remark made by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg⁴ is apt. He said: If a head and a book collide and the result is a hollow sound, it is not always the book's fault. So, too, when some of our contemporaries pass judgment on spiritual truths, which to them seem like a string of words, it is not always spiritual science that is at fault. However, those acquainted with spiritual science will know that the references made to higher beings are to beings that really do exist, even if they cannot be found in the physical world.

Spiritual science recognizes that humans, as they appear in the sense world to physical sight, represent only a part of their true being. In fact, behind the physical body there are several more principles that are invisible to ordinary sight. Human beings have the physical body in common with the so-called surrounding lifeless mineral world. In addition, they have a life body, or ether body. What is here understood by ether is not that of which natural science speaks. The life body or ether body is not something speculative or thought out, but is as concretely visible to the spiritual senses of the clairvoyant as are physical colors to physical sight.

The ether body is the principle that calls inorganic matter into life and, in lifting it out of lifelessness, weaves it into the fabric of life. Do not for a moment imagine that the life body is something the spiritual investigator thinks into the lifeless. Natural science attempts to do that by imagining something called the “principle of life” into what is found under the microscope, whereas the spiritual investigator points to a real definite entity. The natural scientist adopts, as it were, the attitude that whatever exists must conform to the faculties a person happens to have; therefore, what he or she cannot perceive does not exist. This is just about as clever as a blind person saying that colors are nothing but a product of fantasy. The person to pass judgment on something must be the one who has experienced it, not someone who knows nothing about it.

Nowadays one talks of “ignorabimus” and “limits of knowledge”; this is possible only as long as human beings remain as they are. But, as spiritual science points out, we are constantly evolving, and once we develop the necessary organs, we will perceive, among other things, the ether body, and will no longer speak of “limits of knowledge.” Agnosticism is grave obstacle to spiritual progress because it insists that, as human beings are as they are, their knowledge can only be limited accordingly. All that can be said to this is that then human beings must change, and when they do they will be able to know things they cannot now know things they cannot now know.

Thus, the second member of a person's being is the ether body, which one has in common with the vegetable kingdom.

A human being's third member is the astral body. This name, as well as being beautiful, is also significant; that it is justified will be shown later. Those who wish to find another name only show that they have no inkling as to why the astral body is so named. In humans and animals, the astral body bestows on living substance the ability to experience sensation. This means that not only do currents of fluid move within it, but also sensations of joy, sorrow, pleasure and pain. This capacity constitutes the essential difference between plant and animal, although transitional stages between them do exist.

A certain group of scientists believes that sensation should be ascribed also to plants, but that is only playing with words. Certainly some plants do react when something approaches them, but it has nothing to do with sensation or feeling. When the latter is the case, an image arises within the creature in response to the stimulus. Even if certain plants respond to external stimuli, that is no proof that they experience inner sensation. The inwardly felt has its seat in the astral body. Thus, we see that creatures belonging to the animal kingdom consist of physical body, ether or life body, and astral body.

Human beings tower above the animal through a specific quality, often sensed by thoughtful natures. In his autobiography, Jean Paul⁵ relates the deep impression made upon him when, as a small child, standing in the courtyard of his parent's house, the thought suddenly flashed through his mind: “I am an ‘I,’ I am a being who inwardly calls himself ‘I.’ ” What is here described is of immense significance, yet generally overlooked by psychologists. A subtle observation will illustrate what is involved: In the whole range of speech, there is one small word that in its application differs from all others. We can all give a name to the objects in this room. Each one of us will call the table, “table,” the chairs, “chairs,” but there is one word, one name that can only refer to the one who speaks it: the little word “I.” No one can call someone else “I.” The word “I” must sound forth from the innermost soul to which it applies. To me, everyone else is a “you,” and I am a “you” to everyone else.

Religions have recognized that the “I” is that principle in us that makes it possible for the human soul to express its innermost divine nature. With the “I” begins what can never enter the soul through the external senses, what must sound forth in its innermost being. It is where the monologue, the soliloquy, begins in which, if the path has been made clear for the spirit's entry, the divine Self may reveal itself.

In religions of earlier cultural epochs, and still in the Hebrew religion, the word “I” was called: “The unutterable name of God.” No matter how it is interpreted according to modern philology, the ancient Hebrew name for God signifies what today is expressed by the word “I.” A hush went through the assembly when the initiate spoke the “Name of the Unknown God”; the people would dimly sense the meaning contained in the words that resounded through the temple: “I am the I am.”

Thus, the human being consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and the “I” or the essential inner being. This inner being contains within itself the germ of the three further evolutionary stages that will arise out of the blood. They are: Manas or Spirit Self, in contrast to the bodily self; Buddhi or Life Spirit; and a human's true spiritual being: Atma or Spirit Man, which today rests within us as a tiny seed to reach perfection in a far-off future; a stage to which at present we can only look to as a far-distant ideal. Therefore, just as we have seven colors in the rainbow and seven tones in the scale, we have seven members of our being that divide into four lower and three higher.

If we now look upon the three higher spiritual members as the “above” and the four lower as the “below,” let us try to get a clear picture of how the above creates a physiognomic expression in the below as it appears to physical sight. Take first what we have in common with the whole inorganic nature, that is, that which crystallized into the form of a person's physical body. When we speak of the physical body in a spiritual-scientific sense, it is not what can be seen physically that is meant, but the combination of forces behind it that constructed this form. The next member of our being is the ether body, which plants and animals also possess, and by means of which they are endowed with life. The ether body transforms physical matter into living fluids, thus raising what is merely material into living form. In animal and human the ether body is permeated by the astral body, which calls up in the circulating fluid inner participation of its movement, causing the movement to be reflected inwardly.

We have now reached the point where the being of humans can be understood insofar as they are related to the animal kingdom. The substances, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and so forth, out of which our physical body is composed, are to be found outside in inorganic nature. If the substances transformed by the ether body into living matter are to attain the capacity to create inner mirror images of external events, then the ether body must be permeated by the astral body. It is the astral body that gives rise to sensations and feelings, but at the animal level does so in a specific way.

The ether body transforms inorganic substances into living fluids; the astral body transforms living substance into sensitive substance. But—and of this please take special note—a being composed of no more than the three bodies is only capable of sensing itself. It is only aware of its own life processes; its existence is confined within the boundaries of its own being. This fact is most interesting, and it is important to keep it in mind. Look for a moment at what has developed in a lower animal: inorganic matter is transformed into living substance, and living mobile substance into sensitive substance. The latter is to be found only where there is at least the rudiment of what at a higher stage becomes a developed nervous system.

Thus, we have inorganic substance, living substance, and nerve substance capable of sensation. In a crystal you see manifest certain laws of inorganic nature. (A crystal can be formed only within the whole surrounding nature.) No single entity could exist by itself separated from the rest of the cosmos. If we were to be transferred a mile or two above the earth's surface, we would die. Just as we are conceivable only within the environment to which we belong, where the necessary forces exist that combine to form and sustain us, so too, in the case of a crystal. A person who knows how to look at a crystal will see it as an individual imprint of the whole of nature, indeed of the whole cosmos. Georges Leopold Chrètien Cuvier⁶ is quite right when he says that a competent anatomist is able to deduce from a single bone to what kind of animal it belongs, as each kind has its own specific bone formation.

So you see that in the form of a crystal a certain aspect of the whole cosmos is reflected, just as an aspect of the whole cosmos is imprinted on living substance. The fluid circulating in a living creature is a small world that mirrors the great world. When substance possesses not only life, but also experiences inner sensation, it mirrors universal laws; it becomes a microcosm that dimly senses within itself the whole macrocosm. As the crystal is an image of cosmic form, so is sentient life an image of cosmic life. The dullness of consciousness in simple creatures is compensated by its immense range, for mirrored in it is the whole cosmos.

The constitution of humans is simply a more intricate structure composed of the three bodies already found in simple sentient creatures. If you consider people while disregarding their blood, you have beings built up from the same substances as those to be found in their environment. Like the plant, human beings contain fluids that call mineral substances to life, which in turn incorporate a system of nerves. The first nerves to appear are those of the so-called sympathetic nervous system. In humans it extends along both sides of the vertebral column, forming a series of knots from which it branches out and sends threads to the various organs, the lungs, the digestive tract and so on.

In the first instance, the sympathetic nervous system gives rise to the kind of sentient life just described. But a person's consciousness does not reach down far enough to experience the cosmic processes it mirrors. The surrounding cosmic world out of which the human being, as a living being, is created, mirrors itself in the sympathetic nervous system. There is in these nerves a dull inner life. If human beings could dive down consciously into the sympathetic nervous system, while the higher nervous system fell asleep, they would behold in a world of light the workings of the great cosmic laws.

Human beings once had a clairvoyant faculty that has been superseded. However, it can still be experienced, if through certain measures the function of the higher nervous system is suspended, setting free the lower consciousness. When that happens, the world is experienced through the lower nervous system in which the environment is mirrored in a special way. Certain lower animals still have this kind of consciousness. As explained, it is extremely dull, but provides a dim awareness of a far wider aspect of the world than the tiny section perceived by humans today.

At the time when evolution had reached the stage of the cosmos being mirrored in the sympathetic nervous system, another event occurred in human beings. The spinal cord was added to the sympathetic nervous system. The system of brain and spinal cord extended to the organs, through which contact was established with the outer world. Once their organisms had reached this stage, humans were no longer obliged to be merely a mirror for the primordial cosmic laws; the mirror image itself now entered into relationship with the environment. The incorporation of the higher nervous system in addition to the sympathetic nervous system denoted the transformation that had occurred in the astral body. Whereas formerly it participated dully in the life of the cosmos, it now contributed its own inner experiences.

Through the sympathetic nervous system, a being senses what takes place outside itself; through the higher nervous system, what takes place within itself. In individuals at the present stage of their evolution, the highest form of the nervous system is developed; it enables people to obtain from the highly structured astral body what is needed to formulate mental pictures of the outer world. Therefore, a person has lost the ability to experience the environment in the original dull pictures. Instead, individuals are aware of their inner life, and build within the inner self a new world of pictures on a higher level. This world of mental pictures mirrors, it is true, a much smaller section of the outer world, but does so much more clearly and perfectly.

Hand in hand with this transformation, another one occurred on a higher evolutionary level. The reorganization of the astral body became extended to the ether body. Just as the ether body through its reorganization became permeated with the astral body, and just as there was added to the sympathetic nervous system that of the brain and spinal cord, so what was set free from the ether body—after it had called into being the circulation of living fluids—now transformed these lower fluids into what we call “blood.”

Blood denotes an individualized ether body, just as the brain and spinal cord denote an individualized astral body. And through this individualizing comes about that which expresses itself as the “I.”

Having traced man's evolution up to this point, we notice that we are dealing with a gradation in five stages: First the physical body (or inner forces); second the ether body (or living fluids, to be found also in plants); third the astral body (manifesting itself in the lower or sympathetic nervous system); fourth the higher astral body emerging from the lower astrality (manifesting itself in the brain and spinal cord); and finally the principle that individualizes the ether body.

Just as two of humanity's principles, the ether, and astral bodies, have become individualized, so will the human being's first principle, built up out of external lifeless substances, that is, the physical body, become individualized. In present day humanity there is only a faint indication of this transformation.

We see that formless substances come together in the human body, that the ether body transforms them into living forms, that through the astral body the outer world is reflected and becomes inner sensation, and finally this inner life produces of itself pictures of the outer world.

When the process of transformation extends to the etheric body, the result is the forming of blood. This transformation manifests itself in the system of heart and blood vessels, just as the transformation of the astral body manifests in the system of brain and spinal cord. And, as through the brain the outer world becomes inner world, so does this inner world become transformed through the blood into an outer manifestation as the human body. I shall have to speak in similes if I am to describe these complicated processes. The pictures of the external world made inward through the brain are absorbed by the blood and transformed into vital formative forces. These are the forces that build up the human body; in other words, blood is the substance that builds the body. We are dealing with a process that brings the blood into contact with the outer world; it enables it to take from it the most perfect substance, oxygen. Oxygen continually renews the blood, endowing it with new life.

In tracing human development, we have followed a path that leads from the outer world to humanity's inner world and back to the outer world. We have seen that the origin of blood coincides with our ability to face the world as an independent being, a being able to form his or her own pictures of the external world from its reflection within the self. Unless this stage is reached, a being cannot say “I” to itself. Blood is the principle whereby “I-hood” is attained. An “I” can express itself only in a being who is able independently to formulate the pictures the outer world produces within the self. A being who has attained “I-hood” must be able to take in the outer world and recreate it within the self.

If we possessed only a brain without a spinal cord, we would still reproduce within ourselves pictures of the outer world and be aware of them, but only as a mirror image. It is quite different when we are able to build up anew what is repeated within ourselves; for then what we thus build up is no longer merely pictures of the outer world; it is the “I.” A being who possesses brain and spinal cord will not only mirror the outer world, as does a being with only the sympathetic nervous system, but will also experience the mirrored picture as inner life. A being who in addition possesses blood will experience inner life within the self. The blood, assisted by oxygen taken from the outer world, builds up the individual body according to the inner pictures. This is experienced as perception of the “I”.

The “I” turns its vision inwards into a person's being, and its will outwards to the world. This twofold direction manifests itself in the blood, which directs its forces inwards, building up a person's being, and outwards towards the oxygen. When humans fall asleep they sink into unconsciousness because of what the consciousness experiences within the blood, whereas when they, by means of sense organs and brain, form mental pictures of the outer world, then the blood absorbs these pictures into its formative forces. Thus, the blood exists midway between an inner picture-world and an outer world of concrete forms. This becomes clearer if we look at two phenomena. One is that of genealogy, that is, the way conscious beings are related to ancestors, the other is the way we experience external events.

We are related to ancestors through the blood. We are born within a specific configuration, within a certain race, a certain family and from a certain line of ancestors. Everything inherited comes to expression in our blood. Likewise, all the results from an individual's physical past accumulates in the blood, just as within it there is prepared a prototype of that person's future. Consequently, when the individual's normal consciousness is suppressed, for example under hypnosis or in cases of somnambulism or atavistic clairvoyance, a much deeper consciousness becomes submerged. Then, in a dreamlike fashion, the great cosmic laws are perceived. Yet this perception is nevertheless clearer than that of ordinary dreams even when lucid. In such conditions all brain activity is suppressed, and in deep somnambulism even that of the spinal cord. In this condition what the person experiences is conveyed by the sympathetic nervous system; the individual has a dull, hazy awareness of the whole cosmos. The blood no longer conveys mental pictures produced by the inner life through the brain; it only conveys what the outer world has built including everything inherited from ancestors. Just as the shape of a person's nose stems from his or her ancestors, so does the whole bodily form. In this state of consciousness a person senses his ancestors in the same manner that waking consciousness senses mental pictures of the outer world. A person's blood is haunted by his ancestors; he dimly participates in their existence.

Everything in the world evolves, also human consciousness. If we go back to the time when our remote ancestors lived, we find that they possessed a different type of consciousness. Today, during waking life we perceive external objects through the senses, and transform them into mental pictures that act an our blood. Everything a person experiences through the senses is working in not only his blood but also in his memory. By contrast, a person remains unconscious of everything bestowed by ancestors. We know nothing about the shape of our inner organs. In the past all this was different; at that time the blood conveyed not only what it received from outside through the senses, but also what existed in the bodily form, and as this was inherited, we could sense our ancestors within our own being.

If you imagine such a consciousness enhanced, you will get an idea of the kind of memory that corresponded to it. When our experiences are confined to what can be perceived through the senses, then only such sense perceptible experiences are remembered. A person's consciousness comprises only his experiences since childhood.

In the past this was different, because the inner life contained all that was brought over through heredity. A human's mental life depicted ancestors' experiences as if they were his own. A person could remember not only his own childhood, but his ancestors' lives, because they were contained in the pictures absorbed by his blood. Incredible as it may seem to the modern materialistic outlook, there was a time when human consciousness was such that an individual regarded both his and his forefathers' physical experiences as his own. When someone said: “I have experienced... ,” he referred not only to personally known events but also to events experienced by his ancestors. It was a dim and hazy consciousness compared with modern human waking consciousness, more like a vivid dream. However, it was much more encompassing, as it included not only his own life but the lives of ancestors. A son would feel at one with his father and grandfather, as if they were sharing the same “I.” This was also the reason he did not give himself a personal name but one that included past generations, designating what they had in common with one and the same name. Each person felt strongly that he was simply a link in a long line of generations.

The question is how this form of consciousness came to be transformed into a different one. It happened through an event well-known to spiritual historical research. You will find that every nation the world over describes a significant moment in history when a new phase of its culture began—the moment when the old traditions begin to lose their influence, and the ancient wisdom that had flowed down the generations via the blood begins to wane, although the wisdom still finds expression in myths and sagas.

A tribe used to be an enclosed unit; its members married among themselves. You will find this to be the case in all races and peoples. It was a significant moment in the history of mankind when this custom ceased to be upheld—the moment when a mingling of blood took place through the fact that marriage between close relations was replaced by marriage between strangers. Marriage within a tribe ensured that the same blood flowed through its members down the generations; marriage between strangers allowed new blood to be introduced into a people.

The tribal law of intermarriage will be broken sooner or later among all peoples. It heralds the birth of the intellect, which means ability to understand the external world, to understand what is foreign.

The important fact to bear in mind is that in ancient times a dim clairvoyance existed out of which arose sagas and legends, and that the clairvoyant consciousness is based on unmixed blood, whereas our awakened consciousness depends on mixed blood. Surprising as it may seem, marriage between strangers has resulted in logical, intellectual thoughts. This is a fact that will increasingly be confirmed by external research, which has already made a beginning in that direction. The mingling of blood extinguishes the former clairvoyance and enables humanity to reach a higher stage of evolution. When a person today goes through esoteric training and causes clairvoyance to reappear, that person transforms it to a higher consciousness, whereas today's waking consciousness has evolved out of the ancient dim clairvoyance.

In our time, a person's whole surrounding world in which he acted came to expression in the blood; consequently, this surrounding world formed the inner in accordance with the outer. In ancient times it was more a person's inner bodily life that came to expression in the blood. A person inherited, along with the memory of his ancestors' experiences, also their good or bad inclinations; these could be traced in his blood. This ancestral bond was severed when blood became mingled through outside marriages. The individual began to live his own personal life; he learned to govern his moral inclinations according to his own experiences. Thus, ancestral power holds sway in unmixed blood; that of personal experience in mixed blood.

Myths and legends told of these things: “That which has power over thy blood has power over thee.” Ancestral power over a folk came to an end when the blood, through being mingled with foreign blood, ceased to be receptive to its influence. This held good in all circumstances.

Whatever power wishes to subjugate a person will have to exert an influence that imprints itself in his blood. Thus, if an evil power wishes dominance over an individual, it must gain dominance over his or her blood. That is the profound meaning of the quotation from Faust, and the reason the representative of evil says: “Sign your name to the pact in blood; once I possess your name written in your blood, I shall have caught you by the one thing that will hold man. I shall then be able to pull you over to my side.” That which possesses a person's blood possesses that person, and possesses the human “I. ”

When two groups of human beings confront one another, as used to be the case in colonization, then only if there is true insight into evolutionary laws is there any possibility of foreseeing if the foreign culture can be assimilated. Take the case of a people that is very much at one with its environment, a people into whose blood the environment has as it were inserted itself. No attempt to graft upon it a foreign culture will succeed. It is simply impossible, and is also the reason why in certain regions the original inhabitants became extinct when colonized. One must approach such problems with insight and realize that anything and everything cannot be forced upon a people. It is useless to demand of blood more than it is able to endure.

Modern science has discovered recently that if blood from one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the two types of blood prove fatal to one another. This is something that has been known to spiritual knowledge for a long time. Just as unrelated types of blood if mixed cause death, so is the old clairvoyance killed in primitive humanity when blood from different lines of descent are mingled. Our modern intellectual life is entirely the outcome of the mingling of blood. Once this approach is adopted it will be possible to study what effect the mingling of blood has had on the various people in the course of history.

Thus, when the blood of animals from different evolutionary stages is mixed the result is death, whereas that is not the case when the species are related. The human organism survives when, through marriage, blood is mingled with strange blood; here the result is the extinction of the original animal kind of clairvoyance, and the birth in evolution of a new consciousness. In other words, something happens in humans, but on a higher level, that is similar to what happens in the animal kingdom where strange blood kills strange blood. In the human kingdom strange blood kills the hazy clairvoyance that is based on kindred blood.

Therefore, it is a destructive process that gave rise to the modern human wakeful day-consciousness. The kind of spiritual life that resulted from intermarriage has been destroyed in the course of evolution; while the very thing that destroyed it, that is, marriage between strangers, gave birth to the intellect and today's lucid consciousness.

What is able to live in a person's blood lives in that person's “I.” Just as the physical principle comes to expression in the physical body, the ether body comes to expression in the system of living fluids, and the astral body in the system of nerves, so does the “I” come to expression in the blood. Physical principle, ether body and astral body are the “above” blood; the “I” forms the center; and physical body, living fluids and nervous system are the “below.” Therefore, whatever power wishes to dominate humans must take possession of their blood.

These are things that must be taken into account if progress is to be achieved in practical life. For example, just because the “I” comes to expression in the blood, a people's racial character can be destroyed through colonization, when more is demanded than the blood can endure.

Not till Beauty and Truth become part of a person's blood does he truly possess them. Mephistopheles wants power over Faust's “I”; that is why he seizes Faust's blood. So you see that the quotation, which is the Leitmotiv of this lecture, arose out of profound knowledge. Blood is indeed a very special fluid.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, novelist, and playwright.
• 2. Jacob Minor (1855–1912) was professor of philology.
• 3. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a German biologist who supported Darwin's theory of evolution and his theory of ontogeny or the development of an individual organism.
• 4. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1744–1799) was a physicist and satirical writer.
• 5. Jean Paul (Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763–1825), German author.
• 6. Georges Leopold Chretien Couvier (1769–1832) was a French comparative anatomist and the founder of paleontology.

Someone who takes a popular or scientific book to search some instructions about the relation of the human mind and soul to the outer body can mostly find a sort of the following simile. The sensory impressions that the human being receives from the outside are as it were telegraphic news that is led to the central station of the nervous system, to the brain, via the nerves like wires and is sent out from there again into the organism to evoke the will impulses and so on. Even if for some people such a simile seems to be very likeable, one can say that such a simile should only hide the helplessness compared with the big riddle of mind and soul which one can enclose in the words which should characterise the object of the today's consideration: mind, soul and body of the human being.

Now I have already indicated in the preceding talks that the today's considerations in this area suffer from a basic lack. Just if you position yourself with such a consideration on the ground of the so successful scientific approach in other areas, you cannot get over the prejudice that throws together the soul life with the effectiveness of the real spiritual life in the human being. Today soul and mind or spirit are confused almost everywhere in scientific, in philosophical, and in popular approaches.

That is why the investigations often remain infertile today—apart from the fact that they are infertile of many other reasons—because one does not want to renounce from the prejudice that the human being can be considered without envisaging his structure of three members: body, soul and mind. I have also already indicated in a former talk that spiritual science has to build a bridge from the soul to the mind, as natural sciences have to build a bridge from the soul life to the body. It is soul experience, in the broader sense, undoubtedly—even if the soul experience is based in this case also on the body—if the human being feels hunger, thirst, saturation, respiratory need and the like.

However, even if you develop these sensations ever so much if you try ever so much to increase or decrease the hunger to observe it internally emotionally, or if you compare the sensation of hunger to the saturation and the like, it is impossible to find out for yourself by this mere inner observation of the soul, which bodily bases are the conditions of this soul experience. One has to build the bridge by the known scientific methods in such a way that one goes over from the mere soul experience to that which happens meanwhile in the bodily organisation.

However, it is also impossible to get to any fertile view of the human being as a spiritual being if one only wants to stop with that what the human being experiences internally-emotionally in his thinking, feeling and willing. Mental pictures, feelings, will impulses are the contents of the soul. They surge up and down in the everyday wake day life. One tries to deepen them now and again by going over to a kind of mystic contemplation. However, as far as one is able to go with such a mystic contemplation, one cannot get to any knowledge of the spirit by such mysticism. However, you have to build the bridge from the mere soul experience to the spiritual one if you strive for the knowledge of the spirit, as in the area of the natural sciences the bridge is built from the soul experience to the bodily processes which form the basis of the sensations of hunger, saturation, of the respiratory need and the like. However, you cannot consider the spiritual life of the human being in same way as one goes over from the soul life to the consideration of the bodily organisation. Other methods are necessary there. I have pointed to these methods already in a fundamental way. You find the details in my books How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, Occult Science. An Outline, The Riddle of Man, and in The Riddles of the Soul, et cetera. However, I would like to bring some noteworthy qualities of those methods forward introductorily which can build the bridge from the usual soul life to the spiritual nature of the human being.

There it concerns above all that just many psychologists of the present believe that certain things are simply impossible which spiritual science must absolutely intend. How often psychologists say today that the real soul life cannot be observed. One points to the fact that, for example, you cannot observe tender feelings because they escape from you if you want to observe them. One points out rightly that we feel disturbed, for example, if we have memorised something, recite it, and want to observe ourselves. This is shown in such a way, as if it were a special peculiarity of the soul life. However, just this is necessary to understand that that which is shown there like an impossibility must be intended as spiritual-scientific method. What the biologist what the physiologist does for the body, the spiritual researcher does for the mind, while he is anxious to ascend from the mere everyday introspection and from the mere mystic introspection to that true soul observation whose impossibility should be asserted with the mentioned tip that we cannot observe ourselves while reciting a poem because we are bothered about it. It is not necessary that you get in such exterior things, as reciting a memorised material, to a possibility of introspection, although for someone who wants to become a spiritual researcher it is also necessary.

However, it is inevitable that the spiritual researcher and psychologist attains real introspection while he faces the course of mental pictures and thoughts, also the course of will impulses, of feelings really so that he is present like his own spectator and learns to observe himself really, so that the observer and the observed completely disintegrate. Some people consider this possibility often as something very easy and believe, while natural sciences use strict methods, spiritual science is something that one can easily attain. However, to real spiritual research methodically strict, patient, vigorous progress is necessary in a way, not only as it happens in the outer scientific area, but in such a way that someone who knows both must say that compared with the often many years' pursuit which is necessary to get to serious spiritual-scientific results one can appropriate the methods of natural sciences easier.

For this true introspection, one creates a basis while one tries quite methodically to lead the will into the mental pictures. Thereby you come to meditation in the true sense of the word, not in a dark, mystic sense. In our usual consciousness we are not accustomed to such a meditative life at all, there the thoughts completely follow the course of the outer world with its impressions. Based on his experience of life or also of his worldly wisdom he regulates his inner life, his train of thought, so that he gets around to arranging his thoughts from the inside. However, all that can be at most a preparation of that which I mean here. This you have to attain in slow, patient, vigorous work. You attain it while you bring such regularity and still such arbitrariness into your thoughts that you are sure: in that, which one practices in such a way nothing works of memory, nothing of that can ascend from some more or less forgotten mental pictures, experiences of life and the like. Hence, it is necessary that someone who wants to get to spiritual research settles in such a pursuit of mental pictures which he arranges to himself in clear way, or receives from there or there in clear way so that he can really say at the moment in which he dedicates himself to this course of mental pictures, I survey how I string the one mental picture and the other how I influence the course of mental pictures by my will.

All that is nothing but a preparation of that which should happen, actually, for the mental and spiritual life. Since, indeed, this must be prepared carefully, but it appears in a certain point of development as something objective, as a reality coming from the spiritual outer world.

Only someone who dedicates himself carefully to such inner exercises for a while brings about gradually if he has led arbitrariness into the course of mental pictures and has overcome it again to discover something internally which strings one mental picture, one thought and the other together from the spiritual area, and causes a soul life, controlled by spiritual reality. As the outer observation regulates the mental pictures and thereby brings in necessity, so that they become mediators of the outer reality, the imagining life gradually becomes a mediator of a spiritual reality. You have to regard only just that which I mean here in the same sense as something seriously scientific as natural sciences are. You must not give yourself up to the prejudice that you get thereby into any speculative fiction because you get, indeed, in inner arbitrariness and realise that you can grasp something spiritually real that approaches your imagination from the other side than the side is which corresponds to the outer physical reality. It is for someone who has not dealt much with such things at first hard to imagine what I mean with these things, actually. Only these things that should form the basis of spiritual science are, like the scientific performances in the laboratory et cetera, nothing but subtler developed activities occurring in the outside world. These inner activities of the spiritual researcher are nothing but the continuation of that what also, otherwise, the soul life accomplishes to produce the relationship between the soul life and the spiritual life which is there always but which becomes conscious by these exercises.

I would like to take the starting point from something that can be more comprehensible to characterise what I mean, actually. Someone who deals with human or other living conditions is able to find differences between the representations of the one writer and the other if he gradually appropriates a sensation for it. He will find with the one author that he can be right with that what he says, that he can rather strictly use his method that he is, however, far away from the nature of the things by the way how he says the things. Against it, one can often say with another author, he is simply by how he speaks about the things a person who is close to the inner nature of the things. It provides something that brings you surely to the things. An example of it:

You can have a lot against such an art appreciation as the author Herman Grimm (18128-1901, art historian) practised it, but you have to admit if you have a sensation of it, even if you often do not agree with his explanations even if you find him dilettantish: in his explanations is something by which you are acquainted with the pieces of art, with the artists, even with their personal characters.

This atmosphere in his writings immediately leads to the being of that about which he speaks. You can put the question to yourself: how does such an author get around to differing just in such typical way from others? For someone who is not used to talking about such things in the abstract just the following can arise. You find some sentences, for example, at a place where he speaks in a very nice article about Raphael, which may probably sound irritating to pedantic, sober scholars. There he says what you would feel according to his opinion if you met Raphael today, and how you would feel quite different if you met Michelangelo today.—Speaking such stuff in a scientific treatise is for some people daydreaming from the start, isn't that so? Of course, one can absolutely understand such a judgement. You find such weird remarks with Herman Grimm at numerous places. One would like to say, he dedicates himself to certain connections of mental pictures from the start about which he knows of course that they cannot become immediate reality, and wants to say nothing special about the outer reality with such remarks. However, someone who has dedicated himself repeatedly to such lines of thought would realise—indeed, now not in this area, because in this area such lines of thought lead to nothing at all—probably in other areas that his soul forces were set in motion so that he can behold deeper into the things and can express them more accurately than others do who despise to do such “unnecessary” lines of thought.

That matters, and I would like to emphasise it. If you do lines of thought in your inside to produce these lines of thought only, to put your thinking in motion, so that it has a possible relationship with reality, and if you refrain from wanting something else with these lines of thought than to bring your thinking in a certain current of development, then your thinking, your soul faculties become nimbler at first. Then the fruit of it appears in quite different areas of consideration. You have to separate both strictly. Someone who is not able to do this gets to pipe dreams, to all kinds of hypotheses. However, to someone who has the self-control to know exactly that such activation of the thinking has only subjective meaning at first who puts the power from such activity of the thinking in motion in the soul, the fruits of it appear at another time. Taking this as starting point Herman Grimm could make historical remarks in his treatises about Macaulay (Thomas Babington M., 1800-1859, British historian, poet and politician), Frederick the Great (1712-1786, Prussian king since 1740) and others which remind of that what spiritual science has to say about the life of the soul and the mind. I do not want to say with it that Herman Grimm was already a spiritual researcher; he just rejects this. I also do not want to say with it that that what I have characterised with him is more than something that can already take place in the usual consciousness. While you develop such a thing and practise it on and on, you lead the will into the imagining and you grasp the spiritual necessity in the imagining.

