The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My first sad and heavy duty is to acquaint you with the fact that our dear friend, the leader of the Munich Lodge, Fraulein Stinde, now belongs to those whom we have to reckon to-day as the ‘Sphere-Beings.’ She left this physical plane yesterday evening. It is not possible just now to speak about this extremely severe and significant loss to our society. As a beginning to our consideration for to-day I will merely say these few words concerning this event, which is so painful and important to us.

Fraulein Stinde belongs to those who are certainly known to the greater number of our friends. She belongs to those who have grasped our matters in the deepest depths of their hearts and have completely identified themselves with them. In her house (and that of her friend the Grafin Kalckreuth) I was able as early as 1903 to give the first intimate lectures in our sphere, which I had to give in Munich. And one may say that from this first occasion when Fraulein Stinde approached us, she united with our aims not only her whole personality but the whole power of her work, so valuable, so excellent and influential. She forsook the artistic calling which was previously so dear to her, in order to put herself and her powers entirely at the service of our work, and since then she has worked intensely for this, in a rare, objective, quite impersonal manner, both in narrower and wider circles. She was the soul of our whole work in Munich. And she was one of those souls, of whom one could say, that through the inner qualities of her being she gave the very best guarantee that in Munich itself, our aims would be able to develop in the best possible manner. You know what an immense task was laid on all those persons helping in Munich in those early years, through the performances of the Mystery Plays and everything connected with them. Fraulein Stinde and her friend Grafin Kalckreuth gave themselves up absolutely to this work, and above all, it may be said, with the understanding created by the profound nature of their studies, and by the will which may itself be born of this. I may perhaps point out that the intense labour which Fraulein Stinde accomplished, really very considerably exhausted her life-strength in later years. It must be admitted that the valuable life-force which was perhaps too rapidly used up of late, was devoted to our cause in the most beautiful and deeply satisfactory manner. Probably no one among those who knew her most intimately, could help feeling that this personality was one of our very best workers. It is true many of the activities of Fraulein Stinde have been misunderstood, and it is to be hoped that the sun-like force that proceeded from her personality will presently be recognised, even by those of our friends and followers who through prejudice have misunderstood her work. And those of our wider circle who could observe all she did for our cause, will, in common with those more closely connected with her, preserve the most faithful recollection of her. We are sure that in her case we may quite specially emphasise the mantram which must often be uttered during these days in connection with the departure of many of our friends from the physical plane. It may be especially emphasised with reference to Fraulein Stinde, that amidst the many attacks and oppositions which our cause encounters in the world, we reckon on the help of those in the spiritual-world—we reckon on those who have only changed the form of their existence, and who, in spite of their passage through the gate of death, are still truly united with us in soul, and are most significant and important co-workers. The many veils which surround those still incarnate in the physical body, gradually fall away, and the souls of these dear departed friends—of this we are sure—work in our midst, and we specially need their help. We need the help of those no longer assailed from the physical plane, those who have no longer to consider the limits of the physical plane. If we have the deep and earnest belief in the success of our cause in the civilisation of the world, it is because we have the full consciousness that those who formerly belonged to us, are still our best forces, that they work among us from the spiritual world with spiritual means. The trust in our cause that we require, will often be strengthened by the knowledge that we must thank our departed friends for being in our midst in order that, by uniting our forces with theirs, we can accomplish the labour which is laid upon us for the spiritual civilisation of the world. I should now like to continue the considerations which we began to develop in our last lecture. Such times as our own, in which the enigma of death approaches the human soul in so many different forms—and on this we laid stress in our last lecture—urges us quite specially to investigate what man is certainly able to acquire regarding the spiritual world. Times like our own, in which humanity is exposed to such severe trials, are destined for the very purpose of leading the human soul to inquire as to the beings of the spiritual world. For who does not see at each step in what is happening to-day—and is happening in the greater part of the civilised world—who does not see at almost every stage the great riddle of Life confronting him? And who does not feel that great connections lie concealed behind such events as those occurring around us to-day and which, as they occur, convulse the souls and hearts of men with pain and sorrow, though fill them also with hope and confidence? Certainly, he who beholds the events of the world with but a short-sighted vision, will judge such far-reaching events by those which immediately precede and follow them. But one who externally, without entering into esoteric