However, one has to add something else. I have already pointed to the fact that it is important in the development of the spiritual researcher that he can dedicate himself to the so-called limiting points of cognition. Du Bois-Reymond (Emil D. B.-R., 1818-1896, German physician and physiologist) speaks of seven world riddles as limiting points beyond which the human cognition cannot get. Two points form just the starting point of spiritual-scientific investigations. The one is that you feel in the inner life at first what is said with such a border issue, actually. I like to point with pleasure to persons on such occasion who really strive for knowledge. As an example, I cite Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887, German aesthetician). When this treated the important subject of human dream fantasies, he came to such a border issue. He said to himself, if I look at the relation of the soul life to the body life, it is most certain that the soul cannot be in the body, but it is as certain that the soul cannot be somewhere beyond the body. Someone who develops such a thinking which does not strive for knowledge according to common methods, but according to inner necessary currents of the soul life, has often to say to himself, you are at a point where all mental pictures which are due to the sensory observations, to the whole conscious life do not get you anywhere. Now you can stop at such limiting points and say, well, there is just a border, beyond which the human being cannot come. You are mistaken, while you say this. However, about that I do not want to speak.

The point is that you try just in such limiting points to penetrate with your complete soul life that you try to settle in a real contradiction that shows the spiritual-mental reality as an outer inconsistent reality appears if a plant once shows a green leaf, some other time a yellow petal. In reality, the contradictions also come into being. If you experience them instead of approaching them with your usual logical thinking if you approach them with the full living inner soul being if you let a contradiction live out in the soul and do not approach it with the prejudice of life and want to dissolve it, you notice how it increases, how something really appears there that you can compare to the following, as I have done in my book The Riddles of the Soul.

If a lower living being has no sense of touch at first, but only an inner surging life, and gradually stumbles against the outside world, that what was before only inner surging life changes into the sense of touch. That is a usual scientific idea. Then the sense of touch differentiates again, so that as it were by the collision of the inner life with the outside world the latter becomes inner experience. You can apply this picture of the sense of touch to that mental-spiritual experience which the spiritual researcher has to go through. He lets such limiting points of cognition live out in his soul. Then it is in such a way, as if the inner life is not confronted with a physical outside world, but with a spiritual world and a spiritual sense of touch, which then differentiates further and wants to become what one can call spiritual eyes, spiritual ears figuratively. However, it is far from any preoccupation with such border issues of cognition up to that what I have called beholding consciousness in my book The Riddle of Man. However, one can develop this beholding consciousness.

One has to consider this one thing. The other is that you find out just with such an inner spiritual-mental activity that you cannot penetrate into the spiritual world with the faculty of judgement that you have gained in the sensory world, not even in the negative sense that one says that the human cognition cannot get beyond itself at this point. You have rather to refrain from penetrating into the spiritual world, before you have prepared yourself by these and similar exercises to penetrate really into the spiritual world. For a certain resignation, a certain renunciation belongs to it. While as a rule the human being is used to putting up hypotheses and all kinds of logical conclusions about that what could be or not be beyond the physical experience, the spiritual researcher has not only to get to an inner conviction, but to an inner intellectual virtue not to use for the characteristic of the spiritual world what comes only from the physical-sensory reality. You have to appropriate this renunciation first; it must become a habitual soul quality. Then you bring yourself to the knowledge that the soul has to make itself ripe for it first to penetrate into the spiritual world. This virtue also supports the introduction of the will into the imagining life as I have described it. This brings you to the point where you can practise that introspection of which I have spoken just now, with which you can really be your own spectator, while the thoughts, feelings, and will impulses are proceeding.

Only by such true introspection, the human being develops a spiritual activity about which he knows by experience that it is performed not with the help of the body because the human being with his true ego is now beyond the body. This mental picture is quite unusual admittedly. Since everything of the other worldviews tends to deny the possibility that the human being can develop a soul life which is independent of the body. If in this way the results of the introspection are stated, one criticises them with that which one has gained in the outer. One cannot cope with it. One creates misunderstandings about misunderstandings simply because any spiritual research is based on something opposite that forms the basis of the scientific way of thinking. There the thinking and the methodical development of thinking is so organised in experiments et cetera that the human being applies the scientific methods that are developed with the faculty of judgement and the reason to learn nature's secrets. This is quite natural on the ground of the scientific way of thinking. One uses the same power of thinking and imagining to develop all kinds of scientific methods in spiritual science to prepare the soul first, so that it can observe the results of spiritual science.

This serves to prepare the soul, so that it can observe the phenomena of the soul life in a way that is free from the body. The human being can thereby advance from the soul to the spirit as he advances from the soul to the body with scientific methods. So that you can say, already the whole way of the proving and judging thinking must become different in spiritual science. It must not be absent, but what one reaches with it is the ability of observing because one has applied the methods of the outer science to the development of the soul first.

Thus in the beginning the spiritual researcher prepares himself with the same means with which science gets, otherwise, to its results, to be able to observe spiritually. Thereby that originates what I reluctantly call clairvoyant beholding of the spiritual world, reluctantly because even today one points often to older unusual soul conditions and confuses the strict serious method of spiritual science intentionally or accidentally with all kinds of pathological and dilettantish methods if one speaks of the clairvoyant beholding of the outer world. About such things, I will speak in detail in the talk on the Revelations of the Unconscious.

Now one can observe the soul life in such a way that the observation does not stop only at the soul experience, but points to the spirit. I would like to mention two quintessential points at first. While the human being gets to true introspection which is carried out beyond the body and thereby faces the spirit, he attains a view not only of the relationship of the usual wake state to the usual sleep as an immediate result of observation but above all of that what the phenomena of awakening and falling asleep are. It is still the destiny of spiritual science today that it speaks not only of unknown things, but that it has to speak in quite different way about that what is involved in the consciousness of every human being.

One has to add to this that spiritual science must use words that are coined for the usual life. This causes some difficulties because spiritual science must use the same words now and again already in another direction. It has to go back to known phenomena of life to be able to illuminate the spiritual realm starting from them. The human being knows the alternating conditions of sleeping and waking if one speaks from the point of consciousness at first, on one side as the time in which the consciousness exists from awakening up to falling asleep, and on the other side the time in which the consciousness has disappeared in darkness, in the sleeping consciousness. The spiritual researcher knows that it is so weak that one normally speaks of the absence of the consciousness in sleep. Now, these both alternating conditions are suitable to move some way into the riddle of the human being already by a realistic consideration. From the start, it must strike everybody that the real human being cannot begin with falling asleep and awakening anew. The mental-spiritual being of the human being which lives, otherwise, while awake as a consciousness must also exist in sleep. However, for the usual consciousness the thing is in such a way that the human being cannot consider himself in sleep that he cannot compare, hence, the waking state to the sleeping state internally spiritually. Externally scientifically, it is another matter. Now it concerns that one gets closer to these things if one really ascends from the usual sensory observation to the spiritual observation in such a way that one envisages thinking, feeling, and willing.

We turn our attention upon the imagining and thinking at first. The human being considers it as a rule in such a way that he knows: I am awake from awakening to falling asleep. My thoughts position themselves in my usual awake life. The usual consciousness cannot get to another judgement. It is different if the soul life has prepared itself with such exercises to a spiritual observation. Then one can observe this inner expansion world, the awake consciousness generally from awakening to falling asleep. It is strange, that here serious naturalists meet with that what spiritual science brings to light from another side. However, natural sciences can only build a bridge to the soul life going out from the investigation of the body. They refuse even today to speak about that about which I speak here. Hence, the naturalists speak another language than the spiritual researcher does. However, the things are to be found. Thus interesting investigations have appeared, for example, recently in scientific area by the researcher Julius Pikler (1864-1952, Hungarian physician, politician) who envisages the awake consciousness quite unlike one was used in biology up to now. Of course, he does not examine such a thing spiritual-scientifically. Hence, he takes something as basis that is not more than a word. Pikler speaks of a “drive of waking” which keeps the human being alert up to falling asleep, which is there, even if no special thoughts and mental pictures are there which is said to appear as such in particular in boredom. I wanted to point to it only to show that also from the other side one works on it.

Spiritual science cannot simply take any term or any hypothetical force as basis where a phenomenon exists but has to observe it. Indeed, it observes what the human soul experiences while awake. It observes the steady flow of the conscious day life from awakening up to falling asleep. It finds the way in particular if it observes the intrusion of thoughts and mental pictures in this simple waking state with its methods of observation. There arises for the spiritual researcher that the usual waking state is interrupted by a partial falling asleep in the experience of thoughts. We wake in such a way that we perpetually lower the waking state to partial sleeping, while we move the mental pictures into the waking state. We get to know the relation of the soul to the imagining life only because we can observe how the usually intensive waking state is not diminished as strongly as in the dreamless sleep and the thought which may be evoked by a perception falls into this decrease every time. We do not experience the usual waking state in a steady intensity, but it is diminished perpetually if we grasp thoughts. What exists, otherwise, more or less dulled in sleep continues into the awake life. Thereby you become able to differentiate what you usually have as a coloured succession of mental pictures while awake. What one knows, otherwise, as waking and sleeping of equal intensity, you have to learn to imagine with different degrees of intensity. You must be able to observe the complete waking state, the weakened waking state, the complete sleeping state, the weakened sleeping state and so on.

Thus, you get to know gradually what one does not consider, otherwise, in the consciousness. Thereby one can also envisage the waking state independently by observation to which the spiritual eye must be created first. Then you need no proofs of what you see, but you just behold it. There you become able to regard a view as right, as given by experience about which the present psychology speaks exceptionally seldom. However, once a psychologist spoke very nicely, whom one appreciates too little.

Here you are at one of those points, which are so interesting for the development of spiritual research. This is not something new, but something that should be built up only in a systematic roundup for which the beginnings have already appeared with those who struggled with knowledge. Fortlage (Karl F., 1806-1881, German philosopher) speaks about it once, and Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906, philosopher) reproves him, that, actually, the usual consciousness is dying perpetually. It is a weird, courageous assertion, which is to be confirmed scientifically, although natural sciences interpret the concerning facts wrongly; read, for example, the investigations of Kassowitz (Max K., 1842-1913, Austrian paediatrician).

Fortlage realises that that by which consciousness originates is not only based on the growing life, but that just if the conscious life appears in the soul this life must die in the human organism, so that we carry death through our whole conscious life partially in ourselves. While we form mental pictures, something is destroyed in our nervous system that, however, immediately regenerates again. Development follows destruction again. The conscious soul life is based on destructive processes. Fortlage says, if the partial death that always appears in a part of the body, in the brain, while forming the consciousness, seized the whole body each time as the physical death does it, the human being would have to die perpetually. As to Fortlage the physical death only expresses itself as a whole once what the consciousness is perpetually based on.

Hence, Fortlage can hypothetically conclude because he does not yet have the spiritual beholding that we deal with a partial death each time, if our usual consciousness appears, that the general death is the merging of a consciousness into other conditions, which the human being develops for the spiritual world after death. There appears like a silver lining in no uncertain manner what spiritual science develops more and more exactly. Science shows that the whole nature of the human being that is considered rightly from the viewpoint of evolution today must not only considered from this viewpoint. Now I do not expand this consideration beyond the human being; we shall thoroughly speak later about nature where we can enter into such questions.

If one stops at the human being, one has to consider him in such a way that one knows that a development of growing life takes place, but perpetually also a destructive process, a retrograde development. The organs of this destructive process are mainly in the nervous system. The mental consciousness intervenes in the human being while it lets the processes of growing alternate with destructive processes. The whole awake life from the awakening up to falling asleep is based on the fact that with the awakening the mental-spiritual that has separated with falling asleep from the body immerses in the body and that what is progressive development from falling asleep up to awakening changes into retrograde development in the nervous system.

While the human being is thinking, he has to destroy, he must cause death processes in his nerves to make way for the work of the spiritual-mental. Natural sciences will confirm this more and more from the other side. The spiritual researcher advances from the spiritual-mental to the bodily and shows that, while with the awakening the spiritual-mental flows into the bodily, destruction takes place, until the destruction has advanced so far that the progressive development must appear with the beginning of sleep again. The evenly progressive waking state is based on the fact that by the mental-spiritual in the human body repeatedly a proper, a legitimate destructive process takes place, contrary to that current which lives in the usual waking which is active in the forces which let us as children grow and thrive. If we put the imagining, the thinking in the usual waking state, we work the other way again.

There we bring parts of development, partial states of sleep into the destructive process from the bodily development, so that we can say: it is weakened by processes which represent quite weakly what exists in the growth, that state which extends about the usual awake life because it is destroyed. The spiritual researcher realises now that this destruction, this continuously progressing process from the awakening up to falling asleep is the effect of the spirit in the human being. Spirit destroys, and within this destruction, those activities of imagining and thinking assert themselves in which the soul uses the constructive processes to put them in the spiritual destructive processes. Here we see mind, soul, and body intertwining. The spiritual researcher does not want to speak about the spiritual-mental in a dilettantish way and to disregard that what happens in the body, just because he himself observes that the spirit does not work in such a way that it expresses the processes of growth, of development, which are wholly physical processes, but these contrary processes. While the spiritual researcher gets to know that what the mind accomplishes on the body, he also gets to know again how the soul uses the bodily processes to diminish the spiritual processes, while it moves the mental pictures into the destructive process that the mind performs.

As well as the spiritual researcher on one side recognises in the mental pictures which are involved in the usual waking state a partial falling asleep, he learns to recognise on the other side that every time a will impulse positions itself in the soul life, this appears like an increase of the waking state. Thinking, imagining is like a reduction of the waking state, the will impulse is like an awakening of that state which prevails from the awakening up to falling asleep in relation to the will life that is so vague that one can call it a sleeping life even if one is waking. What does the human being know, while he carries out any will impulse, what proceeds in his arm? It is like an awakening every time a will impulse emerges.

With it, I have indicated how the real observer who has ascended to the true introspection can understand the work of the human soul forces and mental powers in the spiritual. While he advances with his methods further, he can get to know that ego that he experiences in this introspection with which he just does the introspection. This ego does not reveal itself to philosophical speculations; one can only experience it. If it is experienced, one gets to know by immediate view what I have now characterised sketchily. The human being with his usual consciousness cannot help believing, envisaging the forces of growing only, that gradually from the bodily developmental processes that develops which is expressed in the mental as ego. Someone who gets to know the ego by true introspection realises that this is a fallacy—but it is a necessary fallacy for the usual consciousness.

There you learn to recognise that that what happens in the body in the ongoing developmental processes relates to the true ego as the lung to the air. As little the lung produces the air, as little the human body creates the ego anyhow. Only as long as one does not know the real spiritual-mental, one commits the necessary fallacy that this ego has anything to do with the body.

However, the spiritual researcher leaves the body with his methods while investigating the ego, as well as that who wants to look at the air has to leave the lung. Thus, the spiritual researcher recognises by real observation that this self, this spiritual-mental of the human being, enters the physical body at birth, at conception respectively that he gets from the line of heredity. He recognises that this ego, which descends from the spiritual world, receives the body that the body inhales this ego, and the human being exhales it again if he dies. This is a pictorial expression how the spiritual-mental that descends from the spiritual world is connected with the physical-bodily.

Just then, however, an essential differentiation of the spiritual and the mental arises for the spiritual researcher also with the transition of the human being to the mental-spiritual surroundings in which he lives with that part of his being that goes through birth and death which is the everlasting, immortal in the human being compared with the transient body. This difference of the mental and the spiritual arises because we learn to recognise something in the mental which breaks away from the human being that is as it were only a died away keynote of that which you experience, otherwise, as thinking, feeling and willing. I would like to express myself as follows: we take a chanted song. We can regard the words of the song as a poem at first and can continue this consideration in listening the chanted song. However, we can also refrain from the contents of the words while singing and can pay attention to the music only. You can grasp the whole experience of the human being in thinking, feeling, and willing in such a way that you can also grasp an undercurrent there if you do not go into the contents of thinking, feeling, and willing.

To express myself even more clearly, I would like to characterise the matter still from another side. You all know that certain Asian people ascend to the spiritual-mental by methods about which I have said in my talks and books repeatedly that they are not applicable to our western cultural development in the same way that here we have to apply other methods to the conscious spiritual research. However, I may adduce something as comparison. You know that the Asian human beings get to a certain cognition of the soul because they recite mantras over and over again. One laughs in the West at the repetitions in the speeches of Buddha and does not know that for the Eastern human beings this repetition of certain sentences is a necessity because thereby just a certain undercurrent is attained in the inner absorption of the matter, disregarding the immediate contents. One hears music living in the soul with these mantras. The soul puts itself in such a thing. In my books, you can find that we do that in the Western spiritual development in a more spiritual-mental way that we do not resort to such a repeated singing or speaking of mantras. However, what is attained there in other way can be explained by the fact that one points out that one witnesses an undercurrent in thinking, feeling, and willing.

If one resorts to the full introspection, maintaining the contents of thinking, feeling and willing, as you have it in the usual awake consciousness, you discover the work of the spirit the easiest. Against it the mental is something more intimate, it often escapes from you. You have to do quite difficult and lengthy exercises if you want to find out it. While you can find out relatively easily that the spirit is destructive in the ongoing waking state, you have to apply subtler, more intimate exercises to observe that the emerging mental pictures are partial sleeping states. However, if you get to this more intimate experience in the soul, you also get from the mere subjective soul life to the objective soul life. Then you do not pursue the spiritual-mental only in that spiritual realm in which the human being lives between death and a new birth, now in a wholly spiritual experience, but you can pursue the mental in its state before birth and in its postmortal state. As strange as it still sounds to the modern human being, one can find out these things. Due to this experience which the Oriental develops just in a way which is so close to the intimate soul life he realised sooner than the Westerner did that the whole human soul life takes place in repeated lives on earth that the repeated lives on earth really result from observation.

It is an observation result of the mental experience. To experience the imperishable that goes through births and deaths in its spirituality is something else than this mental experience as it appears in the repeated lives on earth. It is like a specialisation of the spiritual experience.

As one sees the imagining being involved in the single human being as partial sleeping, one can observe in the outer world how in that spiritual realm, which one discovers as a scene of the everlasting spiritual in the human being, the mental is involved, while it specifies the general-everlasting spiritual life in repeated lives on earth. Those have begun once and will end once. I speak about that in the next talk.

You attain that by the real development of the mental abilities that not everybody needs to appropriate. However, every human being has the sense for truth. Unless prejudices cloud your sense for truth, you can agree with that which the spiritual researcher has to say, also before you yourself have become a spiritual researcher. Since the seer differs from other people as someone differs who watches the watchmaker from that who sees the clock only. He who sees the clock knows that it has originated from the intellectual activity of the watchmaker; he does not need watching the watchmaker. While the spiritual researcher describes from his research by visionary observation how that comes about what is in the everyday life, someone who observes this immediately will find the said confirmed everywhere, even if he himself is no spiritual researcher.

Even if this appears as something paradox in the general cultural development how the spiritual researcher has to think about body, soul and mind of the human being, that will also arise to spiritual research in the course of time—while natural sciences work from the other side on that what spiritual research has to say—what has arisen for natural sciences slowly and gradually. Consider only that there was a time when certain prejudices prevented the emergence of modern physiology and biology. In a similar way one has a prejudice to build the bridge from the human soul life to that what proceeds in the human body, while the soul life takes place. The study of anatomy became also only possible in the course of the Middle Ages. Before a prejudice was an obstacle to add that what happens there in the body to that what the soul can experience inwardly. Today spiritual science is in the same position. Even if one does not believe it, the today's prejudices are of the same value and come from the same causes. As in the Middle Ages one did not want to permit that bodies were dissected to recognise that what happens in them as a condition of the soul life, the most serious scientists are reluctant even today to investigate the spirit with spiritual-scientific methods. As the Middle Ages got around gradually to releasing the scientific investigation of the human body, the cultural development will also involve that the investigation of the spirit which is not identical with the soul is released to spiritual science.

Whether one goes to scientifically minded human beings, whether one goes to other psychologists and comes with spiritual-scientific results, one experiences the same, only in another field, what the biography of Galilei tells.

Up to Galilei's times the prejudice prevailed which continued by an ambiguous conception of Aristotle during the whole Middle Ages that the nerves arise from the heart. Galilei said to a friend that this were a prejudice. The friend was a strictly religious follower of Aristotle. He said, what I can read in Aristotle is true, and there you can read that the nerves arise from the heart. Then Galilei showed him at a corpse that the nerves arise from the brain, not from the heart that Aristotle had not recognised this because such anatomical studies were not yet usual. However, the follower of Aristotle remained unbelieving. Although he realised that the nerves arise from the brain, he said, indeed, the appearance militates for you, but Aristotle says something different, and if a contradiction is between Aristotle and nature, I do not trust nature but Aristotle. This happened really.

Still today, it is this way. Go to those who want to found psychic research in the old sense from a philosophical viewpoint, go to those who want to found psychic research scientifically, they state that one has anyhow to explain that from the psychic only which forms the basis of the soul phenomena coming from the mind or the body. If one points ever so much to facts of spiritual observation, one answers out of the same spirit, if a contradiction exists between that which Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, philosopher, physiologist, psychologist) or Paulsen (Friedrich P., 1846-1908, German philosopher and educator) or any authority say and that which spiritual science shows by spiritual observation, then we do not trust spiritual observation but that which one can read in the books to which we are accustomed in this time without authority. Since today one does no longer believe in authorities, but—indeed, in such a way that one does not notice it—in that which is officially labelled anyhow. Spiritual science will struggle through as well as natural sciences struggled through concerning the investigation of the body.

Naturalists like Du Bois-Reymond and others state that where the supersensible begins science must stop. I have already pointed in a former talk to the fallacy that happens there. Where from did it originate? Indeed, one felt—and Du Bois-Reymond felt rather clearly—that the human being is rooted in something spiritual. However, one must recognise this spiritual only by development of spiritual-scientific methods as the ground from which the mental of the human being originates. Modern science wants to make the things clear, while it envisages that what one can perceive with the senses; since the roots in the spiritual ground escape from it. Science does it like somebody who digs out a tree to face it clearly. Then he faces it clearly but the tree withers. Thus, modern science has dug out the tree of knowledge. However, just as the tree dug out from its ground dries up, knowledge also dries up which one digs out of the spiritual ground. Such a sentence like that of Du Bois-Reymond that science stops where the supersensible begins will be linked up to the contrary conviction in future. One will recognise, if one does not want to recognise the supersensible down to the natural phenomena, one removes the tree of knowledge from its topsoil and makes knowledge dry up. One does not say in future where the supersensible begins, science stops, but one experiences if one wants to found knowledge in the way that one takes out it from the spiritual ground that where in the human spiritual life the supersensible stops science cannot prosper that there a real science cannot originate beyond the supersensible, but that where the supersensible stops a dead science will only be.

This lecture is also known as: Luciferic and Ahrimanic Influences. It is lecture 8 of 8 from the lecture series: The Relation between the Living and the Dead.

From yesterday's lecture you will have seen how the spiritual world, in which we are between death and a new birth, and the physical world interpenetrate. Not only so; the spiritual world and the physical interpenetrate even in our so-called physical life between birth and death. We ourselves give the directions, as it were, for the way we are born with such and such characteristics. For we are connected between death and a new birth with what is taking place here in the physical world, and, among other things, with the stream of inheritance which eventually leads to our own birth.

We may now consider in a more inward way the whole line of evolution which we studied yesterday more externally. We will try to bring before our souls the connection of man with the spiritual world from a certain special aspect. Between birth and death we are living here in the physical world, and the physical world is known to us through our sense perceptions. It is a trite saying and we need scarcely repeat it: If we did not have our sense organs, we could know nothing of our connection with this physical world. All that gives us this connection through the sense organs with the physical world, falls away from us when we pass through the gate of death. Hence we may even say: It is our specific task between birth and death to make acquaintance with the physical world. We are incorporated in this physical body in order to make ourselves acquainted through it with the physical world.

Now we are not only members of the physical world, but equally of the spiritual worlds. The next spiritual world, as it were adjoining this physical, is the world which we have grown accustomed to call the ethereal or elemental. Whether or not the expression is really fitting is a matter of less consequence. To begin with, this elemental world is an unknown world for the human being as he now lives in the physical. It is, in fact, the first of the super-sensible worlds but it is no less fraught with significance for man than this physical world of the senses. For as soon as our sense is awakened for the elemental world—which happens when we are able to perceive Imaginatively—we realise that this world is peopled by many beings, no less abundantly than is the physical. Man himself, inasmuch as he has an etheric body, belongs to the elemental world. As an ether-being, man too is a citizen of the elemental world; only the conditions in the elemental world are somewhat different from the conditions in the physical.

To begin with, I must say something on this one point: the power of perception for the elemental world cannot begin in man till he is able entirely to free himself from that which makes him earthly man. In general it is not even difficult for him to do this. True, it is more difficult for the man of today than for the man of primeval times. We have all heard of the primeval atavistic clairvoyance. For the most part it consisted in this very fact: man was able to free himself from that which makes him earthly man. As earthly men, as you all know, we are formed of solid matter only to a very small extent. To a large extent we consist of liquid; and the moment we can emancipate ourselves from what is solid in us, the moment we feel ourselves only in our liquid part, Imaginative experiences can emerge. It is only our existence in the solid element which prevents our knowing by Imaginative perception all that surrounds us as the elemental world. Imaginative perception will surely return to mankind even as it has been lost. Only the old Imaginative clairvoyance which is lost was in a way unconscious and dream-like, while that which will gradually arise in our Fifth post-Atlantean epoch will be a fully conscious Imaginative seership. By a perfectly normal and natural process of evolution it will enter into human nature.

Let us now return to what I said before. Our relation to the elemental world is different from our relation to the ordinary, physical world. To begin with, I will give one example to confirm this. In the physical world—apparently at any rate—we determine our relationships with other beings by our own free human choice. We form our friendships for ourselves, likewise our other relations to the beings that surround us. In the elemental world, in which we are through our etheric body, this is no longer the case in the same direct way. Through our whole life in the elemental world we are in a more or less close relationship to certain other elemental beings. As an independent elemental being—for such we are by virtue of our etheric body—we are related to a number of other elemental beings, who accompany us throughout our life, and we may compare this relationship to the relation of the Sun to the encircling planets. Our own etheric body is a kind of Sun elemental being, and is actually accompanied by a number of elemental beings belonging to it, like the planets to the Sun. These elemental beings, together with it, constitute a kind of sevenfold entity, as do the planets and the Sun according to the older conception.

During our whole physical life between birth and death, there is a constant interplay between these our elemental satellites and ourselves. Not only does our feeling, our condition, depend on the way in which our elemental or etheric body is related to its ‘planets’; our relation to the outer world, to certain outer beings, and notably to other human beings, is regulated by the mutual relations between these ‘planets’ and our own etheric body. In future time there will be a kind of medicine which will reckon especially with what I have now said; there will be a medical, physiological conception which will ascertain how the one or the other satellite is related to the etheric body; and according to this, it will be possible to diagnose the sick or healthy condition of the patient. For what is called illness today is in truth only the outer physical picture of what is there in reality. In reality there is some kind of irregularity in what I have here compared to a planetary system, and the illness is but an image of this irregularity.

Of course, one might say forthwith: ‘Well, let the people who know this establish a new pathology. Hic Rhodus, hic salta, now let occultism show its art!’ Well, it will do so the moment its legs are freed! A man cannot dance whose legs are tied, and by the fettering of the legs in this case I mean the presence of modern materialism which has simply confiscated the science of medicine. This state of affairs cannot be improved by one individual or another doing this or that it can only be improved by the common will of a larger number of people, strong enough to bring about a system of medical practice which will make the penetration of medicine with spiritual principles a practical possibility.

One thing it is important to perceive. St. Paul did not speak in vain words of untold importance which have, however, never been rightly understood. For people keep on imagining that they are Christian while in reality they are not. St. Paul said that sin came into the world through the law, i.e. sin is there through the law. In a wider sense, that which mars the order of things is there through the law. Even today these truths can only be hinted at. For as a rule, if anything is not in order, our materialistic age will always cry aloud for a law—quite unaware that whatever is not in order comes from the very laws that are made. But, as I said, such a thing can only be hinted at. A very great deal will yet be necessary towards an understanding of these things. I said, people only imagine that they are Christians. For such a passage as this one by St. Paul, though it is read by countless people, is very little understood.

Through the fact that we are etheric beings, we belong to an elemental world, and there is a certain system which stands in a near relation to ourselves. This system consists of the elemental beings or ether-beings who accompany us. Their forces are ordered or arranged in a certain way; and when we pass through the gate of death, it is they, by their forces, who draw our etheric body out of our physical body, and place it—that is to say, place the human being himself to begin with—into the elemental world. The elemental world, as I have indicated, is clearly to be perceived by Imaginative cognition. In it are a multitude of beings whom we may call nature-spirits, but not only these. In it are also all those human beings who have just passed physically through the gate of death. They are only there, however, for a short time, as you know, for a few days. Then what we call the etheric body is given over to the elemental world; a second corpse is laid aside. But we must not imagine that this, the second body which we lay aside, is at all rapidly disintegrated in that world. That is not so. True, in a certain sense, it does become dissolved in the elemental world. It dissolves, it becomes ever more tenuous. But it does not become imperceptible to those beings who by their very nature can perceive Imaginatively.

The elemental or etheric body is always perceptible, for instance, to the human being himself, who has passed through the gate of death. True, he has laid aside this elemental body and he now lives on through the time between death and a new birth. But he remains constantly related to the elemental body which he has laid aside. It is not as with the physical body, to which man loses his relationship when he has cast it off. With the elemental body the opposite is the case; man preserves his relationship to it. Moreover, this relationship of man to his elemental or etheric body can work right down into the physical world.

When a human being here in the physical world has made his soul receptive, when he has acquired the elemental or Imaginative power of perception, then, too, he can consciously converse in his life of thought with the dead. Only, of course, these thoughts are far more refined and delicate than those of ordinary life. Thus he is consciously connected with the dead. Now the connection of which man thus becomes conscious is always there in the subconscious, whenever there was a relation during earthly life between the one who has remained behind in the physical, and the one who has risen into the spiritual world. Let us assume that we lost a beloved friend through death. One who has attained Imaginative perception will be aware of it but, whether we know it or not, the dead human being works upon us. He works—if I may so describe it—as though he were pouring his will into the etheric body which he has laid aside, as into a mirror, and the mirror, in its turn, were sending on the rays to us. Via the elemental or etheric body, the dead react upon the living. This, as it were, is the mediate influence of the dead upon the living.

To describe where this mediate influence comes to expression, I may say, it is expressed in our ordinary conceptions and ideas which we carry with us through the world. As a rule, the human being—especially in our materialistic age—is aware only of the conceptions and ideas which portray to him the outer physical reality. But among the conceptions which we thus carry through the world, some are perpetually living which are so fine and delicate that they are not directly perceptible; we simply do not pay attention to them. If we were wont to observe our soul's life more intimately, we should soon recognise their presence. But we constantly let this finer, more delicate life of the soul be overwhelmed and drowned by the coarser ideas which flow into us from the surrounding physical world. If it were not so, we should soon perceive that finer, more intimate thoughts are constantly there in us. These are due to those who were connected with us and have passed before us through the gate of death; and who, especially in the first period after their passage through the gate of death, are able to communicate their deeds to us.

Through the fact that as ether-beings we belong to the elemental world, we thus bear the being of the dead with us in our own conceptions, in our own life of ideas, for a certain length of time. If we would speak of ‘Monism’ on any basis of reality, we should chiefly speak of the Monism which I have just described—the Monism that is formed by the working together of the living and the dead. In truth, those who have passed through the gate of death are by no means far away from us; they are far nearer to us than we believe.

Now man develops more and more as he lives through the time between death and a new birth, and so he becomes able to work upon the world down here not only indirectly but directly. From a certain time onward we can perceive this influence upon us of the departed; their rays of force begin to penetrate into our soul's life. But this immediate influence cannot work its way directly into our thoughts, into our conceptual life. It works its way rather into our habits, into our whole way of life and conduct; into all this there streams an influence working downward from spiritual worlds, coming to us from those who have passed before us through the gate of death.

We must however realise that this working together of the dead and the living depends on many different conditions. The dead man is in an environment wherein there are beings of his own kind, that is, beings of soul, and all the beings who belong to the higher Hierarchies, down to man himself. And inasmuch as the etheric body which he has laid aside is his mediator, he can also have perceptions of the human beings down here, who are, as it were, veiled from him through the physical body. With the help of his etheric body, he can penetrate the veil. He who has passed through the gate of death is of course subject to the conditions under which man must live in the world of soul and Spirit; he must submit to them. I need only mention one main point, and you will understand what I mean in this connection. We know that throughout the world in which we live Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are working in the most manifold ways. If these Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces did not entice us, all that comes to expression in man as wrong and evil actions would not be there in the world. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces must work upon man, and must give him the opportunity to follow and obey them. Once this fact is brought home to us strongly enough, we shall recognise that man, after all, is a very different being from what we often make him out to be with our hostile criticisms. If we had the faculty, already in the physical world, always to see how the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic work in man, we should judge our fellow men quite differently.

I do not say that we should generally be less critical; for when we divert our adverse judgement from man—though we should no longer be fighting against man himself—we must still be fighting Lucifer and Ahriman. But against man as man, we should be infinitely more tolerant. Now he who lives in the soul life in the time between death and a new birth, practises this tolerance both in relation to the beings who are with him in the spiritual world and in relation to those who are still incarnated as men here in the physical life. It is part of the very character of man, when he has passed through the gate of death, that he acquires this tolerance. He always sees through the fact that Lucifer and Ahriman are playing such and such a part in a human being. He does not say, ‘That is a bad man, following evil desires’, but he sees through the fact that Lucifer is playing such and such a part in him. He does not say, ‘That is an envious fellow’ but he says, ‘Ahriman is playing such and such a part in him’.

He who lives above, between death and birth, judges in this way, it belongs to his very being to do so, just as it belongs to our being to have good eyesight (if we are sound and healthy). Moreover, since this belongs to his very being, it hurts the dead man infinitely when, maintaining his connection with us in the physical life (the connection which was begun during his own life on Earth), he comes up against an altogether different spirit in ourselves. Assume, for instance, that out of our personal antipathy we meet with peculiar hate another human being, who was also connected with the dead man. This hate will signify infinite pain for the dead who tries to approach us—as he must do, since he is still connected with us. This hatred must first be overcome by him; it is like a sword, a jagged sword, a spear that is shivered constantly against him.

And so the way in which the dead man tries to work into us—his own experience as he does so—depends very, very much on the attunement of our soul. Into our ordinary thoughts and ideas borrowed from the surrounding world, into our feelings and sentiments, into our temperament and habits, these influences of the dead are working as I have now described. And there is a constant mutual interaction between what goes on in the realm of those who have passed through the gate of death, and our own souls.

If you bear all this in mind, you will say to yourself: Complicated workings are contained in that which we bear within us as our soul; and much is necessary fully to perceive all the mysterious forces that pulsate in the human soul. The soul has very little in its own consciousness of all that is pulsating in it. But the mood and attunement of the soul, and its ability or inability in one direction or another, depend on all these things. For on a large scale all this is determined once more through our karma. The fact that we are brought together here with this man or that, and that they in turn work down upon us in the way I have described, is, of course, connected with our karma in the widest sense.

In bringing all this before us, we must realise, of course, that our age has a real longing for what Spiritual Science brings to men; and the real longings are frequently satisfied today by quite erroneous methods. Thus there are many people today who have decidedly got beyond the prejudice which people had in the middle of the 19th century, and even in the last third of the 19th century—the prejudice that all things of the soul can still be explained from physical and physiological effects. Frequently, however, half- or quarter-truths have far worse effects than complete errors. Thus it is a half- or quarter-truth which underlies what is so frequently described today as analytical psychology or psychoanalysis. People are truly seeking but they are groping in the dark; they divine that many things are hidden in the foundations of the soul, but they cannot resolve to take the real steps into the spiritual world, so as to find what is hidden there, in the depths of the soul.

What do the psychoanalysts say? They say: Observe a human being as he meets us just in ordinary life. His feeling and condition as a whole depends very largely, not only on what is there in his consciousness, but on a variety of factors which lie in the unconscious, beneath the threshold of consciousness. There comes a man, feeling in a depressed mood; an irregularity in his whole nervous apparatus is apparent. In such a case—the psychoanalyst opines—we must look and see what he may have experienced perhaps many years ago; experiences which he may not altogether have assimilated, but which he pressed down into the subconscious.

The psychoanalyst divines quite well that that which has been removed from consciousness has not therefore been removed from reality; it is still there, down in the subconscious. But his idea is this: If we can only entice it forth into the consciousness by a kind of catechising process, then we shall perceive what is consuming and gnawing at him down below. (I cannot, of course, explain psychoanalysis here in all its ramifications; I will only show you a few features of it.)

Starting from this point, the psychoanalyst looks for many things in the foundations of the soul. Years ago, the human being had perhaps this or that ideal of life, this or that hope or plan. He did not carry it out; he was not able to do so. It is no longer in his consciousness, for he is living in his present life. But it is not eliminated from the reality of his soul; there it goes on gnawing away and consuming him. And his whole mood and condition depends on what is there beneath in his subconsciousness. Perhaps he had an unhappy love affair—that is what the psychoanalysts generally find, for they are on the lookout for it. It is an isolated province in his subconsciousness; he has fought against it, but it goes on working. Notably it will go on working—so believe the psychoanalysts—if feelings of love were there, while the beloved being was removed; that is to say, if the love remained unsatisfied.

In addition to these disappointed spring time hopes of life—in addition to what I have just indicated—the psychoanalyst seeks in the depths of the soul for what we might call the ‘animal morass’ at the very basis of human life—the ‘animal morass’ or slime of life working constantly upward to the surface—connected, as they conceive it, with all that man possesses as an animal being, playing upward into his soul's life. Some psychoanalysts will go still further: if we get further and further down, we find at length what plays upward into the soul out of racial and national connections and the like, playing into the soul's life in more or less unconscious ways. And at last, at the very bottom, there is something demonic—the most undefined of all—lying even beneath the ‘animal morass’, at the very ground of life. Such people, who are among the special followers of the modern psychoanalysts, will sometimes gently hint that in these demonic depths beneath are to be found the impulses that lead people to such subjects as Gnosis, Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Although it is hinted at in a rather veiled way, still the hint is there. Read one of the last numbers of the periodical Wissen und Leben—I think it is called—and you will find such hints at one place and another, albeit they are rather hidden between the lines.

I said half- or quarter-truths often have a far worse effect than complete mistakes. Analytical psychology in its search for the sub-conscious foundations of the soul contains half and quarter-truths. Compare it with what we have pointed out today. The realities that live in the foundations of the soul work in towards us from the realm of the dead. Here we are led to quite a different way of thinking; we shall not seek for the ‘animal morass’ of the soul; we shall not try to interpret this or that mood of the soul from the aspect of disappointed love affairs. On the contrary, we shall often have to seek the underlying cause of an unhappy mood of soul in this or that departed one, for whom we are making difficulties through our own conduct—which difficulties find expression in dissatisfactions of one kind or another, surging up into our consciousness.

In short, we shall do well to bring home to ourselves with true reverence this actual connection with the spiritual world. It is the connection of our world, not with an abstract, vaguely pantheistic spiritual world, but with the real spiritual world wherein those who have passed through the gate of death are living as real beings. They are with us even now, as they were with us in life. But what they do with us now touches our soul far more nearly than what they did in life, when we were always separated from them by our body and theirs, which stood between us like a barrier.

Then comes a later time, when man has become utterly free from the astral body—when he has laid aside the astral. Not long after this, man is able to work down from the spiritual world into the physical in a more inward way. In former times, the outer life was frequently arranged instinctively according to these truths. Customs that arose in outer life might often be referred, it is true, to ordinary outer reasons, but an inner reason underlay the outer, though it was often only known by instinct. I said: the dead, soon after passing through the gate of death, are in direct connection with the human beings whom they have left behind, especially with those to whom they are lovingly united, and the connection is such that they work upon our habits. For this reason, in the times when such things were still felt instinctively, care was taken that a son should remain as far as possible in the whole circle with which his parents were connected. Learning the same business, spending his life in the same profession, he should remain where access was easier for them. All in all, this conservative way of holding on to the same stream of life was an instinctive expression of the desire to make it easier for those who had passed through the gate of death to work in upon those whom they had left behind. For if the latter were in similar circumstances to those in which the dead themselves had lived, it made it easier for the dead to find the way to them. In time to come historians will well observe such intimate impulses and underlying reasons in the historic evolution of mankind.

Now, as we know, when man has been still longer dead, he will have completely laid aside the astral body. But this only happens after decades, for we experience things much slower in the spiritual world than in the physical. One year of the spiritual world corresponds to 30 years of the physical. Man has a way of hastening here in the physical world whereas in the spiritual world, so to speak, he always has to revolve in far larger circles. So, as one spiritual year is equal to 30 earthly years, in one year of the spiritual he experiences approximately the same piece of the world as in 30 years of the physical. He thereby experiences it more intensively, more inwardly.

All in all, what man lives through on Earth is multiply connected with the great universe, the macrocosm. Therefore, what is experienced in the microcosm, in man himself, always finds expression even in the numerical relations to the macrocosm. I will only draw your attention to one point: Reckon up the number of days in an average human life; you get the same number of years—purely as a number—which the Sun requires to process through the complete Platonic year, the cosmic year. Man's life is numbered by as many days as the Sun requires years to advance through the whole cosmic circle in its precession from one sign of the zodiac to another. The Sun requires about 25,900 and a few more years to process through all the signs of the zodiac. Man lives for about as many days—though, of course, it is not always equal—in his individual life between birth and death.

Another interesting connection is this one: man has as many breaths in one day as the number of days he lives, or as the number of years it takes for the Sun to process through the whole zodiac. You see, therefore, in the very deepest sense the world is ordered according to measure and number. One should imagine that this delicate incorporation of man into the universe—this correspondence of the harmonies—would lead the crude materialists of our time beyond their limited outlook which sees nothing more in the whole universe than a great mechanism. Truly it is a strange mechanism which contains all its individual beings organically within itself, in wondrously harmonious numerical relation to the whole.

It is indeed a strange thing. When we consider the world spiritually, we can actually say: In the evolution which takes its course between death and a new birth, man advances more slowly in order that he may do things more thoroughly. Not only so; he advances as many times more slowly in the spiritual world as Saturn courses around the sun more slowly than the Earth. Saturn runs its course around the Sun as many times more slowly than the Earth, as man in the spiritual world moves more slowly than he moves on the physical Earth. For this reason, and not because they knew less than the astronomers of today, the ancients reckoned Saturn as the outermost planet of the solar system. Even astronomically speaking, they were right, for the other planets which are now included—Uranus and Neptune—joined the system at a later time; moreover, they circle around in quite a different order, even in a different rotation than the planets belonging to the solar system proper.

Now at least one such spirit-year—that is, 30 earthly years—must have elapsed before the soul (assuming, needless to say, that a normal age of 70 or 80 was attained) can enter not merely into the habits, but into the whole thought and outlook, into the spiritual life of those whom they have left behind or who join on of their own free will. Nevertheless, in this way too the dead work into our life on a very large scale. It is so indeed. In the whole spirit, in the whole way of thought in which we live, we bear within us the impulses of men who died long ago and who work into us. Altogether, the connection of the future with the past is brought about precisely in this way, through this actual connection of the dead with the living.

The mediate manifestation of the dead, through the etheric body which they have laid aside, works upon our Imaginative cognition. That influence which enters, as above described, into our habits, works upon our Inspirational cognition. And the influence to which I now refer, which can only work when man has passed through a whole spirit-year, works—if we are conscious of it—into our Intuitive cognition. But in any event these influences are working all the time; nor can we truly understand the sense of evolution unless we bear these things in mind.

Forgive my inserting at this point a personal remark—you know I am not fond of doing so, and I do so seldom. Anyone who looks at what I wrote when I first began my work, decades ago, will see that at that time I disregarded what I had to bring forward as my own opinion. I did not write my opinion about Goethe, but tried to express the thoughts that came forth from Goethe. I did not write my own Theory of Knowledge, but a Theory of Knowledge implicit in Goethe's Conception of the World. In this way it is possible quite consciously to connect oneself with men long dead and work out of their spirit. Indeed this is what gives one, as it were, a true, legitimate certificate to influence the living. It is a bad certificate which people of our time are so very keen upon: namely, that every individual, scarcely has he conceived an opinion, should wish to communicate it forthwith to as many followers as possible.

He who is aware of the conditions of existence, the fundamental laws that work from the spiritual world, knows that in truth a man cannot rightly work into the depths of the souls of his fellowmen until he is dead—strange as it may sound. Even then he cannot, till he has passed through a spirit-year, that is to say, 30 earthly years. Infinitely much would be achieved if once this selflessness gained ground a little in the world, so that those who lived later would connect their own work with the dead, and consciously try to maintain the continuity in evolution. Whether it be a pure elective affinity, or some other relationship brought about by karma, to attach ourselves to those who are trying so hard to send the pure rays of their influence out of the spiritual world is of infinite significance, and it is so most of all if we do it consciously.

I have tried to call forth in you a feeling for the way in which the so-called dead and the so-called living work together. Now we must realise that the conditions are very different in the spiritual world and here. You will find a great deal about the conditions of experience in the spiritual world in the lectures Life Between Death and a New Birth which I gave a few years ago in Vienna. But of course one can only select a few points especially important from one aspect or another. Now here it must be said that there is in the spiritual world something very similar, and again dissimilar, to our physical experience.

Before we enter the physical world in the full sense, we undergo the embryo period of existence. There the conditions of life are very different from what they become the moment we enter fully into the physical world as breathers of the outer air. Now in a certain sense and style, the time we go through after death in the first spirit year, which is so often called the period of Kamaloca, is very like the embryo period of existence. Just as the human being calls to his aid, as it were, another human being by whom he lets himself be borne into the physical world through the 10 lunar months, so likewise, through all the wishes and cravings which hold him to the physical and which he slowly casts aside, he lets himself be borne into the spiritual world. Moreover, his consciousness in this first year of the spirit still to some extent resembles his consciousness in the physical world, although the faculties which are only to be acquired in the physical world can only be transmitted mediately through the etheric body. But after this first spirit-year a far higher consciousness ensues than anything which we can have here in the physical body.

If you remember many things that were said in the above-mentioned lectures, you will see how very different is this consciousness in the spiritual world. You need only remember how much our consciousness depends on what can enter into us. When we go about as ordinary men in the physical world, the phenomena of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of nature, and of the physical human kingdom, come into us along with other experiences of soul—experiences of civilisation and the like. But after death, what becomes of the major part of that which enters our soul life through the faculties we possess here in the physical world? The mineral world as such—this we no longer perceive at all, as you are well aware; and of the plant world we only see the all-pervading life. You can read in my Theosophy how these things are, as we ascend within the spiritual world.

Experience in the spiritual world is in fact quite different in kind. Indeed, for these things, there are no words which you can understand. Our language after all is created for the physical; hence it is always difficult to describe these things correctly, and one can easily be misunderstood. Above all, we can only express ourselves by comparisons. Consider the following: here in the physical world you stand as it were, in a single point of the whole world structure, and look out with your eyes in all directions of the surrounding sphere. In the spiritual world it is not so; there you look in from the circumference as it were, towards the interior of a hollow sphere. But this is only a comparison; in reality it is not a hollow sphere, for time plays a greater part in it than space. Nevertheless, it is from the circumference that you observe all things. Hence the conditions of ideation are quite different; even within your thinking the conditions are quite different.

I will describe it somewhat crudely: suppose a man had passed through the gate of death 60, 70 or 80 years ago, or even earlier. He feels distinctly a certain inner experience. When you feel hunger in the physical life, you do not say ‘the hunger is here’ or ‘the hunger is there’ but ‘the hunger is in you’. Or again, take the case when you feel pain in this or that part of your body. So it is when you look inward from the whole surrounding sphere; you feel that at a certain place there is something. You know there is something that wishes to have something to do with you, and now you must begin making great efforts to getrid of it.Think what this means: to get rid of that which has manifested itself. And only when you have got rid of it, only then does there emerge the true being that is trying to reveal itself. Thus we may say: as spiritual beings we have an idea within us, but the idea tells us nothing whatever as yet; we must first get rid of it. Then, when we have got rid of it, then do we find within us—strange as it may sound, it is so—an angel or archangel who is revealing himself to us. His presence is first announced to us in the idea; yet we ourselves must first achieve the actual presence. Perception in the spiritual world is thus bound up with real labour, with a strong exertion of our forces. And only the souls who have remained here in the physical body can to some extent manifest themselves upward to the dead without their undergoing this exertion. This is what happens when you concentrate your thoughts on the dead man, or bring something before him by reading to him or the like. In all that I have been saying, I only wished to make it clear to you how altogether different are the conditions of life and experience in the spiritual world. This being so, you will no longer find it surprising that one year of spirit time represents 30 years of physical time. For in the spirit we are in the circumference and look in towards the centre; it is very important to remember this.

I made it my chief task today to describe to some extent how the souls who have passed through the gate of death work down into the world in which the others have remained behind, with whom they were connected while in the physical body. Thus you have seen once more, from another aspect, how the world is an interconnected whole. Truly it is only for outer physical perception that the dead are dead. In reality, the moment they pass through the gate of death they have a new way of access to our souls. That is the difference. They now work into us from within, whereas they formerly worked into us from without. For us, these things should more and more become no mere external theories; they should live their way into our consciousness, till they are no longer a merely theoretic ‘world conception’, but world perception, or even world feeling. Then will Spiritual Science bear the fruits which it is meant to bear, and which it truly can.

One more remark in conclusion. Think what it means that at a certain period between death and a new birth man must have the inner Feeling that he carries the Hierarchies within him as his own inner experience. It is really so. This might well lead the human being to the most appalling arrogance, which would live as a dim feeling in his soul when he is reborn. In ancient times there was a natural limit to such arrogance, in this way: human beings passing through the gate of death and entering into the spiritual world were somehow aware that it was not they themselves who were beholding, but that the highest beings of the Hierarchies were living in them and communicating the vision to them. But man has lost this connection in the spiritual world, just as in the physical world he has lost the old atavistic clairvoyance. Instead there must now come into us what St. Paul expressed in the words ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, which words are endowed with real spiritual feeling when we say ‘Out of God we are born; into Christ we die’.

If we learn this in all its depths, through the feeling which can come to us in Spiritual Science, that Christ is for the Earth, then we shall rightly place ourselves into the vision from the surrounding sphere. Then, having lived through the gate of death with the right feeling: ‘Into Christ we die’, and gazing in from the surrounding sphere, among all the beings whom we behold—beings of the Hierarchies, elemental beings, beings such as the human souls, incarnate or discarnate—among all these, we shall also find our own Ego-being; and we shall behold from outside the relation of this our own Ego to all the other beings. To be able to have this feeling after we have passed through the gate of death is of infinite importance. Only if we can have this feeling towards our own Ego, only then can we find our true way again into physical incarnation. And there is no other way of having this feeling; we can only owe it to the right passage through the gate of death—the passing through the gate of death with the inner feeling: ‘we have died into Christ’. This union with Christ gives us the possibility to behold, as it were with the eye of the soul of Christ Himself, our relation within the spiritual world, to behold ourselves as Ego being among the other beings.

This, my dear friends, is what I would always like to attain. When, as a result of such studies as we have made today, we take with us once more a new piece of knowledge, the knowledge should also be transformed into inner feeling. Even if all the ideas developed in this lecture should have passed by us like a dream; if the one fundamental feeling remains, which I have sought to gather up in these concluding words, then we shall carry with us into our further life the real fruits of such a line of thought. For I have tried to show how the death in Christ can place us rightly into the spiritual world—so rightly, so abundantly, that we can carry it with us through the physical world in our next earthly incarnation

We remain together in such feelings, recognising that they have power to unite us more intensely. So there will by and by arise in the world the true, invisible community of those who are devoted to Anthroposophy, holding together through such inner feelings born out of the clear ideas of Spiritual Science. The world has need of this indivisible community of souls, able to carry into it the inner force of such communion as I have just described. In this sense we will be together spiritually for the future, though for a time we may not be together physically. So indeed it should always be among us; our communion in the spirit should sustain our coming together in the physical.

Everyone involved to any degree at all in social life will certainly feel that the moral aspect is one of the most important aspects in the entire field of education. At the same time, one realizes that it is precisely this aspect that is the most subtle and difficult one to handle, for it relates to the most intimate area of education.

I have already emphasized that educational practice needs to be built on real knowledge of, and insight into, the human being. The comprehension, perception and observation that I tried to characterize last night will give the knowledge necessary to train the child’s cognitional capacities. Practically speaking, knowledge of the human being, supported by the science of the spirit, will enable one to reach, more or less easily, the child’s powers of cognition. One will be able to find one’s way to the child. If, on the other hand, one wishes to appeal to a child’s artistic receptivity as described yesterday, which is equally important, it is necessary to find a way to each child individually, to have a sense for the way various children express themselves from an artistic comprehension of the world. When it comes to moral education, all of one’s skill for sensitive observation and all of one’s intimate psychological interest must be kept in mind, so that all the teacher’s knowledge of the human being and of nature can be put at the service of what each child brings forth individually. To reach children in a moral way, the only choice is to approach each child on an individual basis. However, with regard to moral education, yet another difficulty has to be overcome—that is, an individual’s sense of morality can only be appealed to through full inner freedom and with full inner cooperation.

This requires that educators approach moral teaching so that, when later in life the students have passed the age of formal education, they can feel free as individuals in every respect. What teachers must never do is to pass on to developing students the relics of their own brand of morality or anything derived from personal sympathies or antipathies in the moral realm. We must not be tempted to give our own ethical codes to young people as they make their way into life, since these will leave them unfree when it becomes necessary that they find their own moral impulses. We must respect and acknowledge the young person’s complete inner freedom, particularly in the realm of moral education. Such respect and tolerance truly demand a great deal of selflessness from educators, and a renunciation of any self-interest. Nor is there, as is the case in all other subject matters, the opportunity of treating morality as a subject in its own right; as such, it would be very unfruitful. The moral element must be allowed to pervade all of one’s teaching.

These difficulties can be overcome if we have truly made our own and imbued with spiritual science the knowledge that we bring to the pupils. Such knowledge, by opening one’s eyes to each individual child, is all-important, particularly in this moral sphere. Ideally speaking, moral education would have to begin with the first breath taken in by the newborn, and in a certain sense, this really is what must be done. The great pedagogue Jean Paul (who is far too little recognized, unfortunately) said that a child learns more of value during the first three years of life than during the three years spent at university. If these words were to be applied more to the moral aspect of education than to the cognitive and esthetic realms, they could be rephrased as follows: How an adult educator acts around the child is particularly important during the child’s first years, until approximately the change of teeth—that is, until we receive the child into our schools.

The first life period really needs to be examined closely. Those who have embarked on the path to a true knowledge of the human being will need to consider three main stages during this first life period. At first sight, they do not seem directly connected with the moral aspect, but they nevertheless shed light on the child’s entire moral life to come, right up to the point of death. In the first developmental phase of the child, the moral is tightly linked with the natural. In fact a crude psychology makes it difficult to notice the connection between later moral development and the child’s natural development during these first years. The three stages in the child’s development are usually not granted enough importance, yet they more or less determine the whole manner in which the child can become a human being inhabiting the Earth. The first one, when the child arises from what could be termed an animal-like existence yet in the human realm, is generally called “learning to walk.” In learning to walk, the child has the possibility of placing into the world the entire system of movements—that is, the sum of all potential movements that human beings can perform with their limbs, so that a certain equilibrium is achieved. The second stage, when the child gains something for the entire course of life, is “learning to speak.” It is the force through which children integrate themselves into the human environment, whereas by learning to walk, children learned to integrate themselves into the whole world through a whole system of movements. All of this happens in the unconscious depths of the human soul. And the third element the child appropriates is “learning to think.” However indistinct and childlike thinking may appear during the first life period, it is through learning to speak that the child gradually develops the capacity to make mental images, although in a primitive way at first.

We may ask: How does the child’s acquisition of the three capacities of walking, speaking, and thinking lead to further development, until the conclusion of the first life period when the permanent teeth appear? The answer seems simple enough at first, but when comprehended with some depth, it sheds tremendous light on all of human nature. We find that during this first life period, ending with the change of teeth, the child is essentially a being who imitates in a state of complete unconsciousness, finds a relationship to the world through imitation and through trial and error. Until age seven, children are entirely given over to the influences coming from their environment. The following comparison can be made: I breathe in the oxygen of the air, which is part of my surroundings, to unite, at the next moment, my bodily nature with it, thus changing some part of the external world into my own inner world, where it works, lives, and weaves within me. Likewise, with each indrawn breath, children up to the age of seven bring outer influences into their “inner soul breath,” by incorporating every gesture, facial expression, act, word, and even each thought coming from their surroundings. Just as the oxygen in my surroundings pulsates in my lungs, the instruments of my breathing, and blood circulation, so everything that is part of the surroundings pulsates through the young child.

This truth needs to stand before the soul’s eye, not just superficially, but with real psychological impact. For remarkable consequences follow when one is sufficiently aware of the child’s adaptation to its surroundings. I will discover how surprisingly the little child’s soul reverberates with even an unspoken thought, which may have affected my facial expression only fleetingly and ever so slightly, and under whose influence I may have slowed or speeded up my movements, no matter how minutely. It is astonishing how the small details that remain hidden within the adult’s soul are prolonged into the child’s soul; how the child’s life is drawn into the physical happenings of the surroundings, but also into the soul and spiritual environment. If we become sensitive to this fact of life, we will not permit ourselves even one impure, unchaste, or immoral thought near young children, because we know how imponderable influences work on children through their natural ability to imitate everything in their surroundings. A feeling for this fact and the attitude it creates are what make a person into a real educator.

Impressions that come from the company of adults around the child make a deep, though unconscious, imprint in the child’s soul, like a seal in soft wax; most important among them are those images of a moral character. What is expressed as energy and courage for life in the child’s father, how the father behaves in a variety of life situations, these things will always stamp themselves deeply into the child’s soul, and will continue their existence there in an extraordinarily characteristic, though subtle and intimate, way. A father’s energy will energize the entire organization of the child. A mother’s benevolence, kindness, and love, surrounding the child like an invisible cocoon, will unconsciously permeate the child’s inner being with a moral receptivity, with an openness and interest for ethical and moral matters.

It is very important to identify the origin of the forces in the child’s organization. As unlikely and paradoxical as this may sound to modern ears, in the young child these forces derive predominately from the nerve-and-sense system. Because the child’s ability to observe and perceive is unconscious, one does not notice how intensely and deeply the impressions coming from the surroundings enter its organization, not so much by way of various specific senses, as through the general “sensory being” of the child. It is generally known that the formation of the brain and of the nerves is completed by the change of teeth. During the first seven years the nerve-and-sense organization of the child could be compared with soft wax, in its plasticity. During this time, not only does the child receive the finest and most intimate impressions from the surroundings, but also, through the workings of energy in the nerve-and-sense system, everything received unconsciously radiates and flows into the blood circulation, into the firmness and reliability of the breathing process, into the growth of the tissues, into the formation of the muscles and skeleton. By means of the nerve-and-sense system, the child’s body becomes like an imprint of the surroundings and, particularly, of the morality inherent in them. When we receive children into school at the time of the change of teeth, it is as if we received the imprint of a seal in the way the muscles and tissues are formed, even in the rhythm of breathing and blood circulation, in the rhythm of the digestive system with its reliability or its tendency toward sluggishness; in short, in the children’s physical makeup we find the effects of the moral impressions received during the first seven years.

Today we have anthropology and we have psychology. Anthropology’s main concern is the abstract observation of the physical aspect of the human being, while that of psychology is the abstract observation of the human soul and spirit as entities separate from the physical body. What is missing is the anthroposophical perspective, which observes the human being—body, soul, and spirit—as a unity; a point of view that shows everywhere how and where spirit is flowing into matter, sending its forces into material counterparts. The strange feature of our materialistic age is that materialism cannot recognize matter for what it is. Materialism believes it can observe matter wholly externally. But only if one can see how soul and spiritual processes are everywhere streaming and radiating their forces into material processes, does one really know what matter is. Through spiritual knowledge, one learns to know how matter works and what its real nature is. One could answer the question, “What is materialism?” by saying, “Materialism is the one worldview that does not understand matter.”

This can be followed up even in details. If one has learned how to see the nature of the human being by viewing body, soul, and spirit as a unity, one will also recognize, in the formation of the muscles and tissues and in the breathing process, the ethical courage inherent in surroundings to which children have adapted during the first seven years. One sees, not only the moral love that warmed them, in the form of harmonious ethical attitudes in their environment, but also the consequences of disharmonious ethical attitudes and lack of love in the surroundings. Here a perceptive educator cannot help feeling that, by the time children are received by the school, they are already formed from the moral viewpoint—an insight that, taken seriously, could in itself engender a mood of tragedy. Given the difficult, disorderly, and chaotic social conditions of our time, it might almost seem preferable from a moral viewpoint if children could be taken into one’s care soon after birth. For if one knows the human being out of a sensitive and refined psychology, one realizes how serious it is that by the time the child loses the first teeth, moral predispositions are fixed. On the other hand, this very same psychological insight offers the possibility of identifying the child’s specific moral disposition and needs.

Children absorb environmental impressions, especially those of an ethical nature, as if in a dream. These dreams go on to affect the inmost physical organization of children. If children have unconsciously experienced and perceived courage, moral goodness, chastity, and a sense of truth, these qualities will live on in them. The presence of these qualities will be such that during the second life period, by the time children are in school, these qualities can still be mobilized.

I would like to illustrate this with an example: Let’s assume that a child has spent the earliest years under the influence of an environment conducive to introversion. This could easily happen if a child witnesses lack of courage and even downright cowardice in the surroundings. If a child has seen in the environment a tendency to opt out of life, witnessed dissatisfaction with life or despondency, something in the child’s inner being, so to speak, will evoke the impression of a continuously suppressed pallor. The educator who is not perceptive enough to observe such symptoms will find that the child takes in more and more intensely the effects of the lack of energy, the cowardice and doubt that has been witnessed in the surroundings. In some ways, even the child will exhibit such characteristics. But if one can view these things with greater depth, one will find that, what thus began as a distinct characterological disposition during the first seven years, can now be seized educationally and directed in a more positive way. It is possible to guide a child’s innate timidity, lack of courage, shyness or faintheartedness so that these same inherent forces become transmuted into prudence and the ability to judge a situation properly; this presumes that the teacher uses classroom opportunities to introduce examples of prudence and right judgment appropriate to the child’s age and understanding.

Now let’s assume that a child has witnessed in the surroundings repugnant scenes from which the child had inwardly recoiled in terror. The child will carry such experiences into school life in the form of a characterological disposition, affecting even the bodily organization. If such a trait is left unnoticed, it will continue to develop according to what the child had previously absorbed from the environment. On the other hand, if true insight into human nature shows how to reorient such negative characteristics, the latter can be transformed into a quality of purity and a noble feeling of modesty.

These specific examples illustrate that, although the child brings into school an imprint—even in the physical organization—of the moral attitudes witnessed in the earlier environment, the forces that the child has thus absorbed can be redirected in the most diverse ways.