considerations, regards the course of cosmic events and compares earlier times with the present, will become conscious of how very much may be connected first with that, let us say, which in quite a different manner, runs its course later on in the Cosmos, as effect. Consider there are now many people who say: “The present events of the war are merely the results of external political opposition among the various nations and peoples.” Certainly, that is true, and there is no question of bringing forward anything in objection to the truth of such a conception in a limited sense; but, if we consider, for example, the wars which were waged in the beginning of the Middle Ages between the Central European peoples and those of South Europe and above all the peoples belonging to the Roman Empire, we must say that the wars which took place then in political strife also proceeded from the opposition, the political opposition which then existed; they had their causes in those oppositions in their immediate vicinity. These battles have now run their course. They have evoked certain configurations in the entire life of Europe. If we investigate but a little into history and consider what happened at that time through the battles of the Central European peoples with, let us say, the peoples of the Roman Empire, we shall come to the conclusion that out of the earlier configuration of the European World there has arisen a later one. But if we wish to estimate correctly the real point at issue, we must consider all the historical results. For these historical results which have occurred in Europe could not have arisen as they have, if those battles had ended the other way. And what was the consequence of this European History? The whole manner in which Christianity spread and grew in Europe is the result of it! And if we consider these deep connections we can say: In all that happened in the following centuries, the facts lie thus: the events of these centuries are karmically connected with their causes, the battles of those times. That means that the events to which we have alluded, are connected with the whole later configuration of the European World even in its spiritual relations. Just consider that in all its gravity, and you will admit that Christianity then spread in Europe and so fashioned itself, that through the youthful Germanic peoples opposing the Roman peoples who had now grown old, and through the uniting of their youthful forces with that which flowed into humanity as the announcement of Christianity, a certain European atmosphere was thereby created, into which the souls descending later were born. Thus the souls lived and developed in the following centuries, in accordance with these events. Thus we may say: If a man at that time had asserted: ‘How does that affect things? It is merely a political opposition between the nations of South and Central Europe,’ he would be right. But if another had said: ‘Just look, the configuration of the spiritual civilisation of all the following centuries will result from what is happening’—he also would be right, and in a much deeper sense. If we seek the immediate causes of anything by pointing to the opposing forces nearest at hand, we do not therewith touch on the entire gravity of the occurrence. The affairs of this world are all very intimately connected. And if we require inner strengthening in order, as it were, to find the right forces for the support of our work, we need only remind ourselves that in a still smaller circle than our present one, were once seated together those who, when Christianity was first announced represented its great Cosmic Truths. I have already often used this comparison. But we shall apply it yet again to-day. There was a time which we can describe as follows: We see the old Roman Empire. We see it with its old philosophy. We see it living entirely in the atmosphere of the old heathen philosophy. We see this Empire with the people who in a sense formed the upper classes. And there below, truly more underneath than our ‘under’ signifies to-day—literally underneath, in the catacombs under the earth, we see the first small handful of Christians, possessing something quite foreign to the world-culture up above, but which they carried so deeply in their hearts that its force became truly cosmically creative. Let us picture to ourselves these catacombs. There, underneath in the catacombs, with their thoughts directed to the Christ-impulse, were the first Christians—and above, over their heads, the Romans, who behaved quite differently from the first Christians. You know all that, I need not relate it further. But if you picture two centuries later, how different everything appears! That which was above is swept away, and that which was venerated underground in secret has found its way to the surface! Certainly, the times and the forms in which such doings occur change; but the essential remains. Concerning those who to-day advocate the external scientific and spiritual culture it may be said—though this is not to be taken literally—they feel themselves above, and call that which is striven for in our circles, the philosophy of a few sectarians, derived from a few abnormal minds. But he who really penetrates the nature of these conceptions of ours and who above all permeates himself with them, may have the assurance that here too some day what is kept under will be on the top. Here then our thoughts may dwell on the transformed world which will arise out of these difficult times of ours, on the spiritual which mankind must learn to grasp. For there hardly exists a greater similarity in historical evolution, than that between our own times and that which played its part in the epoch when the old Roman culture was still above, and Christianity, tended by a few faithful souls, was still below.

I should like to point out—if I may do so without seeming narrow-minded through a too exact and pedantic reference to these things, for in these days we should be very broad indeed—that it is especially good to hold before the soul as imaginative pictures our own epoch and that of the Rome at the first appearance of Christianity.

Now, many who to-day oppose what we call Spiritual Science, cannot fail to feel the entirely different nature of that which Spiritual Science must advocate, in contradistinction to that which is otherwise upheld among the so-called ‘normal’ people of to-day. And here we need only observe, if we wish to understand this correctly, how the first announcement of Christianity was completely opposed to that which was upheld among the Romans, the normal men of those times: with such a thought we must make ourselves acquainted, for it is again and again leveled against us that with the accepted means of cognition man cannot reach worlds such as those with which we are concerned. We must really so grasp the more intimate work in our groups as to be able to say: This life in our groups is not useless. It is not without significance to this cause of ours, that we should meet together in such groups, and again and again renew, not only acquaintance with the theoretical results of our doctrine, which is not of importance, but also renew our warm feelings and sensations for the actual things and beings of the spiritual world. Thereby we accustom ourselves to that manner of psychic sensing and feeling which above all makes it possible for us to take up spiritual truths in a different way from those who are unprepared. In our group meetings there must occasionally be imparted to you something from the higher and later parts of spiritual knowledge. We cannot always start afresh from the beginning. But this intimacy within the life of the groups must make it possible for a number of our friends to take into themselves, into their souls, such things as I pointed out in the last lecture, namely, the special manner of verifying our spiritual knowledge, and of taking it into oneself. We cannot verify these things in the same manner as man does in the external world when he contacts things with his eyes: but he who has a feeling for such facts as I pointed out last time, will, even if he does not himself see into the spiritual world, feel that through the mutual support of spiritual truths the value of these truths is intensified. Therefore I shall yet again draw attention to the very significant fact that on the one side, through many years of study, the definite point of view is reached, that a third of our life between birth and death—in time—is again lived through after death; while now on the other side a quite different point of view is discovered—namely, that in reality we experience our sleep life in a special form during the time we call Kamaloka, and that this time also occupies a third of the life on the physical plane. These two points of view are quite independent of each other and have been discovered from different starting points. We have also shown on other occasions how, from three or four different points of view, one always comes to the same conclusion. Thus do the truths support each other. But for this, we must ourselves acquire the right feeling. This will produce something like a natural elemental feeling for the truth of this spiritual knowledge. I must often appeal to this, otherwise I could not give out the later and higher truths in the various group-meetings.