In school we have an immensely important opportunity to correct an unbalanced disposition through a genuine, intimate, and practical sense of psychology, which can be developed by the educator who notices the various tendencies of character, will, and psyche in the students. By loving attentiveness to what the child’s nature is revealing, the teacher is in a position to divert into positive channels what may have developed as an unhealthy or harmful influence from the early environment. For one can state explicitly that, in the majority of cases, nothing is ever so negative or evil in an ethical predisposition that the child cannot be changed for the better, given a teacher’s insight and willing energy.

Contemporary society places far too little trust in the working of ethical and moral forces. People simply do not know how intensely moral forces affect the child’s physical health, or that physical debilitation can be improved and corrected through proper and wholesome educational practice. But assuming we know, for example, that if left uncorrected a characteristic trait in a child could turn into violence later on, and that it can be changed so that the same child will grow into a courageous adult, quick and ready to respond to life’s tasks—assuming that an intimate yet practical psychology has taught us these things, the following question will arise: How can we guide the moral education of the child, especially during the age of primary education? What means do we have at our disposal? To understand the answer, we will again have to look back at the three most significant stages in the development of the very young child.

The power of mental imagery and thinking that a child has developed until this point will continue to develop. One does not notice an abrupt change—perhaps at most, with the change of teeth, that the kind of mental imagery connected with memory takes on a different form. But one will notice that the soul and physical forces revealed in speech, which are closely linked to breathing and to the rhythmic system, will reappear, metamorphosed, during the years between the change of teeth and puberty. The first relationship to the realm of language is founded through the child’s learning to speak during the first years of life. Language here includes not just language itself in the restricted meaning of the word, for the entire human being, body, soul, and spirit, lives in language. Language is a symptom of the entire threefold human being.

Approximately between the ages of seven and fourteen years, however, this relationship to language becomes prominent in the child in an entirely different—even reversed—way. At that point, everything related to the soul, outwardly expressed through the medium of language, will reach a different phase of development and take on a different character. It is true that these things happen mostly in the unconscious, but they are nevertheless instrumental for the child’s entire development. Between the ages of seven and fourteen, the child wrestles with what lives in the language, and if he or she should speak more than one language, in all the languages spoken. The child knows little of this struggle because it remains unconscious. The nature of this wrestling is due to increasingly intense merging of the sounds issuing from the rhythmic system with the pupil’s thoughts, feelings, and will impulses. What is trying to evolve during this life period is the young adolescent’s hold on the self by means of language.

It is extremely important, therefore, that we understand the fine nuances of character expressed in the ways students bring their speech and language into the classroom. The general directions I have already presented regarding the observation of the pupils’ moral environment now sound back to us out of the tone of their voices, out of the very sound of their speech, if we are sensitive enough to perceive it. Through the way children use language, they present us with what I would call their basic moral character. Through the way we treat language and through the way students speak during lessons, every hour, even every minute, we are presented with the opportunity as teachers to guide what is thus revealed through speech, into the channels we consider appropriate and right. Very much can be done there, if one knows how to train during the age of primary education what, until the change of teeth, was struggling to become speech.

This is where we meet the actual principle of the growth and development that occurs during the elementary school age. During the first years up to the change of teeth, everything falls under the principle of imitation. At this stage the human being is an imitator. During the second life period, from the second dentition until puberty, the child is destined to surrender to what I would call the authority of the teacher. You will hardly expect me, the author of Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, to plead for the principle of authority per se. But for the time between the child’s change of teeth and puberty, one has to plead for the principle of self-evident authority, simply because during these years the child’s very nature needs to be able to look up to what comes from the authority of the adult.

The very young child observes the surroundings unconsciously. One could almost say that a child breathes in the whole character of the environment during the first seven years. The next seven years are spent not so much breathing in the environment, but listening to what it has to say. The word and its meaning now become the leading motive. The word becomes the guiding principle as a simple matter of human nature. During this stage the child learns to know about the world and the cosmos through the mediation of the educator. Whatever reaches the pupils through the mouth of the teacher as authority represents the truth to them. They observe beauty in gestures, in general conduct and again in the words spoken around them. Goodness is experienced through the sympathies and antipathies engendered by those in authority.

These few words give the main direction for moral education during the age between the second dentition and puberty. If we attempt to give the child abstract moral values upon its way, we will encounter inner resentment, not because of any inherent shortcomings in the child, but because of a natural response. On the other hand, if we can create moral pictures for the child, perhaps taken from the animal kingdom, letting animals appear symbolically in a moral light, and possibly extending this approach to include all of nature, then we can work for the good of the child, particularly during the seventh, eighth, and ninth years of life. If we create vivid, colorful human characters out of our own imagination and allow our own approval or disapproval of their deeds to shine through our descriptions, and if we allow our sympathies and antipathies to grow into definite feelings in the children that will lead them over into a more general moral judgment of good and evil, then our picture of the world cultivates ageappropriate moral judgements based in perceptions and feelings. But this particular way of presenting the world is of the essence. During the first years, the child has learned from direct perception. As we reach the primary school age, whatever comes toward the child, to strengthen a moral feeling leading to moral judgment, must have passed through the medium of those in authority. Now the teacher and educator must stand before the child as representatives of the order of the world. The child meets the teachers in order to receive the teachers’ picture of the world, colored by their sympathies and antipathies. Through the feelings with which children meet the teachers, and through instinctual life, children themselves must find what is good and what is evil. The students have to receive the world through the mediation of the educator. The children are happy who, thanks to a teacher’s interpretation of the world can form their own relationship to the world.

Those who have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed such a relationship with their teachers in childhood have gained something of value for the rest of their lives. People who say that children should learn intellectually and through their own observations, free from the influence of authority, speak like flagrant amateurs; for we do not teach children merely for the years during which they are under our care, but to benefit their whole lives. And the various life periods, right up to the point of death, are mutually interrelated in very interesting ways.

If, because of their teachers’ natural authority, pupils have once accepted subject matter they could not yet fully comprehend with their powers of reasoning—for the intellectual grasp belongs to a later stage of development and works destructively if enforced too early—if they have accepted something purely out of love for their teachers, such content remains deeply preserved in their souls. At the age of thirty-five or forty perhaps, or possibly even later in life, it may happen that they speak of the following strange experience: Only now, after having lived through so many joys, pains, and disappointments, only now do I see the light of what I accepted at the age of eight out of my respect for my teacher’s authority. This meaning now resurfaces, mingling with the many life experiences and the widening of horizons that have occurred meanwhile. What does such an experience mean for later life? A sensitive and empathetic psychology tells us that such events give off life-invigorating forces even into old age. Education gains new meaning from knowing that such an expansion of childhood experiences into older ages brings with it a new stimulus for life: we educate not only to satisfy the short-term needs of the child while at school, but also to satisfy the needs of life as a whole. The seeds laid into the child’s soul must be allowed to grow with the child. Hence we must be aware that whatever we teach must be capable of further growth. Nothing is worse than our pedantic insistence that the child learn rigid, sharply outlined concepts. One could compare this approach with that of forcing the child’s delicate hands into an iron glove to stop them from growing. We must not give the child fixed or finished definitions, but concepts capable of expansion and growth. The child’s soul needs to be equipped with the kind of seeds that can continue to grow during the whole of the life to come. For this growth to take place, it is not enough just to apply certain principles in one’s teaching; one has to know how to live with the child.

It is especially important for the moral and ethical aspect of education that we remember, for the ages between seven and fourteen, that the child’s moral judgment should be approached only through an appeal to feelings called forth by verbal pictures illustrating the essentials of an inherent morality. What matters at this age is that the child should develop sympathy for the moral and antipathy for the immoral. To give children moral admonitions would be going against their nature, for they do not penetrate the souls of children. The entire future moral development is determined by those things that, through forming sympathies, become transformed into moral judgments. One single fact will show the importance of the teacher’s right relationship to the child with regard to moral development. If one can educate with a discriminating, yet practical, sense of psychology, one will notice that, at a certain time around the ninth or tenth year (the exact age may vary in individual cases), the children’s relationship to the world—an outcome of sympathies and antipathies that can be cultivated—will be such that they forget themselves. Despite a certain “physical egotism” (to give it a name), the child will still be fully open to environmental influences. Just as teachers need clear insight into the child’s developmental stages when they use observational methods in object lessons with children of nine or ten, such insight is particularly important when it comes to moral education. If one pays sufficient attention to the more individual traits emerging in pupils, an interesting phenomenon can be observed at that age: the awareness that the child has a special need for help from the teacher. Sometimes a few words spoken by the child can be like a call for help. They can be the appropriate signal for a perceptive teacher, who now must find the right words to help the child over the hump. For the child is passing through a critical stage, when everything may depend on a few words spoken by the teacher to reestablish the right relationship between pupil and teacher.

What is happening at this time? By wrestling with language, the young person becomes aware, very consciously, for the first time that “There is a difference between myself and the world.” (This is unlike the time during the first seven-year period when, unconsciously, the child first learned to refer to the self as “I.”) The child now strongly demands a new orientation for body, soul, and spirit vis-à-vis the world. This awareness happens between the ninth and the tenth year. Again, unconsciously, the child has a remarkable experience in the form of all kinds of seemingly unrelated sentiments, feelings, and will impulses, which have no outward relationship with the behavior. The experience is: “Here before me stands my teacher who, as authority, opens the world for me. I look into the world through the medium of this authority. But is this authority the right one for me? Am I receiving the right picture of the world?” Please note that I am not saying this thought is a conscious one. All this happens subtly in the realm of the child’s feelings. Yet this time is decisive for determining whether or not the child can feel the continued trust in the teacher’s authority necessary for a healthy development until the onset of puberty. And this experience causes a certain inner unrest and nervousness in the child. The teacher has to find the right words to safeguard the child’s continued confidence and trust. For together with this consolidation of trust, the moral character of the child also becomes consolidated. At first it was only latent in the child; now it becomes inwardly more anchored and the child attains inner firmness. Children grasp, right into the physical organism, something that they had perceived thus far as a self-evident part of their own individual self, as I described earlier.

Contemporary physiology, consisting on the one side of anthropology and on the other of an abstract psychology, is ignorant of the most fundamental facts. One can say that, until the second dentition, all organic formations and functions proceed from the nerve-and-sense system. Between the change of teeth and puberty, the child’s physical fitness or weakness depends on the good functioning of the rhythmic system, on the breathing and blood circulation. Between the ninth and the tenth birthdays, what previously was still anchored primarily in the breathing, in the upper part of the organism, basically shifts over to the blood circulation; this is the time when the wonderful number relationship of one to four is being developed, in the approximately eighteen breaths and the seventy-two pulse beats per minute. This relationship between breathing and blood circulation becomes established at this time of life. However, it is only the outer expression of deep processes going on in the child’s soul, and the reinforcement of the trust between teacher and child must become part of these processes, for through this trust the consolidation of the child’s inner being also occurs.

These interactions between physiological and moral development must be described in detail if one wishes to speak of moral education and of the relationship between pedagogy and morality. As an educator, whether or not I am aware of this particular point in a child’s life will determine whether or not I exercise a beneficial or a harmful influence for the rest of a person’s life.

I should like to show, as a comparison, how things done at this stage continue to affect all of the rest of life. You may have noticed that there are people who, when they grow old, exert an unusual influence on those around them. That there are such people is generally known. Such people don’t even need to say much when they are with others. Their mere presence is enough to bring what one may call an “air of blessing” to those around them. A grace emanates from them that brings about a relaxed and balanced atmosphere. If one has the patience and energy to trace the origin of this gift, one will find that it has developed out of a seed that came into being during childhood through a deeply felt respect for the authority of someone in charge. One could also describe it by saying that, in such a case, the child’s moral judgment had been enhanced by a feeling of veneration that gradually reached the level of religious experience. If a child, between the change of teeth and puberty, experiences the feeling of reverence for certain people, reverence tinged even with a genuine religious feeling that lifts moral feelings into the light of piety, expressed in sincere prayer, then out of this childlike prayer grows the gift of blessing in old age, the gift of radiating grace to one’s fellow human beings. Using pictorial language, one could say: Hands that have learned to pray in childhood have the gift of bestowing blessing in old age. These words, though symbolic and pictorial, nevertheless correspond to the fact that seeds planted in childhood can have an effect right to the end of life.

Now, for an example how the stages of human life are interrelated; one example in the moral realm is, as I said earlier, that the child’s ability to form mental images in the thinking process develops along a continuous line. Only memory will take on a different character after the change of teeth. Language, on the other hand, becomes somehow inverted. Between the second dentition and puberty, the young person develops an entirely different relationship to language. This new relationship can be properly served by bringing to the child at this time the grammar and logic inherent in language. One can tackle practically every aspect of language if, instead of rashly bringing to consciousness the unconscious element of language from early childhood, one makes this translation in a way that considers the child.

But what about the third relationship: the young child’s creation of an individual equilibrium with the external world after having learned to walk? Most people interpret the child’s attempt to use the legs for the first time in a purely external and mechanistic way. It is not generally known, for example, that our ability for spatial imagination and our capacity for mathematical imagery is an upward projection of our limbs’ potential movements into the intellectual sphere; in this projection, the head experiences, as mental activity, what is experienced in our limbs as movement. A deeply hidden soul element of the human being lives especially in this system of movement, a deep soul element linked to outer material forces.

After crawling on hands and knees, the child assumes the vertical position, lifting vertically the bodily axis, which in the case of the animals remains parallel to the Earth’s surface. This upright achievement of the child is the physical expression of the moral potential for human will forces, which lift the human being above the level of the animals.

One day a comprehensive physiology, which is at the same time anthroposophy, will learn to understand that moral forces express themselves in the way a child performs physical movements in space. What the child achieves by assuming the upright posture and thus becoming free of the forces that keep the animal’s spine parallel to the Earth’s surface, what the child achieves by rising into a state of equilibrium in space, is the physical expression of the moral nature of its will energy. It is this achievement that makes the human individual into a moral being.

The objection may be raised that during sleep the position of the human spine is also parallel to the Earth’s surface. However I am speaking here about the general human organization, and about the way spatial dimensions are organized into the human being. Through an accurate assessment of these matters, within this upright position the physical expression of human morality can be seen, which allows the human countenance to gaze freely into the world.

Let me compare what actually happens in the child with a certain phenomenon in nature. In the southern region of old Austria, (now part of Italy) there is a river named the Poik, whose source is in the mountains. Suddenly this river disappears, completely vanishes from sight, and surfaces again later. What appears as the second river does not have its own source, but after its reemergence, people call it the Unz. The Unz disappears again, and resurfaces as a river called The Laibach. In other words, this river flows, unseen, in the depths of the Earth for part of its journey. Similarly, what the child has absorbed from its surroundings in its early years rests unperceived during childhood sleep. During the first years of life, when the child is unconsciously given over to moral forces inherent in the environment, the child acquires the ability to use the limbs in an upright position, thus becoming free of animality. What the child puts into this newly won skill is not noticeable between the change of teeth and puberty, but reappears as freedom in the making of moral judgements, as the freedom of human morality in the will sphere. If the teacher has cultivated the right moral sympathies and antipathies in the child at primary school age—without, however, being too heavy-handed—then, during the time before puberty, the most important aspects of the will can continue their “underground existence.” The child’s individual will, built on inner freedom, will eventually become completely a part of a human sense of responsibility, and will reappear after puberty so that the young person can be received as a free fellow human being. If the educator has refrained from handing down interdicts, and has instead planted sympathies and antipathies in the pupils’ emotional baggage, but without infringing upon the moral will now appearing, the young person can transform the gifts of sympathies and antipathies according to individual needs. After puberty, the young person can transform what was given by others into moral impulses, which now come freely from individuality.

This is how to develop, out of real empathy with the human being, what needs to be done at each age and stage. If one does so properly between the seventh and fourteenth years by allowing moral judgements to mature in the pupil’s life of feeling, what was given to the child properly with the support of authority will be submerged into the human sphere of free will. The human being can become free only after having been properly guided in the cultivation of moral sympathies and antipathies. If one proceeds in this manner regarding moral education, one stands beside the pupils so that one is only the motivator for their own self-education. One gives them what they are unconsciously asking for, and then only enough for them to become responsible for their own selves at the appropriate age, without any risk or danger to themselves.

The difficulty regarding moral education to which I drew your attention at the beginning of today’s meeting, is solved in this way. One must work side by side with one’s pupils, unselfishly and objectively. In other words, the aim should be never to leave behind a relic of one’s own brand of morality in the psychological makeup of the pupils; one should try instead to allow them to develop their own sympathies and antipathies for what they consider morally right or wrong. This approach will enable them to grow rightly into moral impulses and will give them a sense of freedom at the appropriate age.

The point is to stand beside the child on the basis of an intimate knowledge and art of psychology, which is both an art of life and an art of spiritual endeavor. This will do justice not only to artistic, but also to moral education. But one should have due respect for the human being and be able to rightly evaluate a child’s human potential. Then one’s education will become a moral education, which means that the highest claim, the highest demand, for the question of morality and education is contained in the following answer: The right relationship between education and morality is found in a moral pedagogy whereby the entire art of education is itself a moral deed. The morality inherent in an art of education is the basis for a moral pedagogy.

What I have said so far applies to education in general, but it is nearest to our heart at the present time, when an understandable and justified youth movement has been growing apace. I will not attempt to characterize this youth movement properly in just a few words. For many of you here, I have done so already in various other places. But I wish to express my conviction that, if the older generation of teachers and educators knows how to meet the moral impulses of the younger generation on the basis of an art of education as outlined here, this problem of modern youth will find its proper solution. For in the final resort, the young do not wish to stand alone; they really want to cooperate with the older generation. But this cooperation needs to happen so that what they receive from their elders is different, something other, from what they can themselves bring; they need to be able to perceive it as the thing which their soul needs and which the older people can give.

Contemporary social life has created conditions regarding this question of the younger generation that I would characterize in this way: It is often said that the old should retain their previous youthful forces in order to get on better with the young. Today (present company, as always, excluded) the older generation appears excessively youthful, because its members have forgotten how to grow old properly. Their souls and spirits no longer know how to grow into their changed bodies. They carry into their aging bodies what they used to do in their young days, but the human garment of life no longer fits. If now the old and the young meet, the ensuing lack of understanding is not caused by old age as such, but, on the contrary, because the old have not grown old properly and, consequently, cannot be of much help to the young. The young expect that the old should have grown old properly, without appearing childish. When today’s young meet their elders, they find them not very different from themselves. They are left with the impression that, although the old people have learned more in life, they do not seem to understand life more deeply, to be wiser. The young feel that the old have not used their age to become mature, that they have remained at the same human level as the young themselves. Youth expects that the old should have grown old in the right way.

For this concept to enter social life properly, a practical art of education is needed, which ensures that the seeds planted in education bear fruit right into ripe old age, as I have described it in various examples. One has to be able to unfold the appropriate life forces for each stage of life. One must know how to grow old. When the old understand how to grow old properly, they are full of inner freshness, whereas if they have become gray and wrinkled while remaining childishly immature, they cannot give anything to the young that the latter don’t have already. This sheds some light on the present situation. One must only look at these things objectively. Basically, those who find themselves in this situation are quite innocent of the problems involved. What matters is that we tackle this most important and topical human problem by looking closely at our contemporary education, and in particular at the moral factor in education. Coming to terms with it is of great import, not only from the educational point of view, but for the entire social life.

When all is said and done, the moral education of the human being is the crown of all education and teaching. In Faust, Goethe puts the following strange words into the mouth of the Creator-God:

The good person, in darkest aberration,
is of the right path conscious still.

It is worth noting that although Goethe let these words be spoken by the Lord God Himself, pedantic minds could not resist nitpicking over them. They said, “‘The good person, in darkest aberration ... is conscious...’ ”; this is a contradiction in terms, for the darkest aberration is purely instinctive and certainly not conscious. How could Goethe write such words in his Faust?” So much for erudite barbarians. Well, I believe that Goethe knew very well what he had written in this sentence. He wanted to express the idea that, for those who look at the moral life without prejudice, morality is connected with the darkest depths of the human being, and that in this realm one approaches the most difficult area of the human being. In today’s meeting, we saw for ourselves the difficulty of approaching moral issues in practical education. In these areas the darkest realms of the human being are encountered. Goethe clearly recognized this, but he also recognized that what the moral person can achieve only through the brightest rays of the spirit light, has to be attained in the darkest depths of the soul. I would like to think that Goethe’s words consecrate the moral aspect of education, for what do they really say? They express a deep truth of life, into which I wish to condense all that has been said about the meaning of moral education.

I therefore will sum up in the sense of Goethe’s words what I outlined for you today by concluding as follows: If you wish to enter the land of knowledge, you must follow the Spirit-light of day. You must work your way out of the darkness into the light. If you wish to find your way to the land of art, you must work your way, if not to the dazzling light of the Sun itself, at least into the colored brightness that Spirit-light radiates into the world. For in this light and in this light alone is everything turned into art.

However, it would be sad if, before becoming a morally good person, I first had to work my way toward these two goals. To become a morally good person, the innermost kernel of the human being has to be taken hold of down to its deepest recesses, for that is where the right orientation is needed. And the following must be said too: True, in our search for knowledge, we must work our way toward the light, and the pursuit of art means striving toward the colorful light of day; but it is equally true that, in the moral life, the human being who has found the right orientation can be a good person without light, and also without brightness; it is possible to be a good person through all the darkness and obscurity of life. If, as “the good person,” one is “conscious of the right path still,” one will be able to find the right way through all existing darkness, into the light and into all the colorful brightness of the world.

In the course of these lectures we have been able to show how in the most widely different epochs men have formed conceptions of what really lies behind the world and its happenings. By forming stable ideas, stable concepts, by acquiring definite sentiments and feelings about what happens in the world, and about its Beings, man attains a certain satisfaction, arrives at something of which he can say that it relates him fitly to things, either because it throws light for him upon the mysteries of the world, or because it satisfies him in some other way. Through this activity man demonstrates that he is not content to adopt a passive attitude towards the world, but that he has an impulse to struggle for a knowledge beyond what is evident to his senses, or even to his clairvoyant knowledge; he aims at a knowledge which goes further, a knowledge which is, to begin with, hidden from him, so that he may achieve true harmony with the world. In this way he shows that he is seeking for an explanation of the world, that the world presents itself to him as a riddle, and that his ultimate relationship to it is not limited to the one he started from.

In ancient times this was expressed by dwelling upon the feeling which men have in face of the most arresting Beings and facts of the world-process. It was said that the human being starts out from a feeling of wonder about things and Beings and that from this feeling of wonder all philosophy, all men's efforts to reach enlightenment about the world spring. However it is now a matter of common experience that the soul works its way out of this feeling of wonder to something which reduces it. The soul cannot remain at the stage of mere wonder, for in that way the whole world would consist of nothing else. The soul cannot continue to stand in amazement before the wonders of the world, it has to subdue its astonishment, it has so to say to get rid of what seems a marvel by finding, through its own activity, a kind of explanation, an answer to the enigma, an answer to what is marvellous in the phenomena and Beings of the world.

We have seen for instance how the ancient Greeks got rid of this wonder in quite a different way, by gazing with penetration upon what was current among them as the ancient clairvoyant consciousness and expressing what they saw in the figures of their gods. As soon as the Greek became aware that in one or another fact, one or another thing in the world, spirit-forms were at work which were represented by the figures and Beings of Greek mythology, his feeling of wonder transformed itself into a kind of harmony between his own soul and these ‘world-wonders’. Today, in a world which is materialistic compared with that of the Greeks, we think in a very different fashion. Today when we deem it necessary to reduce the feeling of wonder, we are not at all inclined to find the answer to the riddle of the world in pictorial images. In our time this would be regarded as ridiculous. Our age seeks an answer to the world-enigma which appeals to the understanding, one which we can call scientific. But as a result of the varied sentiments which have perhaps been evoked in these and other lectures you may well understand that the modern way, this dry, prosaic appeal to reason, is only a phase, an epoch, in the struggle to assuage our wonder at the marvels of the world. For when the man of today looks back from the method which he calls scientific to the Greek way of explaining the world and calls it childish, regarding it as derived purely from fantasy and as having nothing to do with reality—when the man of today believes that he has found what will continue to be regarded as scientific for all time, then we must tell him that he is very short-sighted. For just as the progress of humanity has advanced beyond the form of Greek enlightenment to a stage suited to the prosaic intellectual demands of our time, so it will reach beyond this intellectual, materialistic phase. And unless meanwhile man has become much more sensible, he will in future think much the same of what today counts as true science as we today do of Greek mythology. The laws of Kepler, our biological laws, will inevitably appear to our descendants to be as much a mythology as that of the Greeks, unless these descendants of ours are enabled through a wider outlook on the world to perceive that each kind of explanation is justified in its turn. The great arrogance of our age which maintains that mythology is fantasy and our own science a definitive explanation of the universe, will be overthrown, and it will be seen that our own time, just like earlier ones, only represents a phase which in its turn has to be superseded. But when we consider our own intellectual explanation of the world, an explanation which is generally called science, one has to say that it is just this explanation of the world, intellectual in form and idea, which is least able to enter into the realities. We must seriously try to discover why this is so.

If you take into account the whole spirit of this course of lectures, as well as of many others which have been addressed to you from time to time, you must see that the manner in which the human being looks at the world has undergone many changes. Man has become very different. Far stronger, more powerful forces, forces emanating from the entire human being, came into play in the old clairvoyant days. To achieve the purely materialistic interpretation, the soul through the instrument of the brain detaches from itself highly attenuated shadow-like images as intellectual ideas wherewith to explain the world. The old interpretations in times which were more or less clairvoyant were filled with far more life, far more reality. We saw yesterday that our brain is a kind of apparatus which impedes our astral body, brings it to a standstill, and lets the images of this astral body, because they are not allowed to pass through our brain, come to consciousness as our thoughts about the world. But in ancient clairvoyant times it was not only the images of the astral body that were held back, but also those of the etheric body. The result was that the human being let flow far more of his own self, far more of the stuff of his own soul, into the images of his knowledge.

Expressed diagrammatically it is like this. The old clairvoyance, even the ancient Greek outlook (more disposed as it was to fantasy) was such that when a thought of Zeus or of Dionysos came before the soul, this thought was full of the living sap of reality. Admittedly this really came in the first place from the stuff of the human soul; but because this stuff itself derived from the depths of the cosmos, ancient Greek thoughts about their gods contained far more reality than the thought-forms of modern times. If I represent the thoughts of the ancient Greeks as a circle,¹ I have to show the thoughts of the man of today as far more thinly filled with soul-stuff, soul-substance. In forming the ideas of today the human soul draws forth far less from itself, what it produces is much thinner. Thus in the picture of the world which the soul can acquire with present-day consciousness there is far less of world-reality than was to be found in the earlier images. So that what the arrogance of modern academic learning for the most part supposes, namely that the Greeks formed pictures of their gods out of fantasy, pictures in which there was no reality, and that the only reality lies in the abstract ‘laws of nature’ of today, is the very opposite of the truth. This modern view is not true. The creations of Greek knowledge were far more densely packed with true reality, and compared with it the knowledge which we acquire today through the laws of nature is like a squeezed-out lemon! This is something which the soul can feel if it is not preocccupied with the pride of present-day science, but thirsts to fill its consciousness with reality. Such a thirst will reveal that it is just what is lauded as strictly scientific that is above all entangled in illusion, in maya. There has never been in the world such entanglement in maya as in the thought-forms of present-day philosophy and science.

Why has that come about? It is because man in the course of his Earth evolution has had to develop his present ego-consciousness. He has had to become independent, to stand entirely alone with his own ego. He has had to be weaned from his union with the world outside him. The very strong substantial content which made it possible for him to instil much of the stuff of his soul into the figures he fashioned, as happened in the case of the Greek gods, this very thing would have made it impossible for him—just because he would have been too much poured out into the world—to attain to consciousness of his ego. To enable man to become strong as regards his ego-consciousness he had to be torn away from the world-realities, cut off from them; for objective knowledge of the world our souls had to become weak, utterly weak. Our soul, the knowing soul, the soul which perceives through understanding, the soul which is ego-conscious, is at its very weakest as regards cosmic consciousness, as regards conditions which it once passed through. This weakness, which we had to develop, has rendered inevitable the emergence in modern consciousness of our tenuous ideas, devoid of reality, and our abstract laws of nature.

Anyone who by academic learning or by some form of belief in authority has been trained to a natural science which is only at home in pure abstractions will not succeed in feeling this great impoverishment as regards true reality. But anyone who feels within him a thirst to grow into world-reality knows that at a certain point in his life there comes over him the feeling: ‘How hopelessly cut off from true reality one feels by all the ideas of today, and what phantom and shadowy forms they are!’ That sentiment could even be formulated in the terms of ordinary science and you will find it so formulated in my little book Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, on Goethe's theory of knowledge, which appeared many years ago. There I showed that in the attainment of the customary intellectual knowledge the human being acquires only a part of knowledge, a part of truth, and that he is pressing forward to another aspect of the world than the one offered by the intellect. This is to take a scientific path which is quite practicable, even though to modern philosophy it may sound incomprehensible; whereas the feeling I have described gives rise to an attempt to penetrate along the esoteric path into a much more vital reality than the purely abstract laws of reason can provide. If the soul feels that with the normal consciousness of today it can only produce ideas which are maya in face of the living reality, and if it is not like a squeezed lemon, acknowledging only the science of today, then it feels itself empty in face of the real world. It certainly feels able to reach with its ideas the furthest limits of the world, but it fails to take into account the warning in my second Mystery Play The Soul's Probation—(Scene 1)—‘End not at last in cosmic distances’. To do that must involve a feeling of being spread out, with a set of weak ideas, through an endless expanse of space. The further we expand thence into space the thinner our ideas become, and we find ourselves at last before an empty and bottomless abyss. That is an ordeal which the soul has to face. The man thirsting for reality who seeks to solve the riddles of the world, the ‘wonders of the world’, along the lines of abstract science, finds himself at last standing before the cosmic void with his ideas entirely dissipated into spiritual vapour. Then his soul has to experience an infinity of terror in the presence of this void. The man who is unable to experience this fear in the presence of the void is simply not sufficiently advanced to feel the truth about present-day consciousness.

Thus, when we try to expand our present-day consciousness into the far spaces of the world, we have to face this terrifying spectre, this fear of the cosmic void; nobody who takes seriously what normal modern consciousness is can be spared this experience. The soul has to undergo this ordeal if it wants to experience the meaning and the spirit of our time. It has at some time to face the abyss which opens out on all sides when we try to penetrate the widths of space with our ideas; it has to experience the unending fear of the void, the fear of losing oneself in cosmic distances.

If we are familiar with the Goethean phrase, ‘to become one with the whole world, to enlarge oneself to become a world’, then we must say: ‘If a healthy soul with the means available to modern knowledge has reached out into the far spaces of the world, and tries to comprehend the world with the philosophic principles of today—which are bound to be abstract, because they are derived from present-day consciousness—then that soul is bound to experience the ordeal of standing before the void, before the abyss on every hand; every healthy soul has to undergo the fear of being swallowed up with the best part of his being, with what constitutes his consciousness, in infinite nothingness.’ This is the universal experience and any other feeling is but a variation of this horror vacui. Closely confined as the life of the soul is, there would be something amiss with it if, as soon as it tries to expand to the limits of the universe, it were not to feel its present-day consciousness pulverised, shattered, in face of the infinite universe. That is the fate of the soul when with its present-day consciousness it tries to penetrate into cosmic distances, into the widths of space.

There is another path open to the soul. It can descend into its own depths in such a way that it experiences what its own organisation is. Under modern conditions of consciousness the soul really only experiences what has been added to its organisation on the Earth. What it received on the Old Moon as astral body remains subconscious; it lights up in the etheric body, but in normal consciousness is not experienced. Still less does man experience what he acquired during the Sun evolution as etheric body, or what through Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions he has received in his physical body. These are closed regions to him. But upon these closed regions countless generations of gods, of spiritual hierarchies, have laboured. Indeed when through clairvoyant knowledge, through esoteric training, we descend into these regions and penetrate behind our ego-consciousness into our own being, when we encounter what is in us as astral, etheric and physical bodies, then we do not come to a vacuum, we come rather to a condensed world-substance. We meet there everything which has been worked into us men throughout millions and millions of years by innumerable spiritual hierarchies. But when through the serious cultivation of self-knowledge such as is given by esoteric training a man tries to enter, learns how to plunge into the work of countless generations through millions of years, he does not encounter in a pure form what the gods have created. For man has stamped into it all that through the generations he himself has experienced as impulses, desires, passions, emotions and instincts. In the course of his terrestrial incarnations what he has developed in this way has united with what is there below in his astral, etheric and physical natures. Together they form a dense mass; and it is into this dense mass that he first enters. What we ourselves have done to this divine nature of ours veils it from us.

Thus when we plunge into ourselves we find the opposite of what we find when we expand into cosmic space. If we expand into the widths of space there is the danger of finally encountering the void; if we descend into ourselves there is the danger of coming into denser and denser regions, which we ourselves have condensed through our impulses, desires and passions. Just as we feel the matter of our consciousness scatter and disintegrate if we go out into cosmic distances, so when we plunge into our own soul-depths we feel ourselves to an ever greater extent repulsed; we feel like a rubber ball resuming its shape after it has been squeezed. Again and again we are repelled, when we try to penetrate into our own inner being. We can be very clearly aware of this. It is not only that our impulses, desires and passions, which are what we first meet when we enter into ourselves, seem horrifying to us when we meet them face to face, but—added horror—they seem at every moment to be trying to capture us. They wax strong and powerful, their will-nature comes to the fore. Whereas in ordinary consciousness we do not obey this or the other impulse, this or the other instinct, as soon as we descend a little way into ourselves, these instincts develop their full strength, and we cannot but give way to them. Again and again we become gripped by a will of a lower nature in ourselves, and are thrown back upon ourselves worse than before. That is the other danger—that when we plunge into ourselves we are confronted as it were by the density of our impulses and instincts.

Thus we have to face formidable dangers. If we expand into universal space we are in danger of dissolving with our consciousness into nothingness; if we plunge into ourselves, we are in danger of surrendering our consciousness to the impulses and instincts which are within us and of falling a prey to the worst possible egotism. Those are the two poles between which lie all vicissitudes of soul—fear of the void and the collapse into egotism. All other ordeals are variations directed against what we may call dissolution into nothing, or against surrender to egotism. Even higher knowledge is dangerous in this connection. For through it we learn that countless spiritual hierarchies have been at work upon us, we learn how our physical, etheric and astral bodies in all their parts have been assembled by the hierarchies, we learn how cosmic Spirits have been at work in order that at last man should come into existence. So when in the esoteric life a man delves into his own inner being, he is overcome by the thought: ‘You are actually the aim and goal of the gods. It is to create you that the gods have laboured.’ Here he confronts the great danger of falling into immeasurable arrogance.

When Capesius learns from the mouth of Felix Balde² how the spiritual hierarchies have laboured, and how man is the goal of all their efforts, he is afraid of this pride. That is the significance of the uneasiness he expresses. It is part of his soul's ordeal that he should feel this. That is why it is so necessary that man should humbly draw near to this knowledge that he is the goal of the gods, and in lowliness assimilate it, otherwise it will lead to overweening presumption. For when we recognise that man is the goal of the gods, we in this world have every occasion for pride, for presumption. When we see the gods in the macrocosm exerting themselves all the time to develop what is human being, we have every occasion for pride.

It will be good for us to make our ideas as to how the gods have laboured at the formation and perfecting of man a little more concrete. Throughout the Saturn evolution the Thrones co-operated with the Spirits of Personality, during the Sun evolution the Cherubim worked with the Spirits of Wisdom and the Archangels, during the Moon evolution the Seraphim worked together with the Spirits of Movement and the Angels.

Can we point to something upon the Earth now of this work from without upon the human form? Here we encounter once more a characteristic phenomenon of the life of the mind in modern times, a phenomenon to which we have already often had to refer in these lectures. In point of fact nothing is so well able to furnish proof for all that is proclaimed in Spiritual Science as the facts of modern science. The development of this science during the last decades provides, in general, proof of all that is here said. It is only that the facts are often least understood by those who discover them. The interpretation put upon the facts by modern philosophy and modern science does constitute a great stumbling-block to an understanding of Spiritual Science. The facts themselves invariably support what we say here, but the current explanation of the facts always constitutes a stumbling-block. It is really phenomenal. I have drawn attention to specific instances of it in a number of places. You will have gathered from my lectures that the brain was the last human organ to be developed; the rest of the human organisation was worked into man earlier by the Spirits of the various hierarchies. But even today the half unconscious part of us continues to work on the organisation of the brain; that is something capable of observation, only the marvellous and beautiful phenomena furnished by modern science are not interpreted in the right way. Let me give you an example.

In April of this year there could have been celebrated the half-centenary of an extremely important discovery of modern science, a discovery which, rightly understood, fully confirms the spiritual-scientific doctrine of evolution. Of course spiritual-scientific discoveries can only be made through clairvoyance, but they can be confirmed by the facts which ordinary science brings to light. The fiftieth anniversary of that important dissertation on the speech-centre which the great doctor and philosopher Broca delivered before the Paris Anthropological Society in April 1861 might well have been celebrated this year; for the work of Broca is a complete proof that the predisposition to that configuration, that formation of a specific part of the brain which brings about both the aesthetic consciousness of speech and the understanding of its sounds does not lie in the inner laws of the physical brain. When in April 1861 Broca found that the organ of speech lies in the third convolution of the brain, and that this organ must be in order if a man is to understand the sounds of speech, and that another part must be in order for him to speak, the discovery constituted an important advance which can be turned to good account by Spiritual Science and is a verification of the facts known to it. Why is this? Because the way this speech centre is developed shows that a man's outer movements, the movements of his hands (i.e. what he does half unconsciously) plays a part in the configuration of this speech centre. Why is this speech-centre especially developed on the left side? It is because under the cultural conditions which have prevailed hitherto, men have made particular use of the right hand. Thus it is the etheric and astral bodies which, out of the unconscious, bring about the movements of the hands which work into the brain and mould it. Today anthropology makes it plain that the brain is formed from without by macrocosmic forces. When this part of the brain is injured, there is no capacity for speech. If we take into consideration that the side of the brain which through our right-handedness has been strongly developed can be relieved from without by the use of the left hand—a thing which is still possible in childhood though no longer so in later life—then it is seen that, by means of systematic activity from without, the brain can be so moulded that a speech-centre develops in the corresponding third convolution of the brain on the right side. Are we not driven to say that it is the greatest possible error to think that the faculty of speech is formed through the predisposition of the brain? It is not the natural tendency of the brain which brings into existence the faculty of speech but the activity which the man himself develops. The faculty of speech is developed in the brain from out of the macrocosm. The organ of speech comes from speaking, not speaking from the speech-organ. That is what has been established through the important physiological facts discovered by Broca. It is because the gods, or the Spirits of the hierarchies, have helped men to carry out such activities as create his speech-centre, that this speech-centre has been fashioned from without. The speech-centre arises from speech, not vice versa.

When rightly understood all such modern discoveries provide confirmation for Spiritual Science, and it is a pity that I am never able to do more than make a brief reference to such things. Were I able to speak at greater length about characteristic examples of this kind you would see how shortsighted are the people who say that Spiritual Science contradicts modern science. On the contrary it is only at variance with the interpretation placed on the facts by modern scholarship, not at all at variance with the actual facts themselves.

Thus it is the activity of the hierarchies, who have worked into us from without, which has made of our macrocosmic formation what we are during Earth existence. We are indeed a product of the macrocosm. Today we are a product of the movements of our limbs, of our gestures, which carry on a silent speech; these movements imprint themselves on the brain, which had no prior disposition to speech. The archetypal man had of himself no predisposition to anything, but everything has been formed and developed and bestowed upon him by the macrocosmic activity of the spiritual hierarchies.

From this you will see that in our present consciousness we are in fact but feeble. If we try to go out into the cosmos we find ourselves before the void; if we try to sink into ourselves we find ourselves ensnared in our own will-nature. This is what brings about the severe ordeals which are inevitable when a man, starting from his present-day consciousness, would seek to probe in either direction the mysteries of the world, about which he begins by marvelling because they confront him as world-wonders.

Why is this so? It is because when we press out into cosmic space we come into a region which we have closely described in the last two lectures as the region of the upper gods or spirits, spirits who are only the ideas or representations of the real gods; thus we come into a world which has no independence. It is no wonder that what we can gain from this world leads us in the end to the void. However hard a man is struggling to acquire knowledge, when he reaches the utmost limits to which his ideas can attain, he himself can only come to ideas of the gods, he cannot attain to true reality. But if a man plunges into himself, into what has been built up during millions and millions of years, then he comes to the deeds, to the achievements, of the other divine-spiritual Beings, whom in the course of recent lectures we have called the sub-earthly, the true gods. But in order to reach these we have first to penetrate through our own impulses, desires, passions, through all that imprisons us, seizes hold of us and changes us so that we are obliged to follow it. This leads us into egotism and cuts us off from those lower gods. This constitutes the other pole of the soul's ordeals. If we try to reach the upper gods we come to the void, to the world of mere idea; if we try to reach the lower gods, all thought abandons us because we are seized by the blindly raging impulses of our own inner beings and burn ourselves up in them. That is why the ordeals are so arduous. But there is one thing which offers a ray of hope, to begin with purely theoretical. We have to say to ourselves: ‘However tenuous the ideas are, or however slight is what our egotism enables us to receive, it comes nevertheless from the entire cosmos.’ And if we can only find ourselves within this consciousness of ours in the right way, so that we can look, upon it in its independence, observe it as it is in itself, and if this consciousness becomes stronger and stronger, then we can perhaps make progress along one or the other path in such a way that we can withstand the ordeals. This is only meant to give a slight indication of how it is possible to make progress in another way than with the ordinary consciousness.

Let us suppose that we permeate ourselves with what we have already in a variety of contexts named the Christ Impulse. We then learn to understand in its deepest significance the saying of St. Paul, Not I but Christ in me.’ We stand there to begin with in our normal consciousness and say to ourselves: ‘We do not wish this normal consciousness of ours to work alone, we do not wish to remain alone in this personality of ours; we wish to be permeated by the Substantiality which since the Mystery of Golgotha is contained in the atmosphere of the Earth, we wish to be permeated by the Christ-substance.’ When we permeate ourselves with this Substance we do not take out with us into the cosmos merely our own tenuous ideas, but however far we soar into the widths of space, we carry with us the Substantiality of the Christ, and thereby something most remarkable comes about, which I should like to make clear to you in terms of modern scientific development.

Modern science took its start from the phenomena of external nature, and traced these phenomena back to all manner of forces. Then it went on to trace what goes on in the outer world in light and sound and so on, to vibrations, to particles of ether in motion, even to ponderable fragments of matter in motion, and considered it a triumph to be able to reduce the whole world to a world of moving, whirling atoms of ether and so on. This method has now for the most part been abandoned, since people have seen that it leads nowhere, but the consciousness of the general public in this respect still lags behind, it always does remain several paces behind scientific advance. There is still a widespread desire to explain the whole world through the abstraction of whirling atoms, as if space were made up of pure vibrations, pure oscillations. Of course, when we with our ideas and with the empirical experience which one can have of realities, meet such conclusions, the moment we approach what is called the atomic universe, we at once feel the void; for those thought-out atoms have no existence. Atoms there can be within the limits of empirical reality, within the range of microscopic investigation, wherever there is matter endowed with light and warmth, but it is not legitimate to attempt to explain light and warmth themselves by means of atoms or atomic vibrations; for then one is thinking-out a theory of the universe, and a thought-out cosmology leads to something which no longer has any real content. There this old atomic theory has no longer any validity whatsoever. We think it out—and yet feel it has nothing to do with reality.

But it is quite different when we permeate our ideas, our abstract laws, with what in truth is the Christ Impulse; and when I speak of the Christ Impulse you all know that I do not mean anything that the orthodox creeds look to; I am referring to the great macrocosmic Christ Impulse. We must permeate ourselves with this in the Pauline sense. It is not our abstract ideas and concepts which we bear out into the cosmos, but what they become as our modern form of consciousness permeated by the Christ Impulse. And here we experience something very strange. Just as when we press outwards with a consciousness devoid of the Christ we become emptier and emptier and more impoverished, and our consciousness becomes finally completely dissipated, dispersed into the cosmic void ... so, as soon as we have received the Christ Impulse our consciousness becomes richer, fuller, the further we come into the cosmic distances, into the widths of space. And when we have reached the stage of clairvoyance, then is the Christ-filled soul abundantly filled with soul-substance, so that the true grounds of reality stand at last before us in all their might and grandeur as super-sensible realities. Whereas without Christ our consciousness brings us to the void, the Christ-filled consciousness brings us to the true causes of world-phenomena and ‘world-wonders’. Foolish as this may sound today, I ventured to say in the book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind that in the future there will be a chemistry and a physics, a physiology and a biology permeated by the Christ Impulse, and that true science, to an extent not today dreamt of, will become permeated by the Christ Impulse. Anyone who does not believe this has only to turn the pages of history to discover how the rational opinion of the future is often the foolishness of earlier times. If anyone pities us for supposing that what is regarded as foolishness in our day will be the reasonableness of the future, let him remember this. Foolish as it may seem to the humanity of the present day to think of a Christian chemistry it will in the future appear quite reasonable. When we carry the Christ with us into our outlook upon the world, He will give us plenitude in place of emptiness.

If we take the second road, if in the spirit of what has been said so far we fill our souls in the Pauline sense with the Christ Impulse, and then plunge into ourselves, what then happens? The Christ Impulse has the quality of working as a solvent, as a destructive influence upon our egotism. We notice that the deeper we descend with the Christ Impulse into ourselves, the less is egotism able to get a hold upon us. We then press further and further into ourselves and by penetrating with the Christ Impulse through our egotistic impulses and passions, we learn to recognise the being of man, learn to know all the secrets of the ‘world-wonder’ which is man. Indeed the Christ Impulse enables us to go much further. Whereas without it we bounce back like an india-rubber ball, and do not succeed in entering into ourselves, into the sphere of our own organisation, with the Christ we penetrate deeper and deeper into ourselves, and at last come out of ourselves, so to say, on the other side. So that whether we go out into the cosmos and find the Christ-principle in the widths of space, or whether we penetrate below into the sphere of the sub-earthly gods, in either case we find it all impersonal and freed from ourselves. In either direction we find something which transcends ourselves. In cosmic space we are not dissipated, atomised, we find the world of the upper gods; below we penetrate into the world of the true gods.

We could represent the two paths—the one which leads into ourselves, and the other which takes us into the widths of space—by a circle, and show how at last we meet ourselves outside ourselves. Both what is of the nature of will, into which we should otherwise plunge as if into a region of burning fire, and what constitutes the widths of space, wherein we should otherwise vanish into nothing—these two realms meet. Our thoughts about the world unite with the will which comes out of the world to meet us when we descend. Will-filled thoughts, willing thoughts! Thereby we are no longer in the presence of abstract thoughts, but of cosmic thoughts, thoughts which are themselves creative, thoughts which can will. Willing thoughts—but that means divine Beings, spiritual Beings, for thoughts filled with will are spiritual Beings. Thus the circle is completed. Thus do we come safely through the trials which have beset our soul, whereas otherwise we should vanish into nothingness on account of the weakness of our own souls. Thus when we descend into ourselves we come through our colossal egotism, that is to say, through the soul strong in its egohood and its egotism; in either direction we come to what of itself can certainly lead us into tribulation, but can never tell us anything about the world.

We have to travel both these paths, we have to experience both obstacles, the fear before the void, as well as the resistance of our own egotism. And as we thus pierce through ourselves to the other side of the will-nature, and draw near to the cosmos, as soon as we thus emerge from ourselves, we are seized by an infinite compassion, an endless sympathy with all beings. It is this sympathy, this compassion, which, when the circle has been completed, unites with the cosmic thoughts which would otherwise evaporate and which now receive substantial content. Little by little the Christ Impulse leads us to complete the circle, leads us to recognise what lives and subsists in the widths of space as thoughts filled with will, which means real thoughts, thoughts filled with being. But if in this way our ordeals have led us on, our souls then become purified, thoroughly penetrated by the cleansing process we have had to undergo. Because in the downward direction we have to fight our way through what is shown to us by the Guardian of the Threshold as the prompting to egotism, we are also proof against all that might cause us to vanish away in the widths of space, we are proof against the fear of the void.

Such was the wisdom which prevailed in the Greek Mysteries, a wisdom which leads us to the deepest secret behind the soul's ordeals. Therefore the Greek neophytes, the pupils of these Mysteries, were led on the one side to fear of the infinite abyss, and to knowledge; on the other side they were led, through the temptation to egotism and its overcoming, to infinite compassion and sympathy with all beings. In the marriage, the union, of compassion with thought they experienced purification from all the soul's trials. A faint reflection of this is shown in early Greek tragedy, Greek drama. The first dramas of Aeschylus, and in a lesser degree also those of Sophocles enable us to recognise what their purpose was. The way in which the action takes place on the stage is intended to arouse both fear and pity, and through them to lead to catharsis, to purification. Aristotle, who held the tradition that Greek drama portrayed in miniature those tremendous sensations of fear and egotism, of the overcoming of fear through fearlessness, and of egotism in sympathy, in boundless sympathy—Aristotle, who knew that drama was a way of teaching in miniature, defined tragedy as a representation of connected events calculated to arouse fear and pity in the human soul and through those qualities to purify it.

In course of time these tremendous truths have been lost. When, from the eighteenth century and on into the nineteenth, Aristotle began to be studied again, a whole library was built up to explain what he had actually meant by this. What he really meant will not be grasped until it is understood that drama originated in the ancient Mysteries. Thus scholarship is barely able to touch the fringe of the subject, for despite all the labour expended on the concept of drama, very little enlightenment on the Aristotelian definitions of fear and pity is gained from these libraries. We see, then, that inner ordeals arise inevitably from the development of the world and of humanity. But we also see that these ordeals come because the soul feels impelled to take two paths, one into cosmic distances, the other into the depths of its own being; we see that the soul must undergo these ordeals because in neither direction is the prospect open, but we see that it can hope to complete the circle, to find will from the one side, thought from the other, and thereby to reach the true realities, the revelation of the world as willing-spirit, spiritual will.

We come at last to the point at which the whole world is dissolved into spirit, we see spirit everywhere, and we have to recognise everything material as merely the outer manifestation of spirit, as the phantom, the illusion of spirit. It is because we live in the spirit but do not know ourselves in the spirit that we have to undergo such ordeals. For we do indeed live in the spirit without knowing it. We see spirit in a deceptive form, and we must press on towards the reality out of that deception which we ourselves are, out of the dream as which we dream ourselves; we must strip off all that still reminds us of matter or of the laws of matter. That is a path whose end we can only dimly surmise, but it gives us the strength to say that in the end we shall be able to close the circle and to find in the ‘Revelations of the Spirit’ the solution of the ‘Wonders of the World’, and the compensation for our ‘Ordeals of Soul’.

Thus a real study of Spiritual Science must never discourage us. Even when it has to be pointed out how severe will be our inner ordeals, how they have to be repeated over and over again, we must nevertheless say to ourselves: ‘We must get to know them, we must actually undergo them, for it does not help us to know them in an abstract way.’ But we must also have confidence that we shall advance through these ordeals to the revelations of the spirit. Of course anyone who could set his mind at rest with the thought that the revelations of the spirit are bound to come someday, and that therefore one need not go looking for ordeals, would be the first to run into them. For instance, if anyone were to say, ‘Since you have given us your first Rosicrucian drama, in which we find a development of soul which seems to show that Johannes Thomasius has already reached a certain level, we can rely on this and dispense with the second play The Soul's Probation and can simply hope that the revelation of the spirit will follow someday. What need have we to become involved in inner ordeals?’ Anyone arguing in this way would at once be plunged into the severest of them, for our normal consciousness, our intellectuality makes them inevitable. Hence it is better for us to experience every kind of trial that the soul is capable of experiencing, better for us to get to know without flinching every inner ordeal, so that we should understand that even a man like Johannes Thomasius can fall into error and illusion, and has to make progress by unexpected ways. But we must never lose confidence that the human soul is meant to bear aloft her divine self to the revelations of the spirit. For this is the way of the soul of man! She confronts the world, she sees the world as maya or the great illusion, she feels that within this maya there lie hidden the ‘world-wonders’; wonder comes upon her as her first trial, then the trials become more and more severe, but the soul can keep up her strength until the circle is completed and at last the ‘world-wonders’ find their solution, and the ‘ordeals of the soul’ their purgation in the ‘revelations of the spirit’. This is the way of the soul of man—and yet not hers alone, for within her all the divine hierarchies are labouring and aspiring.

This brings to an end the task we have set ourselves in this year's course of lectures—to evoke an idea of the connection between ‘The Wonders of the World, the Ordeals of the Soul and the Revelations of the Spirit.’

• 1. Dr. Steiner drew on the blackboard.
• 2. See Scene 5 of The Soul's Probation

Basically Spiritual Science aims at understanding humanity in its essence, tasks, and strivings in the course of evolution. We have often talked about how the outside world misunderstands our spiritual science. This is largely because people nowadays have a hard time getting used to certain fundamental truths—truths that simply must be perceived and acknowledged if we are to understand the life and nature of humanity at all.

Let us begin today by asking what modern scientific thinking, whose great and significant triumphs over the last four centuries we must fully acknowledge and appreciate, is based on. It is based on what it can perceive, on what is manifest, in physical existence. Now, of course, it goes without saying that first we trust in what we perceive as so-called reality in our environment, and then we try to explain this reality on the basis of all that we find within its domain. It is naturally difficult for us to be aware at the outset that this reality itself may well contain an element of semblance or illusion, that it may well be deceiving us. Those who truly want to understand spiritual science must first overcome this stumbling block. They must realize that the reality around us can indeed deceive us—it can mislead us into interpreting it falsely. Much of what we have learned in spiritual science over the years has convinced us that immediate reality, as it surrounds us, may indeed be deceptive.

Today we will start from a particular point that can only be reached through spiritual science. In spiritual science we must first understand things; then, when we have understood them, we can find them confirmed in reality. Some of the most important things in spiritual science must first be understood before they can be seen. It would be easy to show that this same method is frequently applied in the outer world, notably in the sciences, but we will not go into that today. It is not always possible to develop everything from the beginning.

Now one aspect of the outer appearance or physiognomy of reality that is most apt to deceive us about this reality is the differences, the diversities among human beings. When we look at the human beings inhabiting the earth, we realize that no two of them are alike on the physical plane. Here in the physical realm all human beings are different from one another. Once we have accepted this diversity of human beings as a fact—I mean the diversity of their physical bodies—it is quite natural that people then try to find out, on the basis of the facts of earthly life, why human beings are different, why they look so different.

However, from the point of view of spiritual science we see something very different. According to spiritual science, if we consider only the forms the physical body can take through the forces of the earth, we find that human beings could not be different but rather would all have to be alike and have the same outer form. Indeed, the forces that exist on earth to give us our physical shape are such that if only these formative forces were to work on us, we would all have the same outer, physical form. This is because the physical human body has undergone a long preparation. We know it was prepared through the epochs of Saturn, Sun, and Moon.¹ It was prepared by forces that worked during these three epochs in such a way that the forces of the earth itself could influence our physical body in no other way than to give it a uniform shape if they had indeed been the only forces at work. I might put it this way: Through all the forces that have been incorporated into our physical body during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs, we human beings are so fortified against any diversities coming from earthly forces that if we were left to the earthly forces alone, we would be alike everywhere on earth. Spiritual science, therefore, must start from the fact that a single and uniform shape is predestined for humanity so far as the terrestrial forces are concerned.

Even if we consider just the difference between male and female what I have just said is true. This difference is not caused by the work of earthly forces; it is the result of quite other forces, which we will speak of presently. Thus, we can assume a certain totality of earth forces that works formatively upon human beings and wants to produce absolutely identical human forms everywhere on earth.

Of course, we must now ask why human beings are so different after all. We know we must consider not only our physical body, but also the etheric body that stands behind it. Spiritual science shows us that while we should all be alike in our physical body, in regard to our etheric body we must be different because earthly forces are not the only ones that work on our etheric body. Forces coming out of the cosmos work on our etheric body, forming and shaping it.

We must therefore distinguish between the uniform earthly forces working all over the earth that would make all human forms the same and the forces working out of the universe on the earth, making each etheric body different. We can see the differences between etheric bodies through spiritual scientific research. At the one extreme are those etheric bodies that have strong forces and are tough, retaining their form almost as much as we do our physical form. This is one kind of etheric body. There is a second kind that is mobile, like something that is fluttering and always in movement, flowing and moving. But these two kinds of etheric bodies still reveal themselves in such a way that we can describe their inner tone and shading as being more or less alike. There is another kind of etheric body that is inwardly tinted, inwardly shimmering, not uniform in color but having various tones and colors. There is a fourth kind of etheric body that has one primary color throughout its whole substance, but this color changes over time though we cannot pinpoint other than purely inward causes for this. These etheric bodies are not shimmering in different colors or shaded in many tones; they have only one color, but they change it in the course of time. We may call them chameleon-like etheric bodies.

Then there are those etheric bodies that have a strong tendency to light up inwardly, growing at times brighter and brighter. Other etheric bodies have a powerful faculty to reproduce the harmonies of the spheres. Finally, there are those etheric bodies that appear especially in inventive people and persons of genius—etheric bodies that, if I may say so, reveal forces within them that are rare and strange in this earthly world. Whereas the above-mentioned six kinds of etheric bodies are found among ordinary, even average, human beings, the last kind of etheric body produces the type of human being with powerfully developed faculties, those we often say are “not of this earth”—poets, artists, and the like.

It is not by arbitrarily picking the number seven that we distinguish these seven forms of etheric bodies. We simply have to count, and we find no others besides those I have just described as typical. For this simple reason, there are seven kinds of etheric bodies. There are seven different kinds of human etheric bodies, and in the etheric bodies we have forces that are not earthly, but come in from the cosmos.

Our etheric body forms and molds the physical body. If only earthly forces worked on us, we would all be alike in our physical body. However, the influence of the etheric body makes us different. The astral body brings about further differences, such as those between male and female bodies, through forces it develops between death and a new birth, during the time when we prepare ourselves for the gender that karma requires us to have in the next incarnation.

But for the moment, let us just look at the etheric body. If we take only earthly forces into account, we can say that our physical bodies would have to be alike. However, because our etheric bodies differ in their constitution, composition, and structure in the cosmos, there would have to be seven groups of human beings. This is the fact we gradually arrive at when we investigate the relationship between our etheric body and our physical body with the methods of spiritual science. Now this difference is connected with the racial diversities on the earth. Basically, because of this difference in etheric bodies, the several races can always be reduced to the number seven. Even though certain typical forms atrophy, and though natural science may distinguish fewer than seven basic races, there are really seven basic racial distinctions in the human species. These diversities are brought about by the etheric body; they do not result from the earthly forces that work during our evolution, but originate in cosmic forces.

Now, when we trace the evolution of the earth back into the Atlantean or even into the Lemurian epochs, we find that initially impulses and tendencies existed that would have prevented our physical body from developing the physiognomy it now has through the power of the etheric body—that is, the diversities. Instead, if everything had gone a certain way (we shall see directly in what way), the seven-colored etheric body would have brought about diversities in our physical form, but successively, one after the other. Thus, the etheric body would have created one form of human being in the fifth period of Atlantis, a second in the sixth period of Atlantis, a third in the seventh, a fourth in the first post-Atlantean period, a fifth in the second post-Atlantean period, a sixth in the third, and a seventh in the fourth post-Atlantean period, that is, in the Greco-Roman time.

That is what would have happened; various types of human beings would have appeared one after the other. Thus, in the fifth Atlantean period we would have had human beings in whose physical formation one type of etheric body would have predominated. In the sixth Atlantean period, the second of the etheric bodies just described would have been at work, and so on right until the fourth post-Atlantean period. That was the original conception. However, Lucifer and Ahriman opposed this; they did not want it to happen that way. They fought against this harmonious tendency of development in the evolution of humanity, and they managed to change the whole process so that various developments were shifted and displaced. While there should have been basically only one form of human being in the fifth Atlantean period that was to develop gradually into another type, Lucifer and Ahriman preserved the form of the fifth Atlantean period into the sixth, and again that of the sixth Atlantean period into the seventh, and even into the time after the Atlantean flood.

Thus, forms that should have disappeared remained. Instead of racial diversities developing consecutively, older racial forms remained unchanged and newer ones began to evolve at the same time. Instead of the intended consecutive development of races, there was a coexistence of races. That is how it came about that physically different races inhabited the earth and are still there in our time although evolution should really have proceeded as I have described it. Even when we consider only what resulted from the development of the etheric body, we see everywhere that Lucifer and Ahriman play their part in the earthly evolution of humanity.

Now we must ask what the intended consecutive development of humanity up until the Greco-Roman epoch meant in the larger cosmic context. As we know, around the Atlantean time, human souls gradually came down from the planets to which they had ascended. You may remember that I described in my An Outline of Occult Science that the souls had ascended and then came down again and that the life of earthly incarnations, properly speaking, begins with their descent.² Thus, the I of human beings, their individualities, would have gone through the various human forms mentioned above in consecutive periods. In the fifth Atlantean period, the I would have had one human form, in the sixth another, in the seventh again another; in the first post-Atlantean epoch it would have had yet another form, and so on. We would all have lived through these types of humanity, one after the other.

Indeed, it was planned that human beings would thus complete the necessary schooling of human individuality by passing through various etheric formations that had different effects on their physical body. In fact, according to the original plan, there could have been a type of human being on the earth who would have been the result, as it were, of seven successive periods of development, each of which would have contributed to the perfection of that human type. In the fifth post-Atlantean period, then, there would have been one united type of human being spread over the whole face of the earth.

However, Lucifer and Ahriman interfered and thwarted the original design. As a result, the ancient Greeks could only dream of an ideal, superhuman type, which they tried to represent in various ways, for example, in the form of Apollo, Zeus, or Athena. They could not fully encompass this type simply because it did not really exist. But if we have a sense for Greek sculpture, we can feel how the ancient Greeks dreamed of a uniform, perfect, beautiful type of human being that should have developed. This development did not occur because Lucifer and Ahriman preserved older racial forms that had developed, so that there was a coexistence of races rather than a succession.

In the fourth post-Atlantean period, in the Greco-Roman era, human evolution was faced with the fact that what the gods guiding the evolution of the earth had intended for the outer forms on this earth had not been realized because of the luciferic-ahrimanic influence. The spirits of the hierarchy of form had intended that the harmonious working of the various hierarchies of form should really lead to a human type with perfect physical development. As it turned out, the ancient Greeks could only dream of this perfect type and express it in their art.

It is a deeply moving experience to realize in the course of spiritual research why the Greeks created such perfection in their plastic art. They did it because through a soul-spiritual instrument they perceived that Lucifer and Ahriman had disappointed the good divine-spiritual beings, whose plans for humanity were different from the development that actually occurred. What should have developed through the work of these good divine-spiritual beings weighed on the ancient Greeks' minds, and so they wanted to at least represent it even though it did not exist in outer reality. It is great and wonderful and also deeply moving to behold these inner forces of human evolution that appear there in artistic forms, striving to express what could not be achieved in outer reality. Such insights shed new light on Greek art as it was developed so uniquely and unrepeatably at that time.

The Greek era was also the time when humanity faced a crisis because of the luciferic-ahrimanic influence. Lucifer and Ahriman had caused races to live side by side instead of one after the other. At the same time, however, all the forces the spirits of form were pouring into human evolution on the earth were immobilized. Now they could do no more than stimulate and inspire the creative imagination of the Greeks so that it developed as I have described it. The spirits of form had to decide whether the human race should continue to develop so that human beings would never again be united in earthly evolution. For this indeed is what would have happened. If earthly evolution had continued beyond the fourth, the Greco-Roman period, in the same way it was prior to that, then humanity would have become separated into seven groups due to luciferic and ahrimanic forces. These seven groups would have been as different from each other as the various species of animals. Animal species do not understand each other, but regard each other as foreign. Similarly, toward the end of the fourth post-Atlantean period and in the fifth one, in which we live, people would have had to develop more and more the view that there are seven groups of human beings on earth that see each other as completely different species. This view would still have prevailed in our time; in fact, the separation between the seven groups would not yet have reached its culmination or completion, but would still be developing and widening. The term “human being” for all people on earth would have seemed wrong; we would have had seven different terms, one for each of the seven groups.

Therefore, in the fourth post-Atlantean age, in the Greco-Roman period, something had to be done in the universe to forestall the development that threatened to result in the future, at the end of earth evolution, namely, the evolution of seven groups of human beings, each called by a different name, just as each animal species has a different name. These groups would not have regarded each other as belonging to the same species, and at most there would have been handed down to them some copy of the Greek forms, such as the statues of Zeus or Apollo. They would have regarded these statues as something alien to them—something that could never have existed on earth. Precautions had to be taken to prevent such a development. Physical evolution had already gone too far and could not be changed anymore. Therefore, precautions had to be taken for our etheric body; an impulse had to enter our etheric body that would counteract the separating of earthly humanity into seven groups. This impulse that was to counteract the growing fragmentation of humanity and that was to make it possible for the term “human being” to retain—and, in fact, increase—its true meaning over the whole face of the earth was the Mystery of Golgotha, which we can now see in a new light.

The first attempt that had been made with earthly humanity before the luciferic and ahrimanic impulses interfered in evolution was to create unity among human beings everywhere through the forming of the physical body. This attempt by the spirits of form failed because of luciferic-ahrimanic interference. But it could not be allowed to fail altogether; precautions had to be taken to prevent complete failure and to immobilize and offset the work of Lucifer and Ahriman. The physical body could no longer be worked on as was originally intended; therefore, the etheric body had to be worked on. This was done by the divine-spiritual being we have so often spoken of—the Christ Being—taking on human form at the time in human evolution when the possibility to express the archetype of humanity was the greatest.

At what period in human evolution was this? All the forces that counteract the original, identical design of our physical body are at work in us mostly in the first seven years of life, when the physical body is still soft and pliant. They do not allow our physical body to become the same everywhere, but from within the body they immobilize the forces for the original identical design.³ These opposing forces can still go on working in the second seven years until puberty; indeed, they can even continue to work in the third and fourth seven-year periods during the development of the astral body and the sentient soul. However, in the middle of the development of the intellectual or mind soul, which evolved above all in the fourth post-Atlantean or Greco-Roman time, the extra-earthly forces are less and less able to reach us. And in the very midst of this development, that is, in the period between our twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years, they have least access to us. If we add two years at the beginning of this period and subtract two years at the end, the time in question is that between the thirtieth and the thirty-third year. In the time following those years, extra-earthly forces once more have the greatest influence. The period from the thirtieth to the thirty-third year, however, is the time of the greatest influence of earthly forces on the human being. And if in this period of three years there remained only the degree of diversity that existed in younger years and only what is to appear in later years would be added—in short, if only what works on human beings between the thirtieth and the thirty-third year remained effective, then people would indeed be much more alike.

Christ had to use these three years—very special and unique years—to unite with those earthly forces in human beings that had retained most of the earthly element in the human being. To this end, as we have discussed, the body for Christ was prepared through the two Jesus bodies up to the thirtieth year. Then, from the thirtieth to the thirty-third year, Christ took possession of this body. Where the earth forces were most active and where deformations could have set in, there no further development was possible, and physical death occurred. Thus, the sun-being, Christ, really entered into the earth sphere and united with the whole etheric body of the earth, as I have often explained. He then entered into the earth aura and now continues to work there. This sun-being must work for us in such a way that we realize more and more that in Christ the divine spirit was sent to us who was to counterbalance and redeem from within the separation and diversification in humanity created by Lucifer and Ahriman's opposition to the original impulses.

In outer human nature, the good spiritual beings work together with Lucifer and Ahriman. But what human beings originally, at the beginning of earth evolution, were intended to have on the outside, namely, uniformity and the applicability of the term “human being” everywhere on earth, was now to be brought forth out of the innermost essence of the human being through the Christ-Spirit. It is one of the many meanings of the Mystery of Golgotha that with the Christ-Spirit something was given to the earth that, when rightly understood, makes the name “human being” again applicable to all earthly humanity. The real substance of Christianity, which has already been partially revealed through its teachings, will be explored by those who, in regard to Christ, seek in the spiritual world what Christ is continually revealing in accordance with his words: “I am with you always, to the close of the age.” When what can be conveyed to human beings in the name of Christ from within thus gradually becomes known, then, as a result, what Lucifer and Ahriman did in earthly humanity can more and more be made up for and redeemed.

We may, of course, ask now if there is any meaning in this detour. This is really a childish question, and it is often raised by people who think themselves cleverer than the cosmic wisdom—and indeed there are many who aspire to such superior cleverness. Such people say, “If there are mighty divine beings, could they not have eliminated the luciferic-ahrimanic influence at the beginning of earthly evolution in order to protect their work?” This may be human wisdom, but in St. Paul's sense it is “folly with God.” It is nothing more than mere human wisdom.

In our lectures, we must look at things as we are now doing, and then what has developed through the opposition of Lucifer and Ahriman does not seem absolutely evil to us, but only relatively evil. For let us now consider the other side of the matter. Let us assume the original, divine cosmic plan for the earth had been fulfilled. Imagine that in the regular course of evolution the Greco-Roman era would have arrived, as I have pointed out, and that beautiful, harmonious type of human being the Greeks dreamed of would not only have been created by their sculptors, but would have lived among them and would gradually have spread over the whole earth. All other human forms would gradually have disappeared, and only what lives in the Apollo type, the Zeus type, the Diana type, and the Athena type would have spread over the earth. Since such beings would have recognized each other as belonging to the same species, they would have given themselves the name “human being.” Then the term “human being” would indeed have been applicable, and at the same time there would have been a sense of the equality of all people.

In that case, a human race of Grecian beauty would have spread over the earth, and in our age we would already see humanity approaching more and more this beautiful Grecian type, which would reach its perfection when the earth arrives at its goal in the seventh post-Atlantean epoch, after which it will pass over into other stages of existence. However, human beings would have advanced to this common humanity in unfreedom—that is what we must bear in mind. We would have been compelled to see all human beings everywhere as the same beings. It is only because such an identical form did not develop that all the other things could happen that allow us to see others as different, so that each sees the other as unlike himself and does not love his neighbor as himself. You will probably understand that if human beings had really become outwardly as alike as the original divine-spiritual forces had intended if Lucifer and Ahriman had not interfered, the feeling that one must love one's neighbor as oneself would necessarily have developed. There would not have been any choice; for anything else would have seemed to be nonsense, both in terms of feeling and of perception.

However, this development was not supposed to come from the outside because then it would have made us into beings who love automatically—that is, we would have loved others because they are our own kind, but without knowing the force that urges us to this love. Thus, what would otherwise have come to us in unfreedom was prepared for freedom through Lucifer and Ahriman's opposition. This sanction of the opposition is therefore inherent in the original plan of divine wisdom. Indeed, we may say that in still earlier periods of earthly evolution, the opposition against the harmonious progressive divine-spiritual powers was created precisely so that it could later bring about freedom.

At this point, we must realize that our concepts must change when we leave the sphere of physical observation and ascend to a higher order of perception. Many of you probably know that philosophy speaks of antinomies, and that Kant has even gone so far as to claim that it can be proven with equal conclusiveness that the two statements “the world is infinite in terms of space” and “the world is finite in terms of space” are correct. Similarly, both “the world has had a beginning” and “the world has had no beginning” can be proven conclusively. Why is this? It is because logic does not apply when we come into a sphere that can no longer be comprehended by physical means. We finally have to realize that our physical logic works neither in the realm of philosophy nor anywhere else where we concern ourselves with other than physical forms of existence. We must not make the mistake of looking at the opposition of Lucifer and Ahriman as we would at the antagonism between a good and an evil person on earth. This kind of mistake occurs when we continue to carry over the earthly into the super-earthly realm.

Most people picture Ahriman and Lucifer as evil beings—albeit much more intensely evil than human beings. But this is not true; we must keep in mind that certain earthly feelings we associate with our concepts lose their meaning when we go beyond the earthly realm. Thus we cannot say that there are good gods on the one hand and the evil gods Ahriman and Lucifer on the other. We must not assume that a trial should be held in the universe where a highly qualified cosmic judge would sit on the cosmic judgment seat and sentence Lucifer and Ahriman to be locked up once and for all, so that only the good gods can get to work. True, locking somebody up can at times make sense in earthly life; in the cosmos it would not make any sense because there such ideas and concepts have no meaning. The opposing forces were created by the good gods themselves in an earlier period so that they would be able to bring to bear their full force for the development I have described.

For freedom to enter in so that human beings did not develop an unfree love through their outer shape or form, the luciferic and ahrimanic elements had to be part of our evolution. Only in this way can we arrive from within ourselves at the unity indicated by the term “humanity.” Thus, the gods allowed humanity to be fragmented by the opposing forces, so that later, after their bodily nature had been thus separated, human beings could again be brought into a unity in their spiritual nature through Christ.

This is one of the meanings of the Mystery of Golgotha: the attainment of the unity of humanity from within. Externally human beings are becoming more and more different. The result will be not sameness but difference over the earth, and human beings must exert all the more force from within to attain unity. There will always be setbacks in this process of achieving unity—we can see them coming if we look for them. What was actually intended only for an earlier epoch is preserved into a later epoch, and what was to create differences in consecutive periods coexists. Human beings form different groups, and while they are struggling for unity all over the world in the name of Christ, through the Christ impulse, differences remain as aftereffects and setbacks. Such differences will always exist because human beings will only gradually be able to attain unity. At the same time, different groups will fight each other tooth and nail about everything concerning their outer life. There are setbacks from earlier epochs that run counter to the Christ impulse, rather than in harmony with it.

Indeed, here we see a very profound meaning of this Christ impulse. Based on true knowledge, we can say Christ is our savior who keeps humankind from being fragmented into groups. This is not yet fully understood by all people because the old still exists alongside the new. Today, people hardly understand the community of life in the Christ impulse, and this is connected with the fact that this understanding must proceed from our innermost being. We must realize that the Christ impulse has worked in the earth aura for the last two thousand years, but has not been understood. As we have often emphasized, this Christ impulse can only be fully understood through what spiritual science gives us. It is only when a growing number of people can more and more grasp, think, and feel what actually entered our earthly evolution in the fourth post-Atlantean period that understanding for that event will increase. To expect modern humanity to understand the Christ impulse is really asking too much. After all, just think how unwilling people are to acknowledge that this fourth post-Atlantean period of evolution, the Greco-Roman epoch, is of such paramount, such mighty significance in human evolution. Just think how unwilling people are to recognize any such post-Atlantean age at all with the Greco-Latin epoch as its pivotal point. To accept such truths, people need to take in the ideas of spiritual science. Without them one cannot understand these things at all—that is, one cannot understand the evolution of humanity if one has not taken in these concepts.

We have to understand the significance of the spirits of form, who had intended to develop a homogeneous human race in seven successive stages. This homogeneous human race was fragmented by Lucifer and Ahriman, but the force that wants to spread the one name “human being” over all the earth and unto the end of time—in spite of the outer differences between people—was revived from within by the Christ impulse. One of the chief tasks of the immediate future is to understand that Christ stands between Lucifer and Ahriman and to grasp his significance in relation to them. Therefore, we must always call Lucifer and Ahriman by their true names—we must call a spade a spade, so to speak—and look to the Christ impulse as the one combating them and saving the earth from this one-sided luciferic-ahrimanic impulse. This is what must be presented more and more often.

In our Dornach building we have therefore placed the statue The Representative of Humanity in the most prominent place; it presents the archetype of humanity that is to be recreated by Christ from within, surrounded by the luciferic-ahrimanic elements.⁴ That is the meaning of this central statue in our building. Looking at this central figure, people will realize that this is indeed what the good gods had intended. The human race was fragmented, Lucifer and Ahriman made their appearance, but the Christ impulse triumphs and recreates from within, from within us, what was originally intended for the outside. In the process, our freedom is created. Our building and what will be in it are to place before humanity what must be accomplished in terms of understanding human evolution. What is most needed for humanity in the immediate future is to be revealed in our building; we want people to understand human evolution showing and telling them what is most important for the near future.

Of course, many objections can be raised, and some of them have already been brought to our attention. After seeing the paintings and sculptures in the Goetheanum, some people have said that a true work of art must be understandable immediately to everyone without requiring an explanation. Here, on the other hand, people need theoretical explanations to understand our art works. Well, if people would only think a little! Imagine a Turk, for example, understanding nothing at all except what is contained in the Koran, a Turk who has heard nothing about Christ except that he must fight against Christianity. Suppose you took this Turk to see the Sistine Madonna and showed it to him without any explanations. Naturally, a work of art can only be understood by those who live in the same spiritual stream out of which the work was created. Thus, our ideal figure surrounded by Lucifer and Ahriman will only be understood by those who live in our spiritual stream.

This is true for all works of art in all ages: they are comprehensible only to those who live in the same spiritual stream. Only within that stream are they true works of art. The spiritual orientation must be inherent in them. Those who understand Raphael's Sistine Madonna or, let us say, his Transfiguration must know something of the spiritual stream in which the pictures were created. Similarly, to understand what they have seen in our building, people must have some element belonging to our spiritual stream in their souls and hearts. If they have this element within them, then the work of art must speak for itself, and no labels, identifying names, or other comments will be needed to explain or interpret it.

For example, when people look at one of our glass windows, they see in the bottom part a kind of coffin with a dead man in it; above that, they see an old man, a youth, a young woman, and a child standing on a winding path. If people have taken in our spiritual stream, they will realize that this is the review of life. Immediately after we have passed through the gate of death, we will see the course of our earthly life in reverse. Of course, you have to know this fact to make sense of the picture in the window. But if you know this, then the picture works by virtue of what it contains, just as the Sistine Madonna works upon those who know the Christian history behind it, but it has no such effect on the Turk. By the same token, what is presented in our building cannot work upon those who have not taken in our spiritual stream. These things just have to be seen in the right way.

Today, I wanted above all to explain that Christ was that spirit from the cosmos who, in the course of earthly evolution, brought spiritually what was originally intended for our outer form but could not develop externally, because we would then have become automatons of love and equality. On the physical plane there prevails the fundamental law that everything must operate through antitheses, through polarities. The gods could not simply have sent down Christ at the very beginning of earth evolution, as our naive wisdom might suggest they should have done. For then the antithesis of external fragmentation and inner concentration could never have developed. Humanity, however, must live in this antithesis and polarity. We have the right feelings for Christ only when we see in him the savior, rescuing humanity from dispersion and separateness; only then can Christ fill our own innermost I. Christianity lives wherever people are able to understand this union of all humanity through Christ. In the future, it will not matter much whether what Christ is will still be called by that name. However, a lot will depend on our finding in Christ the spiritual uniter of humanity and accepting that external diversity will increase more and more.

We will also have to accept that there will still be many setbacks for this spiritual understanding of the Christ impulse. What developed at the same time instead of consecutively will for a long time continue to evoke forces that fight against a spiritual understanding of global human equality. There will be many and terrible onslaughts, and, for the most part, their purpose will be to continue the luciferic-ahrimanic war against the Christ impulse. And it will be one of the greatest, most beautiful and significant achievements of our age if we can be among the few who understand this thought of the unifying of all human beings, who understand how remnants of the luciferic-ahrimanic elements strive to bring to the fore what is unique in various groups of human beings so as to exclude all others. It is very difficult to say anything at this time about the final outcome of these matters. As human hearts are now, to speak about that outcome would only be upsetting and bewildering; it may lead to opposition, perhaps even to hatred and abuse rather than to working in accordance with the Christ impulse. However, what can be said about this principle in the Christ impulse, namely, the salvation of humanity out of bodily fragmentation into spiritual unity, must be told, for it must become more and more effective in human evolution.

We have to be able to face calmly and courageously the increasing diversity in human nature because we know that we can carry a word into all these diversities that is not merely a word of speech but one of power. Though there may be groups that fight against each other and though we may even belong to one of them, we know that we can bring something that will express: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” into every group. We know that this “Christ who lives in me” will not lead to the forming of groups; rather, it will bring about the spreading of the glory of the name “human being” over the whole earth.

The understanding of spiritual science brings to life the realization that we can carry the power that comes from the words “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” into the groups that are fighting each other—no matter into which group we bring our I. This is one of the practical and moral-ethical aspects of our strivings in spiritual science. With the force of these words we bring something into the group that does not belong exclusively to one or the other group but to all humanity. It is only through this that we can arrive at a true spiritual understanding of Christianity.

It is the hallmark of mighty spiritual paths that they are finally expressed in simple words. Think of the simple words that can express the whole of Christianity, which has permeated the world for nearly two thousand years. But these simple words can only be found on the basis of big, long-term developments. These simple words that express Christianity were not just there all at once; they had to be worked for. We must be aware that we are among those people working to make it possible that someday simple words may be found to express, in a basic, elementary way, the truths we have to spread and develop today. Without such development the simple could never come about. We may not yet be able to put our spiritual science into simple words in any language—words that would condense it on a quarter of a page—so that all striving people would understand it, as was done for Christianity when it originated two thousand years ago. Yet, we can be sure that those simple words will contain something of what I said today, something that will direct our attention to the Greco-Roman age, especially to the Mystery of Golgotha during that time, as well as to the contrast or polarity between Christ and Lucifer-Ahriman.

What can be seen everywhere will be concentrated in a few simple words that can then be handed down to future humanity in the same way as the commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Just as this commandment expresses something that had to be attained as a result of a long development, so, in the future, the findings of spiritual science will be put into simple words, and then all people will understand them.

This requires our spiritual work, for the simple can only arise in the spiritual evolution of humanity when people have been willing to spend long periods of time learning about the details. You are called upon to help in this development, which will lead to something appearing to people in bright clarity, something we cannot yet express because we do not have the words for it in our languages, yet something spiritual science works toward. When you feel you belong to such a spiritual stream, and feel at home in it, because you see that it is necessary for human evolution, then you have the right understanding of our spiritual movement—you belong to it in such a way that you rightly understand the greatest of its goals based on your increasing understanding of the contrast between Christ and Lucifer-Ahriman. You understand that this contrast is vital and had to exist.

This is what I wanted to bring before your souls today. It is all connected with the question of the meaning of our whole earthly evolution. For when spirits from other planets look down upon the earth and ask what the meaning of this earthly evolution is, they will understand it when they learn about the Mystery of Golgotha. Everything that happens in the course of earthly evolution has its meaning only through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha radiates out into the cosmos and imparts to everything else that radiates out from the earth its meaning, its central meaning.

• 1. These names do not refer to present-day planets but to ancient evolutionary stages and are therefore capitalized.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, vol. 13 in the Collected Works, repr. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989).
• 3. Editor's note: The transcript seems to be faulty here. The original reads: “They [the opposing forces] let it [the physical body] become the same; they make it identical from within.” This obviously contradicts not only the statements directly preceding this passage, but also the lecture as a whole.
• 4. The statue is Rudolf Steiner's wood sculpture The Representative of Humanity. It survived the burning of the first Goetheanum and stands now in the second Goetheanum.

Last time I spoke to you here, I spoke about an area of unconscious life, that is, of that life which remains unconscious for the ordinary consciousness of man as he has it today in his earthly existence. I spoke about the character of the life of sleep and tried to describe to you in detail and very specifically what the human soul experiences from falling asleep to waking up. Perhaps you have been able to recognize that these experiences of the human soul between falling asleep and waking up are clear revelations of the eternal, immortal life of the human soul, because you must have seen that what the soul goes through in the state of sleep are experiences from the spiritual world. And you know, of course, that the cognitions of such supersensible experiences can be gained through that which I have often explained to you verbally and which I have set forth in writing in my book How to Know Higher Worlds, in my Occult Science and so forth. You know that what is present as knowledge in the ordinary consciousness of man can be developed into so-called imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. The experiences that the soul has unconsciously in sleep are, as it were, illuminated by the power that the cognizant human soul can acquire when it develops itself upward to imagination, inspiration and intuition. But by the same development it is also possible to fathom to a certain degree that part of man's unconscious experience of which sleep-life is but a reflection, the part from which the human soul emerges when it enters physical earthly existence through birth, or, let us say, conception, and which it enters again when it detaches itself from this physical earthly existence through death. And today I will at least give you a rough outline of some of the things that lie behind the events of birth or conception and death for the soul and spiritual life of man.

If a person first arrives at imaginative knowledge — I will not describe this here, I have often done so, as well as how it can be acquired — the first thing is that his physical life on earth lies spread out before him as a unity, as in a large tableau. In ordinary physical consciousness, a person has his earthly life only as a memory in his soul. What then are memories? They are something that consists of pictures, pictures that through their own inner essence point to the experiences that the person has gone through since birth or since a point in time somewhat later. But they are images that cannot be said to unfold an existence independently of the body, based on the knowledge of ordinary human life as it is today on earth. Today's physical science is absolutely right when it points out to people how these memory images are dependent on the constitution of the physical body. It is right when it points out that this memory is not yet present in the very first years of a person's life, how it develops with the physical organism, and how it also declines again when the physical organism of the person itself approaches its twilight. And it can also be established from certain symptoms of disease, from examinations of the physical organism of sick people after death, how the loss of memory is caused by certain physical organs. Of course, science has not yet come to a conclusion in such matters; but anyone who penetrates the spirit of the relevant physical scientific results can already see through how the time will come when it will be possible to show how ordinary memory images are connected to the physical human organism. But what we have as individual images of memory, as it were, surging up out of the stream of our experiences, when we look back over our lives, is not what is meant when it is said that imaginative knowledge has the earthly life of the human being, in so far as it is a spiritual-soul life, spread out before it in a great tableau. What one surveys in imaginative knowledge is truly not the abstract memory images that ordinary memory preserves. Rather, imaginative knowledge is preceded by an active, organic experience that not only has the passivity of memory images, but also an inner strength, like the growth forces that are active in our organism when we transform the substances of the external world that we take in as food in a – now, it is permissible to say – wonderful way into that which we need to constitute our organism. What lives and works in us, creating and generating, is something different from what is merely in our memory images in a more passive way. Look at the thoughts. They brighten our consciousness; certainly, we owe an infinite debt to the life of thought during our earthly existence. It is only through this that we actually become human and only through these thought images do we become fully aware of our human dignity. But these are fleeting images, bound to the physical human organism, like the flame to the fuel of the candle. That which the imaginative cognizer surveys as the spiritual-soul life that underlies physical earthly existence, that which he surveys as a wonderful, great tableau, is not something passive. It is an inwardly living alive, and one that, although it presents itself to us spiritually and soulfully, we know through direct soul perception just as we know through the eye what a red-colored external object is. And we can say in imaginative knowledge that we not only have thoughts that flash into our consciousness, but that we become truly aware of such forces at work in our organism.

I would even say that it has been taken amiss, as an absurdity, that I once said in my book “The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity” that all the wisdom of the adult human being is not as capable as the wisdom of the young child, which, however, unconsciously in this little child; but look with the most developed, with the most learned human knowledge of the way in which a human brain, how a human whole organism is in the first human years of life, and look at how man actually forms himself inwardly. All the activity of even the most ingenious sculptor is insignificant compared to what is powerfully carried out by the child's inner spiritual soul through plastic activity, as it develops its brain in a plastic way. Only when we consider and understand this can we gain a true insight into the mysterious wisdom at work here, a wisdom that is a forceful one, not just one that is stored in a person's head to enlighten itself about the world, but of a wisdom that contains within itself a spiritual-soul organism of forces that, so to speak, penetrates the child's outer organization hour by hour and only makes it a full human being. Just try to form a fleeting mental image of what is working there, so full of wisdom and magnificent that the human being, with his intellect and intellectual wisdom, cannot possibly keep up with what is working in the child, what must work for many years out of the unconscious , for example, the miracle of human speech. Try to form a picture, albeit an abstract one, of this wisdom-filled work up to the point where the human being becomes conscious enough to be able to use his intellect. Then, I would like to say, this intellect creates an ephemeral wisdom according to that wisdom that first formed man out of the innermost forces of the world. But we must also be clear about the fact that when we develop the human intellectual mind, I would say, in the upper layers of our being, in the lower layers of our human beingness, that which continues to shape our organism in childhood, full of wisdom, as a wonderful sculptor, continues to do so. What lies at the basis as a system, as an organism of forces, is surveyed in a unified tableau by imaginative knowledge. This imaginative insight is not confronted with abstract memory images, which cannot be said to persist when the organism disintegrates into its elements because they are bound to that organism. Rather, this imaginative insight is confronted with the system of forces that builds this organism, that is, is not bound to it, that is bound to the material no more than the creative, ingenious power of the sculptor is bound to it. In order for the material to become what it becomes, the sculptor's formative power must first be applied to it. For the human being to become what he is in his earthly existence as a physical organism, these entirely non-physical, supersensible forces must underlie it as a spiritual-soul organization that governs the human being's physical existence.

This is the first thing we acquire as an insight when we ascend to imaginative knowledge.

But at the same moment that we are able to do so, that is, to see what it is that works in us as a spiritual-soul element during our earthly existence, which is not only independent of the physical organism but actually brings about the shaping of this physical organism itself . At the same moment that we are able to do this, we are also able to disregard our earthly existence, to abstract from it, as we can abstract from a thought in physical life. We must gain this power through those meditation exercises of which I have often spoken to you, not only to be able to refrain from a thought, not only to be able to suppress a thought, but to be able to erase from our consciousness that which we have only just acquired with great effort in our contemplation of the spiritual and soul in our physical existence on earth. But then, when we are in a position, I would say, in a knowing selflessness, in a knowing altruism, to be able to erase from our inner vision what we are spiritually-soulfully during earthly life, then, before our consciousness, our true spiritual-soul eternal appears before our consciousness, then what we were before we descended from spiritual-soul worlds into physical earthly existence appears before our consciousness as a concrete spiritual-soul being. We learn to look at ourselves as spiritual-soul human beings in our pre-earthly existence. And we learn to speak not only in general, abstract terms about this pre-earthly existence, but we learn to look at it in its development, and today I have described some of this development to you.

You see, when we are here on earth, when we speak of ourselves, we feel connected to our physical body; in our waking state we feel connected to this physical body. No matter how dull the feeling of connection with the physical body may be, it is there, and it becomes particularly apparent when something is wrong with this physical body. Then we feel not only the physical body in general in a dull sensation of life, but also its individual parts. We may feel our lungs, our stomach, our heart, our head organs. In ordinary life, all this is immersed in a dull sensation of life; but unless a person is exclusively healthy throughout his or her entire life, there will come a time when he or she has the opportunity to feel his or her individual organs. In short, man feels himself during his waking consciousness between birth and death in earthly life, in that he feels himself in his being, together with his physical body, with all that is enclosed within his skin. But in the moment when man is not connected with his physical life on earth, in those times when he has a spiritual-soul existence before entering his physical earthly existence, he does not feel as his inner self, of course, what his physical body or its limbs are, but he also has an inner self then. I had to hint to you how the soul experiences inner images between falling asleep and waking up, even if it is not conscious of these images. But in the state in which the soul was before it descended from the spiritual-soul existence into the physical earthly existence, it had the consciousness of a different inwardness. This consciousness of a different inwardness is only hidden, only veiled by the fact that in our physical earthly existence our physical body also becomes an organ of knowledge. And it obscures the soul's introspection, which is only present when the soul is free of the body. But what the soul then experiences as its inwardness is now not what is enclosed within the skin of the physical body, but what the organization of the cosmos is. And just as the human being here in this physical earthly existence is connected with his lungs, with his stomach, with his heart, with his other bodily organs, so in the supersensible existence he is connected with what otherwise appears to our eyes, to our other sense organs, as the outer world of the cosmos. What is the outer world for us in our earthly existence is the inner world for us when we are in our extra-earthly existence. And we look down on our earthly existence as on an outer world from the supersensible existence that we spend between death and a new birth. And just as we are, I might say, steeped in our lungs, our heart and so on here, we are embodied before we descend to physical life on earth in that which appears to us in the outer reflection in the planetary movements, in the constellations of the fixed stars, as forces that permeate and interweave the cosmos. That which is the cosmic external world during our earthly existence is our internal world when we are in extra-terrestrial existence.

You must not be misled by the thought that the external world is one for all earthly people with different bodies; it is precisely that which is significant, that we have a common world when we are in extra-terrestrial existence, that the same world that one person has is also the same world that another person has, and that people who are spatially separate from one another here on Earth, in that each is enclosed in his own skin, are then separate from one another through the inner strength of the soul. In the extra-terrestrial existence, everyone is also an individuality; but he is not separated from the other individualities by space, but by the inner strength of his soul, by the cohesive forces within him. But what flows into these cohesive forces is that which corresponds spiritually to the universe, which appears to us in the physical image of the sun, the moon, the planets, the fixed stars.

Just as we here on earth see a person with our outer senses, only the shape of his face, the shine of his eyes, the movements of his limbs, but we become aware that we ourselves are spiritual-soul beings, that in these formations of his face, in the shine of his eyes, in the incarnadine of his skin, in the movements of his limbs, a spiritual-soul element is of his skin, and in the movements of his limbs, a spiritual-soul element is living itself out. Thus, the person who is able to view the world spiritually and soulfully recognizes that it is not true when it is claimed that the sun and moon, fixed stars and planets, and the movements of the planets are only that which our present-day physical astronomy describes. This description is actually similar to that which someone would give if they only wanted to describe the external movements of a muscle in our face, if they only wanted to describe the movement of the eyelashes, and did not want to see the expression of a spiritual soul in the movements of the facial muscles, in this movement of the eyelids. The one who is able to look at the world spiritually and soulfully sees the physiognomic expression of a cosmic spiritual-soul life in the phenomena of the moon and the sun just as we see the expression of a spiritual-soul life in the human face. In the movements of the planets, he sees expressions of spiritual-soul events, just as one sees in the movements of the limbs of human beings the revelations of spiritual-soul impulses. And in these spiritual-soul backgrounds of what appears to us in the physical image of the outer physical sun, the outer physical moon, the stars and their movements, in this spiritual-soul that corresponds in the cosmos to the spiritual-soul of the individual human being, the human being lives, if he is a supersensible being, before he descends into earthly existence. And just as I can say here as an earthly human being: I have lungs and a heart within me, so as a supermundane human being, before I descend into the sensual-physical existence in order to constitute my physical body, I can say: I have moon and sun within me. However, I must be aware that I do not mean the sensual earthly reflection of the sun and moon, but that which underlies them as spiritual-soul. The entire spiritual world of divinity interweaves and lives in me, in that I am in a supermundane human existence. Only when one sees through this does one get that deep reverence for all real world existence into which man has been woven. For one now sees through the wonderful connections that exist between man and the universe. One learns to look at man as he stands there in his physical earthly existence, and one learns to say to oneself: In that which is enclosed within the walls of the skin, not only what you see with your physical eyes, what the anatomist can look at and unravel on the dissecting table after death, but the ultimate goal of all cosmic activity lives within it. The wonderful saying of ancient religious times, that man is an image of God Himself, takes on a new meaning of infinite intimacy. And inspired knowledge teaches us to look at what man actually experiences in connection with the spiritual-divine powers that underlie the cosmos in his pre-earthly existence.

In scientific terms, when we survey earthly human life, we first speak of the human germ that develops from the mother's body into the physical human form of the growing child. We naturally address the germ as something small that gradually enlarges. In a kind of germ, the human being lives in his pre-earthly existence, only this germ is the experience of the entire spiritual-soul cosmos. In a sense, the human being has become one with the spiritual-soul cosmos; the divine spiritual forces live in him, they are active in him, they permeate him and they develop within him the great spirit germ, which contains within itself the forces that must pass through the spiritual existence until birth or conception, so that they then emerge again when the human being, as the inner sculptor, has to shape his physical organism in earthly life. The formation of the physical organism becomes clear; for this physical organism is the goal of that which the human being experiences in an immeasurably magnificent way in spiritual-soul, fully aware of himself as the cosmic germ of his inner life. The human being receives the physical germ from the physical world; the human being receives the spiritual germ from the spiritual world. And we are, so to speak, in a certain time before we have descended to the physical existence on earth, a huge spiritual-soul human germ that has poured out into the whole world, which then unites with the physical human germ that receives us here when we descend into earthly existence.

We look at our cosmic existence when we look through the inspired knowledge into the pre-earthly existence. Just as we know ourselves as one with our organism here, we know ourselves as one with the whole world through this looking. Here, in this world, the human being looks at the outer revelations of the spiritual in nature and in the human existence; he senses the divine-spiritual behind these physical-sensory revelations. In the pre-earthly existence, he is permeated, imbued and interwoven with this divine-spiritual existence, and this divine-spiritual existence lives itself out in him in such a way that it implants in him those forces that tend towards physical earthly existence. Just as we direct our eyes up to the marvelous starry sky here, so we direct our eyes from our extra-terrestrial existence to the marvelous structure of the physical human being as he lives here in his earthly existence. I would like to say that we look from the earth to heaven in our physical earthly existence, but we look from heaven to earth in our pre-earthly existence. There the earth becomes understandable to us as the work of the gods, as it should actually live in our soul. And all of this is direct experience, initially in the pre-earthly existence.

But after we have gone through this pre-earthly existence, after a certain time something happens: the divine spiritual beings withdraw from us human beings. We do not yet have nature around us, because in this spiritual-soul existence we also have no physical eyes, no physical organs, and so we could not see nature at all. We have around us something that is only like a shining in of the divine-spiritual. That is the great change in the pre-earthly existence, that we first experience an immediate being in, being permeated by and with the divine-spiritual existence, but that then a point in time comes when we look at the spiritual world that surrounds us, which is still a spiritual world, but we have to say to ourselves: before that we lived with the divine spiritual beings, now they show themselves to us through their actions, now their appearance is there. It is a spiritual-soul manifestation that we do not have only in our earthly life, but it is only a revelation of what we ourselves have experienced earlier. We enter from the sphere of experience into the sphere of revelation. And to the same extent that we enter from experience into revelation, we have to say to ourselves: The divine spiritual beings have withdrawn from us human beings for direct experience, we can now only look at them, they are certainly there for us human beings, but only for our spiritual-soul contemplation. In the same moment, in our spiritual-soul pre-earthly existence, that which I can compare to what lives in our physical organism as a desire awakens. Man is inwardly permeated by desire to the extent that the world becomes a revelation before birth. Only now do we actually feel ourselves as a self that is separate from the rest of the world. We move away from an experience that is at once a world experience and an experience of our own human nature. Between death and a new birth, we are not only human beings, we are world beings. World consciousness and human consciousness coincide. Then comes the time when world consciousness and human consciousness part, when we no longer experience the world but it reveals itself to us, when an inner life separate from the world arises in us. In the past, our inner life was one with the world; now an inner life separate from the world arises, and this first announces itself as an inner desire, as a wish, a will. A wish, a want, a desire is always directed at something. This wish and this want and this desire is directed at our future life on earth, to which we will descend after some time. We are filled with the visions of our future life on earth and we absorb those forces, which then become unconscious when we go through the embryonic life on earth. We are conscious there; but consciousness becomes more and more dimmed, and there comes a time when desire grows strong and even the revelation of the divine spiritual world, in which we previously lived and moved, becomes more and more obscured. As spiritual beings in the pre-earthly existence, we feel that we must say: The spiritual world around us becomes increasingly shadowy and shadowy. That which previously still shone brightly as divine revelation becomes increasingly shadowy. As the external world becomes increasingly shadowy, the inner desires become more vehement, the external world darkens within our spiritual existence, the inner world becomes more powerful, but after some time this powerful inner world completely takes away our awareness of future earthly life. For a time, not long before earthly conception, the view of earthly existence darkens. We used to look down on this earthly existence; it was, as it were, the target appearance, that magnificent, mighty world tableau in which we lived. Now our view of the earth is lost to us, but instead another view opens up to us. It is not long before we descend to the earth, but just as we descend, our view of the earth is lost to us and our view of the etheric world opens up. What the ether phenomena are that hold the light, that hold the forces of life, that are spread out in space, but not centrally from the earth up into space, but rather as if from the periphery of the world, pouring in upon the earth, the etheric becomes visible to us. As in a great cosmic fog containing the most diverse formations, an etheric world becomes spiritually visible around us, and from this etheric world we can, with the power that remains to us, with the power of desire, take from the general etheric cosmic fog our own etheric body, can shape it, and by shaping our own etheric form our own etheric body, we form with this etheric body an image of what we used to be in the spiritual-soul world, integrate this etheric body with what is brought to us from the evolution of heredity, what is brought to us by our ancestors in physical substantiality, and we descend to the earthly existence.

I have been able to sketch for you only what arises for imaginative and inspired knowledge when man expands his consciousness beyond ordinary earthly consciousness. In the course of earthly development, man has progressed to the consciousness he has today, which is bound in the narrowest sense to physical corporeality, and has lost an original consciousness. I have often pointed this out. I have pointed out how history actually only describes the external aspects of the earthly life of mankind, how we need a soul history, how this soul history shows us that people have not always had the same state of consciousness as today, when they can only combine with their intellect what the sensory organs perceive, and when they can only bring up what rises from the physical body to consciousness. The further we go back in time to earlier periods of human history, the more we see that people had a kind of original, if dreamlike, clairvoyance. What the human being acquires today in imaginative, inspired knowledge is a fully conscious realization, I would say, as fully conscious as mathematical realization; the people of an earlier time had a dull, dream-like clairvoyance, but it was no less imbued with wisdom. These people of an earlier time not only perceived what today's human being experiences with ordinary consciousness when he looks within, but they also saw something of what I have described to you now. If we go back even further, to the most ancient Egyptian times, and then still further back to still more ancient times, of which there are no records in the form of external history but only in the form of the kind of history I have described in Occult Science, we find men who did not have to acquire the power through such exercises as I have often described to you, but who could speak of this pre-earthly existence because something of this pre-earthly existence lived in their souls during their earthly existence, like a memory. Modern man has bought his freedom by only being able to have a memory in abstract thoughts of the events and experiences that he encounters during his life on earth. Mankind in earlier primeval times did not only have such memories living in the soul, but by looking into this soul, they brought forth, in addition to these memories of this physical life, images from the soul of what I have now told you. Just as one remembers today in the ordinary consciousness what one experienced on earth twenty or thirty years ago, so in a certain sense a person of older epochs remembered what he had experienced in his pre-earthly existence and what I have described to you today from spiritual science. But just as the human being of today is certain, through his memory, that he was not born this morning but was already here before this morning, so the human being of older epochs knew of his pre-earthly existence through what he experienced in his soul. But from this also arose the certainty that what he experienced as such already existed in a spiritual-soul world before he descended to physical earthly existence, that it goes through the passes through the gate of death and is not dependent on the physical organism, that just as it builds up the physical organism for earthly existence, it finds its further existence when the gate of death is passed.

But what goes out of physical earthly existence? What we experience here in physical earthly existence as thoughts is also bound to the physical organism; but what wells up as will in such a wonderful way from within the human being that he can actually grasp his volitional acts only in thoughts, only in images, and can only say: I will raise my hand or arm. But he does not know what happens between these thoughts and between the actual raising of the arm, the whole miracle that lies in between, the tensing of the muscle. All this is in the unconscious, just as the events of the life of sleep itself are for the soul. That which arises as will remains unconscious for the most part, that is, it is reflected only in the life of thought. But he who looks down into this life of will with inspired and intuitive knowledge makes tremendous discoveries within it. Here in our physical existence on earth, which we only view externally, we perform our actions, and a materialistic age could even believe that these actions are exhausted in the physical existence on earth, that they have no further significance.

But he who looks into the true nature of the human will, which remains unconscious to ordinary day-consciousness, sees there how, not out of thinking, but out of willing, to the same extent that man progresses in physical earthly existence, something is formed which is composed of the evaluation of his actions. In our physical existence on earth, we say: an action is good, an action is evil, we are satisfied or dissatisfied with some deed. We can perhaps believe that this is only an abstract judgment that we add to the deed. If we look into the human being's volitional existence with our truly true inspiration and intuition, we see how a real being weaves itself out of what is only a thought here, such as the judgment: I can be satisfied with an action — or: I must be dissatisfied —, inwardly, in accordance with our will, becomes a fact, how a whole being is woven in the depths of our human nature, a being that, if I may express it this way, has a countenance, depending on our actions here in our earthly existence. If we have done bad deeds, which we cannot be satisfied with while fully conscious of our humanity, then an entity with an ugly face develops within us; if we have done deeds that we can be satisfied with, then an entity with a sympathetic face develops. Indeed, the evaluation of our actions becomes an inner being in us, and to the same extent that our thoughts become more and more dependent on the physical organism - in the child they were not yet dependent on the physical organism, they worked on the physical organization, then they became abstract - the same measure in which, I might say, our thoughts become a corpse in our physical organism, for they are not alive, they are dead thoughts. In the same measure, the human being's moral being stirs down there, which he develops during his life. This moral being is there, and this moral being unites with his ego, and this moral being he now carries through the gate of death into the spiritual world. When the human being passes through the gate of death into the spiritual world, he has first laid aside his physical body, as described in my book Theosophy. He is now in his etheric body, and still has a consciousness of his earthly deeds. But this consciousness begins to be permeated by a cosmic world consciousness. That which is the etheric body dissolves into the general world ether; just as it was contracted hard before birth, it now dissolves into the world ether. With the astral body, which you will find in my book called 'Theosophy', the human being gradually reintegrates with the cosmos, but he still lives together with his newly formed moral-spiritual organism; he carries this out with him, and with it he lives out.

And now a task arises for him that is connected with what I already told you the last time I spoke to you about the life of sleep in humans: I explained to you how humans have the strength to re-enter their physical organism during sleep, that they have this strength through what can be described as lunar forces. The lunar forces are what bring the human being back into physical earthly existence, even every morning. Man is initially within this sphere of the lunar forces when he has discarded his physical and etheric bodies. But within these lunar forces he cannot receive the comprehensive world consciousness that I described to you earlier; rather, there the human being still has something that connects him to the earth through this moral earth organism. He must snatch himself from the lunar forces; he must leave behind in the lunar sphere that which he has woven for himself out of his moral actions, out of all that he has done as a moral or immoral act; he must leave that behind in the lunar sphere and must penetrate into the solar sphere, into the world of the stars. Now he must not only penetrate into the image, as I have described it for the state of sleep, but into the real world of sun and stars; he must snatch himself from the lunar sphere.

The clairvoyant consciousness of primitive man also had an experience of this, could speak of these things, which today man can only gain if he develops his spiritual and soul powers. Primitive man could speak of these things through the natural elementary powers with which he was endowed. But primitive man was at the same time always guided, just as man is today guided by science, just as he is guided by the various educational institutions (such as did not exist in ancient times). What human beings could see of the pre-earthly and post-earthly existence was, so to speak, oriented by what the initiates of the mysteries knew through their higher knowledge. And so the members of primitive humanity learned what became an inner experience for some of them, who were knowledgeable in the sense of the word at that time: that man cannot escape the lunar sphere through his own strength after death, that a spiritual being from the cosmos must come to meet him, of which the sun is the external physical reflection. That must come to meet him, that must snatch him from the lunar sphere. He must leave behind what he carries with him from the earth in the form of guilt; he must be led up into the guilt-free sphere of the cosmos by what the ancient initiates called the high being of the sun, which found a wonderful description in all the ancient mysteries. You need, as people said in those days, the power that comes to meet you from the heavens. But man was organized differently in those days. I have already indicated today how differently man was organized in those days. He had clairvoyant powers within him; he knew from inner vision that there is a supersensible world on earth. He had no real fear of death, for what was death? An experience in life. He saw that something within him was independent of death. He had that which was independent in his body, and because he had that in the body, he could see the sun being coming to meet him, he could accept the help after death.

But therein consists the earthly progress of men, that men have lost the natural way of looking at their Eternal. Mankind has acquired an intellectual consciousness that is completely bound to the physical body, that is dependent on the physical body; we have an earthly consciousness depending on the organization of the physical body. This earthly consciousness obscures the spiritual world for us, even before we are born and after we die. For today's man, it is not the same as for prehistoric man or even for man in the older Egyptian times, that he brings a certain light with him through the gate of death and can illuminate the space — if I may express it this way; it is only a figure of speech — of the supersensible world, and can, as it were, hasten towards the high solar being that comes to lead him out of the lunar sphere. Through what he had within him between birth and death, he was able to recognize this high being of the sun.

You see, you need not be offended by the expression; the old initiates, out of their knowledge, had the right to call this being the high being of the sun. But there came a time in the development of mankind when mankind would have lost the possibility of penetrating into those worlds after death, into which it must penetrate if it does not want to lose itself. On the other hand, mankind on earth had to penetrate to that consciousness in which one can only and alone acquire freedom as a human being. As a result, a terrible state would have occurred for mankind at a certain time. The terrible situation that would have arisen for humanity would have been that people would have been cut off from the supersensible world, that precisely because of the perfection they attain here on earth, which predestines them would have been deprived of the supersensible world, because they could no longer find the connection to that spiritual being that would snatch them from that which holds them together with the earth for life after death.

And what has happened to further real progress of mankind? Not an external abstract knowledge, not a theory could help. The only thing that could help was that being, which had previously only lived in the supersensible worlds and came to meet people when they were between death and birth in the supersensible, could only help if the being descended to earth, so that the earthly human being could have a connection with it already on earth. And this descent is the event of Golgotha. The Christ-Being has descended and has assumed an earthly existence in Jesus of Nazareth.

Within his earthly existence, the Meusch gains a connection with the Christ Jesus. What he adds to his earthly consciousness by looking to the Christ Jesus, by feeling with, sympathizing with the mystery of Golgotha, what he instills into his earthly consciousness by not only calling himself an ego that can be free, but by fulfilling Paul's words: “Not I, but the Christ in me,” could he make this word a truth in his earthly life by connecting his ego, which he attains here but which would at the same time cut him off from the supersensible world, by connecting this earthly consciousness with what has entered into earthly existence through the sacrifice of the Christ Being: this is what man carries through death. The ability that used to come to him only through the fact that he had elemental powers within him: since the Mystery of Golgotha, it is the connection of the earthly human being in his consciousness, in his soul life, with Christ, with the Mystery of Golgotha, which secures his life when he passes through the gate of death. For the consciousness that one attains through the physical body would have to be lost with the physical body; one would not find the way through the spiritual worlds. If one finds on earth the Guide, that is to say, the Christ, who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and if one's spiritual powers are linked with those of humanity on earth in the sense of St. Paul's words: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,” then one will find a living way through the gate of death. Therefore St. Paul's words can be taken in all seriousness: And if the Christ had not come to earth, that is, if He had not conquered death, then all would avail man nothing in his faith.

The old adepts told men: A supermundane Being will take up the thread of your consciousness, which you have here of your entire human nature, and will lead you out of your lunar existence into pure cosmic world existence. The more recently initiated must tell people: Look to what was accomplished by the Christ in the Mystery of Golgotha, take into your consciousness the substantiality of the Christ with all its power! This goes with you through death and leads you towards those worlds which you must pass through between death and a new birth. In the lunar sphere you will leave behind your moral being, only to find it again when you return to the lunar sphere. And in your earthly fate will appear the image of that which you first left behind and then will find again in the lunar sphere.

From what I can tell you now, human science, through the natural human science, only knows through those powers that came to humanity in the last third of the 19th century. In the past, these powers were more or less obscured in humanity. They were still there, but in the form of dreams from the ancient times that I described to you earlier. In the first centuries of Christianity, people did not have what we can achieve today through imagination, inspiration and intuition, but they had a natural, atavistic clairvoyance, and there were still old initiates at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha; they were able to tell their people who trusted them: The Christ, who was in that world, which you remember as the time of your pre-earthly existence, the Christ, who used to be only in extraterrestrial spheres, descended to Earth through the cross of Golgotha. Therefore, in the first four centuries of the development of Christianity in the West, the main focus was on the descended Christ. Everywhere you find descriptions from the first centuries AD (most of the literature has been destroyed) of how the Christ descended from cosmic and spiritual worlds and took on an earthly existence in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. At that time, the greatest value was placed on this descent, on this leaning towards the earth. But when, with the fourth century A.D., the old initiates began to die out and the new science of initiation was not yet there, which could only come with the last third of the 19th century, when these old initiates had died out, then what had previously been a direct vision had to be hardened into the documents. It had to be handed down traditionally; in order to attain the consciousness of freedom, people had to forget the old, initiated science for a time. That is why, the more humanity approached the 19th century, the more was forgotten about how the supermundane Christ-Being descended into earthly existence and took on an earthly existence in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In the end, people only looked at the historical event, and gradually they lost sight of the Christ in Jesus. We must begin again today to speak of the Christ as a supersensible entity. We must understand what it means for the Christ to keep the human soul alive, for the body has changed in the course of human evolution. Why did the ancients have clairvoyance? Because the body was softer and the glands within the human body were even more active. It is precisely the glandular activity that has approached a hardening, and the more this hardening progresses, the more the human body hardens, the glandular activity becomes a tougher one, that which can serve as a can serve as a hardened human body for intellectualism, which is becoming more and more developed, as the glandular activity in the human body hardens, the human body itself becomes extraordinarily useful for the intellect. But man must acquire the connection with the spiritual world all the more with the soul. The initiates of the early Christian centuries still knew all this, but they expressed it with a courage that is no longer spoken of today. They said that people would have gradually become physically sicker and sicker if Christ had not come and healed them from the soul. Therefore, in the first Christian centuries, Christ was not only revered in our abstraction, but above all revered as the healer, as the great world physician, as the savior.

Today, all these things must be achieved again; they can only be achieved if man can once more look into the secrets of birth and death. The ability to look into these secrets of birth and death can only be acquired through the path of imaginative, inspired and intuitive science. We must gradually receive knowledge of this, for the one who receives knowledge of it also acquires the vision of it in his soul.

This is what I had to say to you today about the connection between man and those worlds that he leaves through birth and reenters through death.

after a eurythmy-dramatic presentation

Today we have preceded the Easter scene in 'Faust' with the scene in which the Earth Spirit appears to Faust. Eight days ago, we were able to tie in many thoughts from 'Faust' that can be meaningful to those who want to approach the laws of the world, the life of the world, in a spiritual scientific way. It is not just to give you explanations of Goethe's 'Faust' that I am taking up Goethe's poetic creation last time on Easter Sunday and this time here. The reason is because the human soul can truly perceive something of the artistic images that confront us in “Faust” that must be called the development of this soul into the spiritual worlds, which one can call becoming familiar with the spiritual worlds. To the extent that we can, so to speak, immerse ourselves in “Faust” from a spiritual scientific point of view, we may indeed tie one or the other reflection to this poetic creation. In essence, Goethe's 'Faust' is the expression of the striving into the spiritual world in Goethe, and thus the expression of how, at an important turning point in modern history, a mind as deep as Goethe's tried to enter the world that we seek through our spiritual deepening.

Last time, we were able to convince ourselves that Goethe lived in a time in which it was really not yet possible to find the way into the spiritual worlds in a clear, I would say unambiguous, way. We were able to convince ourselves that such truths as those of the significance of Lucifer and Ahriman still hovered before Goethe's soul as an unclear realization, one might say, like an unclear sense of the spiritual world, and we were able to convince ourselves that in the figure of Mephistopheles the two figures of Lucifer and Ahriman have been conflated, so that Goethe has before him an unclear figure in Mephistopheles, to whom he cannot get close in an unambiguous spiritual-scientific relationship. And so we can see precisely in this striving of Goethe's, as it is expressed in 'Faust', with what seriousness and with what inner conscientiousness, one might say, with what responsibility before our own soul we should pursue what spiritual-scientific deepening is intended to open up. When a spirit so profound encounters such difficulties in the way of what many, many people today are seeking, there is truly an opportunity to learn a great deal from Goethe's own quest and striving. One would wish that everyone who has delved a little into the results of our spiritual science would again approach this document, Goethe's “Faust”, which is a document from the dawn, not yet from the time after the sunrise of spiritual-scientific endeavors. Last time I said that Goethe needed the maturity of his life to emerge from the state of his soul in his youth. Goethe's soul cannot be satisfied with just seeing in the world what the sensory eyes see and what the mind, bound to the brain, perceives. And what lived and raged in his soul for the deeper spiritual foundations of life, he shaped it in the striving Faust, who is not a likeness of Goethe, but who does present certain aspects of Goethe's striving and Goethe's life in a truly artistic way. And so we have here, in the scene with the Earth Spirit, one of the oldest parts of Goethe's Faust that he wrote down.

Last time I spoke about Goethe's “Faust” in such a way that if I were misunderstood as I often am, one could go and say that I had called “Faust” a defective work of art and would even have said some harsh words about it. And someone who is particularly inventive might say that I have undergone a change in my view of Goethe, for I was of course once an admirer of Goethe and have now proved myself to be someone who criticizes Goethe. Now, I should not need to mention that I venerate Goethe no less than I ever did, that he appears to me as the most magnificent spirit of modern times. But what is venerating devotion to a personality should never lead us to a blind sense of authority, but should always keep us clear-sighted for that which we have recognized as truth.

The various parts of Faust can be said to have been pieced together, not to mention glued, and it can be said that at the time when Goethe wrote the oldest parts of Faust in the 1770s, 18th century, was really incapable of writing the later parts, that he really had to mature first in order to come from his longing for the spiritual world to what one might call his understanding of Christianity. It was only through the maturity of life that Goethe was able to continue Faust, who is searching for the spirit world, in such a way that Faust comes to be preserved in life through the Austrian memory, and that Faust even comes to take the Gospel into his own hands and to begin translating the Gospel of John. When one hears some people today saying that they need no spiritual knowledge to fathom the depths of Christianity, that this spiritual science is unnecessary stuff, because Christianity can be sufficiently understood by what every pastor proclaims from the pulpit, that mere belief must prevail, especially in this Christianity, and one compares such soul mood with what must be said about Goethe, who, as one of the deepest took decades to mature to his understanding of Christianity, then one can get an idea of the tremendous arrogance, the tremendous conceit, that is in people who, conceited and haughty, always speak of the simplicity of their minds, and who dismiss what they do not need — the content of spiritual science, what they do not need according to their view.

In the scene with the Earth Spirit, we see something of what occupied Goethe in his youth, in his thirties, and also in the last twenties of his life. We can see from this earth spirit scene and from what preceded it, the so-called first Faust monologue, how Goethe immersed himself in so-called occult-mystical literature and how he tried to find the spiritual world through meditation and meditative devotion, through what this literature gave him. We see him in the scene that has been presented to us today, in the midst of his search through meditation, which arises from the allusions that he, as it is said here, can gain from an occult-mystical book, from an old mystical book by Nostradamus, as he strives through his meditation, which arises from a mystical book, to rise up into the spiritual worlds.

Let us try to imagine the worlds to which Faust, and thus also Goethe, actually wants to go. When the soul of man has really managed to strengthen its inner power so that the spiritual-soul core of man's being is released from the instrument of the physical body, when the soul, so to speak, with its powers that are not perceptible to it in ordinary everyday life, has slipped from the physical body, what becomes – not the physical body itself in its spatial boundaries, but the physical life, with which the human being is always spiritually connected because a ray or stream goes to this physical life – what becomes for the human soul this physical experience? In the time between death and a new birth, a ray or stream of spiritual life goes back to what we have experienced on earth, as you can see from the illustrations of earlier lectures. So there is always something like a spiritual reaching out, or even more than a spiritual reaching out, back to what is physical experience. What then does this physical experience become for the human soul, which has been freed from the use of the instrument of the physical body? I would like to say: the whole physical experience becomes a soul organ for the person who has emerged from this physical experience. The physical experience becomes, as it were, an eye or an ear; the whole human being becomes a sense organ, a spiritual sense organ, an organ, one might say, of the whole earth, which looks out into space. In order for our eye to see physical objects, we have to be outside of our eye. The eye has to be embedded like a kind of independent organ in the eye socket, which is even closed off by bony walls, so that the eye is a relatively independent organ. In a similar way, the ear is also closed. Again, the whole physical apparatus of the brain is enclosed in the head cavity and closed off from the rest of the human body. The physical experience of the human being must become so closed off that it becomes a kind of sensory organ, a kind of eye or ear through which the human being, who is outside of what his physical experience is, looks out into the vastness of space.

What is experienced there can also be described as follows: one can say that one is now in the world that is presented in the book 'Theosophy' as the soul world. This is the world that one first enters when one has the experience of being outside the body with the soul that has become independent and having one's own physical experience outside of it. In the Vienna Cycle of April 1914, I described how, in the life between death and a new birth, the human being has a spiritual-soul sense organ through his last life on earth to perceive the rest of the world, that is, he perceives the rest of the world through this life on earth. In this world we find our deceased for quite some time after their death, until they advance to another world, which can only be reached by a later state of development of the soul, even for the human initiate. In this world, into which we enter, many things must strike the observer. Only details about this world can be said. From the various lectures, one must gather what characterizes this supersensible world. Above all, what the soul immediately notices is that, having become free from the body and entering into a new world, the soul now sees the stars going out, feels the stars going out. The soul settles into an elementary world, so that it now weaves with the sea of air, itself surges with the warmth surging in the world, radiates out with the light, and since the soul radiates out with the light, it cannot see external objects through the light. That is why the sun and stars fade, and the moon extinguishes its light before the soul. It is not an external looking at, in which one then is, it is a co-experiencing of the elemental world. And at the same time it is a co-experiencing of that which one calls the power of historical happenings, of historical becoming. In this world one can see in process what history really does in human life.

In its further meditative development, the soul can then struggle up to a higher experience. Then, not only its own experience becomes a spiritual-soul sense organ, but the whole earth becomes a sense organ. To put it quite paradoxically, but you will understand me, the human soul must advance to such an experience, of which one can say: The human being is now something in which the whole globe is inserted, as otherwise the eye or ear is inserted into our body, and as we otherwise see with our eyes, hear with our ears, so we perceive the cosmic space with the whole earth and its experiences. There we become aware that what physicists say about the sun and the stars is mere materialistic dreaming. The stars have indeed already gone out, the sun, the moonlight has gone out in the previous world. But now we become aware that where we suspected the sun there is a community of spirits, that everywhere we suspected a star there is a spiritual world. And we become aware, by remembering our life on earth, that the materialistic reverie of which the physicists speak is a fantastic one, because when stars or suns appear to us, it is because somewhere in the spiritual world there is the seat of a spiritual community, just as the earth is the seat of a community of people. But just as little as one would perceive the physical bodies of a distant star, only the human souls, so little can it be said that something up there among the stars could interest us that is not of a spiritual-soul nature. But what we see, we must imagine as the vapors of the earth's atmosphere, which collide with what is coming in, and the physical eye can see nothing of what the star really is, but only the vapor that the earth itself throws out into space. All that we see as the starry sky is nothing but the material, albeit ethereal, material of the earth itself woven together, it is a curtain that the earth draws across what is behind it. But when the soul comes to live itself out in this world, then it perceives that out there are not these fantastic stars, these materialistic-fantastic stars that physicists speak of, but living beings, living communities of beings, floating up and down, weaving back and forth in the outer space of the universe, passing the gifts from top to bottom, and in turn the gifts are passed from bottom to top. If you translate the words into the spiritual:

How everything is woven into the whole,
One thing within the other lives and works!
How heavenly powers ascend and descend
And pass the golden buckets!

— Powers, but now in the sense in which we speak of primal forces -,

With wings that smell of blessing
From heaven through the earth they penetrate,
Harmoniously through all the universe they resound!

But if we imagine all this in spiritual and mental terms, then we have roughly the world in which the soul lives out itself.

Now, what did Faust have of all that has been described here at the time when he is presented to us? He has opened an old book, written by someone who has recorded an ancient observation in signs: this was given by the sign of the macrocosm. But Faust is naturally not in a position to project his soul into worlds where the entities in space develop their great happenings. Faust is not able to reach that level. He only sees the sign that someone who has reached that level has written down, the sign of the macrocosm. But a dream, a presentiment is evoked that this sign means something. So imagine yourself in your soul, that you had never heard of spiritual science, that you had the sign in front of you, but that you had an inkling that someone had once seen something similar that you would also like to see, then you are in Faust's soul. At first you can dream yourself into it, so that your imagination brings to life something through these outer signs, which are essentially the signs of the zodiac, the signs of the elements, the signs of the planets. You can even begin to break out with overflowing feeling into the words:

What a spectacle!

But this strikes back at you, for now you become aware that you have nothing but the sign in the book, nothing but a fantasy...

But alas! only a spectacle!

Even just a spectacle as an inner fantasy! And you are thrown back. The sign has brought you to nothing, on the contrary, it has thrown you back, has brought you the feeling: there is the world of the spirit, before which you stand, but nowhere can you find an entrance.

Where can I grasp you, infinite nature?
Your breasts, where? You, the sources of all life,
On which heaven and earth depend,
Where the withered chest presses –

Nothing but feeling inside the elements, in the light and in the air, as I said, in the subordinate world. And now even more clearly expressed. Faust has pushed his way up into the spiritual world, fallen back into the world that I described earlier as the next supersensible world. This with the air and light life, that expresses itself very well in the words:

You spring up, you water, and must I languish in vain?

He has fallen back completely, back from the spiritual world into the elemental world. But he is not yet able to recognize this either. It helps him that he opens the book and sees the sign of the earth spirit. That is the sign that someone has written who has had this lower world, the elemental world, as his own world. Now he feels at home in it. He has a presentiment of being at home in it.

How differently this sign affects me!

— because he feels something in it, because he has turned away from the appearance of meaning and feels something of the world's inner workings. Now he is actually always speaking of this world:

Already I feel my powers increased,

— that which one experiences when one lives in warmth and light -,

I glow like new wine.

Imagine feeling warmth in your soul when you live and weave in the world as a heat wave!

I feel brave enough to venture out into the world.

It really is like moving in the elements. I told you that life on earth becomes a sense organ, and just as you feel your eyes and ears within you, you now feel your sense organs in the earth.

To bear the earth's sorrow and its joy,
To battle with the storms around me,

when you are a wave in the air.

Clouds gather overhead,
The moon hides its light.

No wonder! I have just described to you how this happens, how stars like the moon go out. The light goes out because it goes with the light itself.

It steams! – Red rays
Twitch around my head

This is now internal perception.

A shuddering blast
From the vaulted roof descends
And seizes me!
I feel it, thou art hovering around me, implored spirit.
Reveal thyself!
Ha! how my heart is torn!
To new feelings
All my senses are awakened!

Do you not notice how life is expressed in the elements here?

I feel my heart completely given to you!
You must, you must! Even if it costs me my life!

And now, out of his meditation, he speaks the spell that is added to the sign of the earth spirit, a meditative, suggestive spell that really does lead him to the sight of the spirit, who is the leader of the spirits in whose realm we enter when we enter the elemental world. But immediately we realize that Faust is not actually ready for this world, and above all cannot feel ready for this world. What will become of him, then, of Faust? He will come to self-knowledge, in the sense that this is the highest knowledge of the world, in that we all experience what can be experienced when we swim and weave and roll and dwell in the elemental world. But Faust cannot recognize what individualizes itself in it.

This spiritual conversation between Faust and the Earth Spirit is so very characteristic of the state of maturity of Goethe at the time when he wrote the scene, as he describes his tremendous striving into the spiritual world.

Spirit: Who calls me?

Faust is already turning away. Of course, it doesn't sound like what we usually hear with our ears, that it sounds to us from afar, but rather so that we live in the sounds. It sounds different from what can be heard on earth, very different. Just as one does not see what one sees through the light, but rather shines with it. It looks different. Faust wanted to become a superhuman. That is, he wanted to enter the spiritual world, but he is seized by horror at this spiritual world. Through this encounter with the earth spirit, it becomes clear to Faust that one must become a different person than one was before as a human being if one wants to enter the spiritual world, that one cannot enter this spiritual world with one's ordinary powers, feelings and passions. Faust must have felt this deeply, how he was first thrown back, falling from the higher spiritual world into the elemental world, and how he is now thrown back in the elemental world in his knowledge, because he has remained only the ego he used to be, because he did not develop into this elementary world, to which the suggestive meditation brought him, which he carried out through the saying attributed to the earth spirit. He was able to see for a moment what kind of beings are within. But the spirit says to him:

Where are you, Faust, whose voice resounded for me,
Who with all his powers penetrated me?

That this voice resounded from the subconscious, I have already pointed out, that this was the Faust whom the outer Faust himself does not even really know.

Is it you, surrounded by my breath,
Trembling in all depths of life...

This “you” now refers to the ordinary Faust, while the striving Faust was the higher human being Faust.

A timid, cringing worm?

But now Faust's defiance awakens. He wants to plunge into the world for which he is not ready:

Shall I yield to you, flame formation?
It is I, I am Faust, I am your equal.

Now he can still hear how the spirits of the elemental world, into which he has transferred himself, live with human history, with what takes place on earth through the races and cultures, and how they live with it. And the secret of the elemental world is expressed by the earth spirit; it never speaks of being, but of becoming, of happening.

Spirit: In the floods of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
Weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I labor at the whirling loom of time
And weave the living robe of divinity.

Not in space, but in time: read the lectures given in The Hague!

Faust can grasp that this is the spirit that walks through history:

You who wander the wide world,
Busy spirit, how close I feel to you!

You who wander the wide world! You who are the spirit that belongs to the spirits of the age, how close I feel to you! — So he says in his presumptuousness. The spirit now tells him what Faust himself later calls the word of thunder, which strikes his soul like a word of thunder and in turn strikes him back into the ordinary world in which he is because he is not yet mature. He should seek self-knowledge and in the self expanded to the world, the spiritual world. He cannot yet find it, so the word of thunder must sound to him from this earth spirit:

You resemble the spirit that you comprehend,
Not me!

What spirit is it then that Faust comprehends? What spirit does Faust comprehend? He, the image of the deity, who cannot comprehend the earth spirit? How can he then advance in self-knowledge? What kind of human spirit can Faust comprehend? Enter the other Faust, wearing a dressing gown and nightcap: this is the spirit you comprehend! You do comprehend Wagner! You have not progressed any further, for the other part of you lives only in defiance, as a passion! In self-knowledge he comes a little further. That is precisely what is so remarkable about Goethe's Faust, that is the beautiful artistic form of Goethe's Faust, that what is brought onto the stage in real form is always, at bottom, a piece of self-knowledge. Just as Mephistopheles is a piece of self-knowledge, so is Wagner also a piece of Faust's self-knowledge. Wagner is Faust himself. And it would not be wrong to stage “Faust” in such a way that the character of Wagner, dressed in a dressing gown and nightcap, to whom Faust turns away, would be a likeness of Faust himself. Then people would immediately understand why it is precisely this Wagner who comes in. What Wagner says is basically what Faust already understands; he only recites the rest. He just lets it out. He believes he is elevating himself to the highest truths, which he can recite in a phrase-like manner, but which he does not experience inwardly. And now a piece of self-knowledge takes place. Wagner speaks the truth. Basically, Faust has not spoken his innermost experiences, he has recited.

Forgive me! I hear you declaim.

That is one truth: he only declaimed. And it is a piece of self-reflection to realize that you do not approach the spirit of the world in this way, but at most read a Greek tragedy. So many people, when they approach spiritual science, want to declaim about the highest truths, even if it is often a self-declamation about the highest truths. Basically, they want nothing more than to benefit from this spiritual science, to profit from it, to delude themselves with a hazy mist. With regard to today, it can be said that this is often the case in some circles. Some people are very interesting when they talk about their visions. In earlier times, we heard this from the priests; now the actors have learned it even better, so that the priests can learn something from the actors. If Faust were to go only as far as his understanding, he would have to say the words that Wagner speaks, his mirror image. But he goes beyond the limits of his passion, and goes beyond with the Luciferic, not with the genuine, full, human core of the soul, but with the Luciferic core. It is the Lucifer in Faust who now answers what Faust is, but what stands before us as Wagner:

Yes, when the pastor is an actor;
How that may come about in time.

This contempt, this arrogance comes from the Luciferian in Faust, because if Faust were not seized by Lucifer, he would speak as Wagner does when he expresses only what he can honestly admit as the subject of his understanding. The other thing is a dark foreboding in him of something he wants to get to. But this soliloquy – really, it is only a conversation with himself – does get him a little further. You get so much further in life when you encounter yourself in another. You don't like to admit to yourself that you have these or those qualities. But when they confront you in another, you are more willing to study them. In this way, we acquire self-knowledge when a quality presents itself in the form of another, as in Faust by Wagner. Faust has not yet reached the point where he would say to himself, now that Wagner is gone: Yes, that is actually me. — If he had already fully penetrated to himself with his understanding, he would say: I am only a Wagner, the Wagner is only here in my head!

How all hope does not fade from the mind,
That clings forever to stale evidence,
With greedy hand digs for treasures,
And is glad when it finds earthworms!

For up to now he has done nothing else, except seek the spirits in the manner described. It is self-knowledge that confronts Faust in Wagner. Who sent Wagner into him? The Earth Spirit sent him in, the Earth Spirit:

You resemble the spirit you comprehend,
Not me!

And now Faust shall see what spirits he resembles. He does not resemble the Earth Spirit, who is the ruler of the Earth, but he shall see one of the forms within him: there is your Wagner! This Wagner is in you!

But now there is not only Wagner in Faust, but the Luciferic element is opposed to Wagner, that is, opposed to itself. There is another element in him.

If you look at “Faust” in its earlier form, as it was at the beginning, it is the case that Goethe did not finish the following after the earth spirit scene at the time. It continues like this: conversation with Wagner, then with the student, Mephisto... Mephisto enters, of whom Goethe does not quite know whether he is Lucifer or Ahriman. If he had studied spiritual science, Lucifer would appear now. But he has the other one, who is sent to him by the earth spirit. The earth spirit sends him Wagner, sends him Mephisto, we would say Lucifer. Faust is to get to know little by little what is in him. Mephisto is sent by the earth spirit: There you have another one of the spirits that you understand. Try to understand the Lucifer that is in you, and not immediately look at the spirit of the earth!

How unclear Goethe was about the matter can be seen from the fact that a small piece, which was later left out, is in the original writing, in four lines. In 1775 there were four lines after the scene where Mephisto has brought Faust so far that he has led him to Gretchen, and that Faust now wants to force himself on Gretchen. There are four lines that were no longer in the fragment as early as 1790. After Faust, who is actually Lucifer – Goethe just mixes them up – has asked Mephisto to take care of the jewelry for Gretchen, Mephisto says in the old manuscript, after Faust has left:

He acts as if he were a prince's son.
If Lucifer had a dozen princes,
They would surely conjure up something for him;
In the end, he would get a commission.

There it is, Mephisto himself calls himself Lucifer. As I said, the four lines were later omitted. So what was Goethe actually trying to do in his earlier days, when he wanted, one might say, to express himself in his “Faust”? Well, he wanted to show how man should come to self-knowledge. But, one might say, there is an inkling of it in this first scene, which Goethe wrote in his youth, and which you can now read with clarity, where it is described in “How to Know Higher Worlds?” the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. You foresaw in Faust how the human being, who gradually realizes how different entities are within him, divides himself up, how he divides himself up into Wagner and Lucifer-Mephisto. He gets to know himself bit by bit in his individual parts, he gets to know himself as Wagner, he gets to know himself as Lucifer-Mephisto. But as I said, Goethe first had to mature in order to really see the great significance of the Christ impulse for humanity, as far as that was possible in his time. Therefore, we see how Goethe, in his later years, sought to supplement what he had written earlier about Faust's striving until man encounters himself in his various images, including the image of Lucifer, by having Faust come into contact with what has been incorporated into earthly development through Christ. One could say that the cultic symbols of Christ approach Faust. And so we see in Faust the document that shows us how Goethe himself brought occultism to Christianity, to the Christ impulse, and how we are indeed continuing today to work on the path that Goethe took with regard to its first steps. In Goethe's time one could only get a glimpse. Today, the time has come when it is possible for man, through spiritual science, to truly enter into the realm of spiritual life, into which all of Goethe's striving was directed. Today, Faust must be understood differently than Goethe himself understood him. Yes, the world is progressing, and if we do not fully recognize that the world is progressing, then we are not serious enough about the world. But such experiences, that one splits, that one encounters oneself in one's true form, in a Luciferian form, such experiences do bring one forward, but always only a little way. We must part with the belief that we can see the whole spiritual world if we have only made small advances, such as we can make through meditation. One always advances only a little.

There are two natures in Faust: the Wagner nature and that which now strives forward. When Goethe wanted to point this out in his later years, he did it very beautifully. Goethe felt the need, when Faust had already approached Christianity, to show what the Wagner nature in Faust is. Therefore, he lets Wagner and Faust take the Easter Walk together. It is now the case that, as is naturally dramatic, two people are presented to us, showing what is going on in Faust's soul. The higher man in Faust strives forward, but the Faust-Wagner holds Faust back. A spark of comprehension of the spiritual world has been kindled in Faust, so that he now sees not only the sensual poodle, and there really is something like a soul force in Faust that expresses itself in the conversation with Wagner:

Faust: Do you see the black dog roaming through the seed and stubble?

Now the nature of Wagner awakens in Faust.

Wagner: I saw him long ago, he seemed unimportant to me.
Higher Nature: Look at him closely! What do you think the animal is?
Wagner Nature: A poodle, who in his own way is trying to follow his master.

These are objections that Faust himself actually raises. And now it continues. Faust begins to see the supersensible behind the sensual; he already senses it. So, it is a hunch, brought on by the experiences he has had. A spark of the spiritual world has entered into him. And it is beautiful, one wants to say, how infinitely artistically sincere and honest Goethe is, one just has to understand him. When Faust now feels the Luciferic in himself – as you know, the Luciferic is connected with obstinacy, with inner egoism – he, Faust, now also carries this Luciferic into his being gripped by the Christ impulse. It is a Luciferian trait that the Gospel of John, in that he wants to translate it, does not seem perfect to him at all. For the understanding, the Goethe commentators are a bit curious, who really go along with the poet, because they always go along with the poet, even where he distributes the things he wants to say among his characters. Faust does not yet understand the text of the Gospel at all, otherwise he would stop at “In the beginning was the word”. He falters because he does not yet understand it. The professors present it as if Faust understood it better, but he does not yet understand it. What appears to him now is the power, the deed – so he brings rationalism and intellectualism into the gospel. This now evokes the opposite phenomenon. Whereas he was once pushed down into the sensual world, he is now drawn up into the spiritual world. By fully asserting his limitations, by setting 'sense and power and action', he is pushed up into the spiritual world, because there is already a spark of spiritual power in Faust. Then the spirits come and again as the messenger of the earth spirit... Mephisto, this unclear figure between Lucifer and Ahriman. So you see, one must understand Goethe's struggle to penetrate Faust's spiritual world, and one can learn an infinite amount from it, especially for our present time.

What I particularly wanted to do in the last lecture on Easter Sunday and in this lecture was to show you how it is more difficult for a spirit that wants to delve deeper to penetrate to the Christ impulse than for a spirit that remains in its infinite pride and conceit and does not want what spiritual science can offer it. On the other hand, I also wanted to use Faust to illustrate how powerful the impact of the Christ Impulse has been on the world. There will come a time when we will learn to understand the inner nature of the Christ impulse ever better and better, precisely through what spiritual science has to give. It stands there in the world – I would like to say, as an illustration of the development of humanity on earth, brought about by world history, of what the Christ impulse is – the fact stands that centuries after the Christ impulse entered into the development of humanity on earth, something occurs in this development of humanity that is also not properly understood. But at the moment when one begins to understand it correctly, one is led precisely through this understanding to a deeper feeling for the Christ event. You know, of course, that six hundred years after the Christ impulse entered into the evolution of mankind, a prophet arose in a certain community who initially rejected what had entered into the evolution of mankind through the Christ impulse: Mohammed. Today we must no longer profess the superstition of the 19th century, which, out of rationalism, seeks to explain in a belittling way what must be explained out of spiritual insight. And it must appear ridiculous to anyone who really wants to penetrate into spiritual science when a particularly learned and clever man says of Mohammed: Yes, he claims that the angel who whispered in his ear what he wrote in the Koran approached him in the form of doves! But Mohammed - so the rationalist scholar says - was a mere juggler. He put some grains, which doves like to eat, into his ear, so the doves flew up and took the grains, but flew away again when they had had them! Yes, there have been such explanations, within and outside of Christianity, in the very clever 19th century.

There will come a time when such explanations will really only be laughed at, even though they are fully capable of satisfying materialism. We have to take Muhammad more deeply; we have to be clear that what lived in his soul was really such intercourse with the spiritual world as Goethe sought for his Faust. But what did Muhammad feel? What did he find? Today I can only hint at it, another time I will explain it more precisely. What did Mohammed find? Well, you know, Mohammed first strove for a world for which he had an expression, it is only one word: God. The world becomes a monism, a monistic expression of God. This world has nothing of the essence of Christianity, of course. But Mohammed does look into the spiritual world; he enters the elementary world of which I have spoken today. He promises his believers that they will enter, when they have gone through the gate of death, into this spiritual world. But he can only tell them about the spiritual world that he has come to know. What kind of spiritual world is this? This spiritual world, of which Mohammed tells his believers, is the Luciferian world, which he regards as paradise, the world that is to be aspired to. And when one passes from the abstract to the real, and adds, by way of interpretation, the meaning of Islam's striving in the spiritual world, one recognizes what spiritual science also proclaims. But this spiritual world is the world in which Lucifer rules; reinterpreted, the Luciferian world becomes a paradise, the world that people are just beginning to strive for.

I believe that it must make a deep impression on our souls if we can delve into the essence of historical development in such a way, through a very important phenomenon. It must give us pause when we learn in the progression of religious life how a great prophet emerged with the error that the Luciferic world is paradise. I do not want you to take this in just as abstract truths, I believe it can shake the soul if you let it affect you. But what does the Muslim do to enter his spiritual world? Perhaps we could later have a note handed in at the door from each of our dear friends here who has read the entire Koran. It would be interesting to count the slips of paper of those who have read it. But it is not easy to read the Koran completely, with its endless repetitions, which Westerners find so endlessly boring to read. But among Muslims, there are people who claim to have read it from beginning to end seventy thousand times in their lives. That means: to have brought a word that was given to the soul in such a way that this word has become alive in the soul! Even if we cannot learn anything in terms of content from such a religious community with regard to Christianity, we can still learn that within that community of people, even spiritual error is treated quite differently than what we are called to recognize as spiritual truths. At most, a European might read Faust, then, when he has forgotten it, read it again, and when he has forgotten it again, read it once more. But those who have read Faust a hundred times will also be sought after. It is also understandable within the context of Western education to date. How could anyone read everything that is printed in the West seventy thousand times? It is quite understandable. But we should still acquire something, that it is one thing to simply inform oneself about a content that is meaningful for the soul's life, and something else to live with it, again and again, so that one becomes completely one with it, completely one. It is something that one must first gain an understanding of, something that one cannot even understand according to the thinking habits of our national community. But we should reflect on such things. Not just to tell you something, but to stimulate your reflection, words are spoken as they are in this reflection. To increase our sense of responsibility towards ourselves and towards the world, with regard to what spiritual science can and should be for us.

We live in difficult times in many respects. The very difficult external events that surround us at present are only the outward sign of our very difficult times. It is not good to look at these very difficult times as if they were an illness, as we often call an illness an illness, because an illness is often a healing process, the true illness has preceded the physically apparent illness. So also what is now going through the world as mourning events has been preceded by something pathological, and we are to see into much deeper things than humanity is inclined to see into. Oh, a great pain can be deposited on the soul of the one who looks at the present time with the tasks it has, and with the little understanding that so many people have for these tasks. When one sees how people judge, think, feel and perceive the world today, and how these thoughts, feelings and perceptions lead to external events, and how people learn so little from these external events, then an infinitely meaningful pain is deposited on the soul. It is this feeling of pain that must now often come over the soul. If one can really look back over the past months of trial, to mention only the most recent, and turn one's gaze to what people have learned through these months of trial, to what judgment confronts one in relation to what confronted one eight months ago: it is the same kind of judgment, the same kind of feeling. What made people believe they were right eight months ago, they still think so, they even want the sad events to have occurred in order to prove them right in what they believed was right eight months ago.

I cannot express how infinite the pain is that one feels at the small way in which human souls have changed in recent months according to the assumptions that had to be made for this change, so that our time really would be a time of trial, a time of learning. But of those who stand within spiritual science, one would wish that they absorb much of what can be learned when such considerations as these are undertaken in connection with Faust. Again and again one would like to point out to souls the deep seriousness and the sacred striving for truth that must be connected with our spiritual-scientific view. And in such a movement there must be retribution for everything that does not arise out of deep sincerity and a deep sense of truth. We must really try to overcome everything that can make one say to the one who utters it: Forgive me, I hear you declaiming!

Is it not strange, when we see the stage traditions according to Wagner often on the stage today, and when scholars, when rationalists and intellectuals deride what Wagner is, instead of them knocking on their hearts and seeing themselves in the Wagner. This Wagner sits on the chairs everywhere, in the laboratories, and our scientific literature, our philosophical literature, would contain a deep truth if the majority of the authors chose the pseudonym “Wagner”. For they are written by Wagner, these philosophies of the present.

I am quite sure that many a person who lives in the ranks of spiritual science also has sufficient reason to beat their breasts, to examine themselves in self-knowledge, to see how much of their soul is mere self-promotion and how much arises from absolute honesty, from an absolute sense of truth! With this admonition to your hearts, to the deepest powers of your soul, I close this reflection.

There are many reasons why the theosophical attitude is currently finding it difficult to gain access to people's hearts. On the one hand, it is confronted by the prejudices of the calculating mind, which, once accustomed to accepting only the tangible, meets the doubting feelings of those who say: the cultivation of the higher spiritual life may be something wonderful, something noble, but we have more important things to do today. Such objections often arise from genuine philanthropy, true compassion for the hardships and sufferings of humanity. Attention is drawn to how many people live in the bitterest misery, how many are tormented by hunger, dulled by living conditions that are truly inhuman. Look at yourselves, the theosophists are called out, the thousands in the big cities in their dark holes that do not deserve to be called human dwellings. Many people are crammed into a space that condemns them to physical and moral depravity. Look at the workers who sacrifice their strength from early morning until late at night for the meagerest of wages and who are condemned to a life unworthy of a human being! Is it not necessary above all to help humanity in this direction? Those who speak in this way see the theosophical endeavors as the work of idle minds who know nothing of what is most urgently needed. And one can only say that such objections to Theosophy have much appearance of right for themselves. One would have to close one's eyes to the things that are happening all around us if one did not want to admit this. It is undoubtedly true that the bitterest need of countless people makes it impossible for them to even think for a moment about the higher goals of life. It can easily even appear as an outrage, as a sin against humanity, when the theosophist speaks to a few who have the good fortune of a more or less carefree existence of the “destiny of man”, of the “higher life of the soul”, while the great mass is wasting away in material misery. Theosophy is only for a few enthusiasts who have no sense of the true, the immediate tasks of life: this can be heard not only from malicious opponents, but also from noble humanitarians, from people whose clever minds and noble hearts above all force them to devote their energies to improving the material circumstances of their fellow human beings. For them, the “social question” is the most important one in the present. And they demand of the theosophists that the teachings of “universal love of humanity” and “fraternity” be practiced above all where practical life, where hunger and misery, where physical and moral decay loudly call for relief.

The theosophical side should not simply reply to such noble humanitarians by saying that Theosophy wants nothing to do with the struggles of the parties and the interests of the day. It is true that it cannot be the task of the theosophist to intervene directly in the disputes of political parties. He must seek to serve and help humanity in other ways than those which parties and legislation can employ. But he must also bear in mind that, by pursuing some unworldly aim which is of no value to thousands upon thousands of people, he would be seriously failing to do what is really needed. The theosophist speaks of the necessity of not allowing the noble spiritual powers in the child's soul to wither away; he speaks of the fact that the germ of the Divine lies hidden in every human being, and that teachers and educators in home and school must make it their business to cultivate this germ of the Divine, that they should make the soul of the child a citizen in the Kingdom of the Eternal. And the socially minded philanthropist replies: you may talk for a long time; but just look at these children, for whom their parents have no breakfast, who come to school weak, hungry and cold, with their mental powers completely dulled. Is nothing more necessary for them than to think of the eternity of their soul?

The theosophist will have to listen to such and similar speeches again and again. And it is not surprising if those who believe that they are doing the right thing to alleviate material need and misery call him an idle dreamer. — Misery and want also kill every spiritual urge in man, they blunt him for all higher aspirations. And if one speaks to a starving crowd about spiritual life, one preaches to ears that are incapable of grasping the words.

These are the facts of which the Theosophist must be clear. The fundamental principle of the Theosophical Society is: “to form the nucleus of a brotherhood that extends to all mankind, without distinction of race, religion, class, nationality or sex”. This is in fact the only principle that is considered binding for the members of this society. All other aspirations should be only means to the great goal that is expressed in this essential requirement. — Many socially minded people of the present day will object: we do not need Theosophy for such a requirement. After all, many humanitarian organizations of our time also make this demand, and in a comprehensive way it is made by those parties that strive for an improvement in the social situation of the economically and spiritually oppressed classes. But, it is said, the socialist parties are grounded in practical life and in real interests that the masses must understand; but theosophy is content with more or less general phrases, with preaching and with an emphasis on things that cannot help the oppressed. And radical socialist newspaper writers and agitators are quick to say: the theosophical talk is only likely to cause confusion in the minds of those who are to be won over for a true improvement of their living conditions. They claim: “We must challenge the oppressed to fight against the oppressors; we must work to put power into the hands of those who are economically weak today, so that their labor does not always remain the prey of those classes by whom they are dominated. The power of the working classes must be conquered by all means of struggle. The workers must fight in their own well-understood interest; and you, Theosophists, want to preach “universal love of humanity” to them; you want to talk to them about “fraternity.” In doing so, you only want to distract them from what can really help them. Have the ruling classes of today ever based their power on “human love” and “fraternity”? It is a pipe dream if you believe that such ideals can ever rule the world. What the ruling classes have achieved, they have achieved out of the selfish interests of their classes; and in the same way, the oppressed today can only act out of their class interests. And then the conclusion is drawn, as a matter of course: “The laboring and starving population could wait a long time if they were to rely on you, Theosophists, with your talk of ‘love’ and ‘selflessness,’ to get anyone to strive for the solution of a social task if that solution is contrary to their class interest.” — It could seem as if Theosophy is a rather superfluous thing in the face of the serious social duties of our time. Demagogic speakers and writers, in particular, will emphasize that it is; and in view of the current situation, they will certainly have the applause of the crowd on their side.

But the ugly phenomena that we are currently witnessing within the socialist party efforts in Germany should prompt those who think more deeply to reflect. We are witnessing how those who have been talking about “class struggle” and “liberation of the people” in the sense described above for years are persecuting and fighting each other in blind passion. One question should arise in any case: Can a movement lead to a fruitful goal whose principles give rise to such attitudes in the leading personalities as we can observe today? Just think about what it means to entrust the leadership of humanity to minds that are not in the least able to be leaders of their own passions. Can such people really contribute to improving the general human condition? It should not be denied that the forms under which we live would change if such personalities achieved their goals. Only the intellectually immature could claim that the nature of human society would be different. The trusting will console themselves with the thought that the terrible things that are coming to light today in the leadership of the masses are only of a temporary nature; and that a great movement must necessarily produce such facts. Well, the reasons for many distressing facts in the present are to be found in the fact that the contemplation of social life that our contemporaries have and from which they would like to intervene in the circumstances in a better way, remains entirely in the external, material conditions of life. As a result, they can only approach their social work in the same way that a simple village locksmith who has never learned anything about electricity would have to behave if he wanted to make an electric motor. No one can understand the external actions of human beings without learning the spiritual laws that underlie them. The personalities who want to heal today's social effects should first of all learn about the causes of these effects. And these causes lie in the depths of human nature. What Theosophy reveals as the soul (astral) and as the spiritual world contains the laws for human life, just as the science of electricity contains the laws for the electric motor. It is understandable that people in socialist circles in particular do not want to know about these laws of the higher worlds because they have no idea of their existence. But as long as people are not willing to engage with these higher worlds, all social work will be powerless. Those who understand something of social conditions and theosophy know this. Annie Besant, the soul of the Theosophical movement in the Gegenwatt, was for years in the midst of social work, developing an exemplary and meaningful activity in it. And when she had made the views of Theosophy hers, it became clear to her that all such work is powerless without the enforcement of the spiritual powers, to which Theosophy provides the key. In her speech on “Theosophy and Social Issues” at the Theosophists' Congress in Chicago in 1892, she spoke the momentous words: “I, who have spent so many years of my life dealing with these — the social — issues in the material realm, who have devoted so much time and thought to the quest to find a cure for the social ills of humanity; I consider it my duty... to say that a single hour of spiritual energy devoted to the welfare of mankind bears a hundredfold fruit more than years of labor in the material world.” In the following, the task of Theosophy in the direction indicated here will be presented.

It will be shown that the words of the great Buddha, “Hate can never be overcome by hate, but only by love,” are not mere figures of speech.

An economics teacher, Professor Dr. Werner Sombart, describes the change that took place in the course of the nineteenth century in relation to thinking about social issues in the following sentences: “It is extremely appealing to observe how, since the middle of our (nineteenth) century... the character of the social movement has been transformed in its fundamental ideas, parallel to the theoretical approach to social issues. For it is obviously the same transformation: that in the theoretical interpretation and this in the practical application. Here, too, it is nothing other than an outflow of that fundamental transformation in the entire conception of the world and life, that gradual displacement of what we can call an idealistic or, better, ideological worldview, through realism... What I mean here by an idealistic view of people and life, which has now increasingly begun to retreat from the marketplace into the study, is the belief in the naturally good human being, who, as long as he is not misled by any error or malice of individual evildoers, lives in the most amicable peace with his fellow man, the belief in that “natural order”: in the past or the future, the unshakable confidence that it would only take enlightenment and encouragement to lead people out of this vale of tears and back to the laughing islands of the blessed, the belief in the power of eternal love, which would overcome evil through its own strength and help good to triumph... This basic sentiment was now reversed into the absolute opposite: faith in the naturally good human being gave way to the conviction that man is primarily dominated by selfish, by no means “noble” motives, that he carries the “beast within him”; in his innermost being, even in all civilization and despite all “progress”. And from this, the conclusion: that in order to achieve something in the world, one must above all awaken the 'interest', the normal, material instincts, but that also - and this was the most important conclusion for the fate of the social movement - because in the world, where something had to be achieved, interest , to shape a state of affairs in a certain sense, to 'emancipate' a class like the proletariat, that one must not oppose eternal love to the interest of the capitalist class, but that one must muster a power against the power, a real power, a power consolidated by the interest.” Without doubt, what is expressed in these sentences has increasingly become the attitude of those who want to play a leading role in the social movement. They have completely withdrawn their attention from the spiritual life of man and are of the opinion that one only needs to keep an eye on material interests and economic conditions if one wants to bring about a favorable situation for humanity. They completely overlook the fact that the causes that determine a person's fate include, above all, the drives and instincts of his or her spiritual life. It is certainly true that the domination of the machine, that the development of industry and world trade have created the situation of our proletariat. But they could only have brought about this situation by developing under the influence of those drives and instincts that have dominated humanity in recent centuries. What is important is to recognize the connection between human perceptions, feelings, and drives and between their destinies. Those who want to change economic conditions without recognizing how they are connected to the development of the human soul are like those who believe that a town hall plan can be transformed into a church plan simply by cutting the stones differently and using different materials. Whoever wants to provide for the people what belongs to the people must, above all, direct his attention to the spiritual connections on which all material life depends. He must turn his eye up to the forces of the soul from which the fate of the nation is woven. — And it is unfortunate that at the very time when the social question has become an urgent one, a materialistic way of thinking has taken hold of the masses, and especially of their leaders. Only in the light of an idealistic, spiritual way of thinking can social questions flourish. Under the influence of materialistic thinking, the character traits of the leading personalities of our time have developed in such a way that no one wants to understand the higher laws of human nature anymore, that no one really wants to learn anything that goes beyond mere sensual reality. But no one can exert a truly favorable influence on the destiny of humanity without knowing the true laws of that destiny. And Theosophy is the way to learn these laws. It is the way to penetrate the souls of those with the right attitude who want to guide material development. Just as a blacksmith's tools are of no use to him if he does not know the laws of how to use them, so all economic measures are of no use to the “world-blesser” if he does not gain access to human souls from his soul. The world is guided by the spirit, and anyone who wants to contribute to its guidance must grasp the essence of the spiritual. Theosophy must therefore become the soul of social affairs. And only when material interests arise on the basis that it creates, can the salvation of mankind follow from it. Therefore, nothing could be more false than the assertion that Theosophy is a foreign spiritual movement from which one can expect nothing for the happiness of nations and the liberation of mankind. No, the theosophist only lives with the realization that you do not build human society by merely laying bricks and stones on top of each other, but above all by fully devoting yourself to learning about the plan of this building. And at the present time, those who claim to have a say and a part in social matters do not want to know anything about this. They suspect nothing of it, and in their materialistic blindness they do not want to suspect anything of the fact that they must investigate the true nature of man. They expect nothing from the “love” in the soul, because they close their eyes to the laws of this “love”. It is sometimes the fate of truth to sound paradoxical in the circumstances of the time. This should not prevent the truth-lover from expressing it. One such truth, however, is that the leaders of social issues cannot work for the benefit of humanity until they have absorbed the knowledge and attitudes of Theosophy. There may be Theosophists who want to remain unworldly and keep repeating that it is the karma of the present-day nations to be tested by their purely materialistic attitude. To them it may be said: it is certainly also the fate of the sick person to be sick; but he who is supposed to heal and does not heal fails in his duty because he regards his sickness as a test.