Last time we drew attention to the fact that the right connection of our Ego-consciousness between death and rebirth is, as it were, kindled through that panoramic review of our last earth-life which takes place after death. We go over our life again in a kind of tableau. You must quite clearly understand what a man there really beholds. We are here accustomed to stand on the physical plane, forming, in a sense, a kind of central point of our cosmic horizon, and we see the world around us which makes an impression on our senses. In normal life on the physical plane, we do not look into ourselves, we turn our gaze outwards. Now, if we want to form an idea of the life immediately following death, it is important to keep in mind that this gaze on the panorama of life is absolutely different from the perception we are accustomed to use on the physical plane. On the physical plane we look out of ourselves and regard the world as our environment. ‘We are here, we look outwards, and not into ourselves.’ Immediately after death we have a few days in which our field of vision is filled with that which we have undergone between birth and death. We then look within from the circumference to the centre. We regard our own life in its chronological course. Whereas we usually say: ‘Here are we and everything else is outside us’ ... immediately after death we have the consciousness that this distinction between us and the world does not exist. For we look from the circumference on to our own life, which for these few days is our world. In ordinary perception on the physical plane we behold hills, houses, rivers, trees, etc., so, in the same way, we see that which we have undergone in life from a certain personal standpoint, as our own immediate world. And because we see it, that gives the starting point for the maintenance of the Ego through the entire life between death and rebirth. It is that which strengthens and invigorates the soul, so that between death and rebirth it always knows: ‘I am an Ego!’ Here in physical life we realise our Ego through the fact—which I have often pointed out—that we stand in a certain relation to our body. Consider: if you reflect closely on a dream you will say: In the dream you have no clear feeling of the Ego, but often a feeling of separation. That is because man here on the physical plane only really feels his Ego through contact with his body. You can represent it very crudely thus: If you move your finger through the air—there is nothing there! Move it further—there is still nothing. When you touch something, however, in coming against something, you know of yourself, you become aware of yourself. We are thereby made aware of our Ego. Not the Ego itself is aroused—the Ego is a Being—but the consciousness of the Ego. The opposition makes us aware of our Self. Thus we are Ego-conscious in the physical body because of our living in it. For this reason we have received the physical body. In the life between death and rebirth we have an Ego-consciousness, because we have received the forces which proceed from the vision of the previous life. We come to a certain extent in contact with that which the world of space gives us and thereby win our Ego-consciousness for the life between birth and death. We come in contact with that which we ourselves have experienced between birth and death in the last life, and thereby have our Ego-consciousness for the life between death and rebirth.

There now follows the quite different life which occupies a third of the time of the life between birth and death, and which is usually called the Kamaloka life. This life follows. It is of such a nature that we may say a widening of our vision appears. While during the first few days our vision is really directed only to our self, to our past life, not to the personality—this, as time goes on, becomes quite different. Certainly the power of knowing oneself as an Ego remains. But there now appears, and you can gather for yourselves, from the lectures and books, what I am about to say—there now appears something quite peculiar, to which man has first to accustom himself, because the whole method of perceiving in that world is quite different from what it is here on the physical plane. A great part of that which man has to undergo after death consists in inwardly accommodating himself to a different mode of perception. Here we have nature around us. What we here regard in the physical world as nature is absolutely nonexistent in that world which is ours between death and rebirth. To see nature here we have our physical eyes, ears, and the whole physical apparatus of perception. And this nature as it exists with its fullness of colour and other characteristics could not be perceived by other, different organs of perception. Therefore we are endowed with a physical body, that we may be able to perceive nature. After death, in the place of what is here around us as nature, we have around us the spiritual world which we describe as the world of the hierarchies and world of pure being, of pure soul. Not matter or substance or objects which have colour, but pure being. That is the essential point. Therefore naturally the astonishment is greatest for those souls who denied the spirit while here in physical life. For those, who deny the spirit and believe nothing of the spiritual, are placed in a world which they have denied, and which is completely unknown to them. They have compulsorily to live in a world whose existence they actually refused to admit.

Thus we are encompassed by a spiritual environment of pure being, of pure soul. And now gradually emerge souls, fashioning themselves out of this universal soul-world, for at first there are souls everywhere—souls whom we do not recognise. We know they are all souls, but we do not recognise them individually; and gradually the individual souls appear more distinctly and concretely. And especially at this time appear those souls with whom we have lived here on the physical plane, the souls of men with whom we have lived here. While we face this fullness of souls we learn to know among whom we are: this soul is so and so, that soul is someone else, and so on. We make acquaintance with these souls. First of all we must recognise the fact that the whole relation in which we stand to the world then, between death and rebirth, is essentially different, in yet other respects to the relation in which we stand here on the physical plane. Here we say that the world is outside us; after death we have really the consciousness that the world is within us. Just imagine that for a moment here, on the earth, you were to dissolve entirely, that you were to vanish into vapour. The vaporous cloud which is you spreads out more and more and only ceases to spread further when it reaches the firmament. It expands, but it can get no further. Let us consider for a moment the firmament as a being. You then feel yourself as this firmament and now see everything within it; thus you stand outside with your consciousness and see the world inside. You feel yourself in such a way that everything that appears is within you. Just as here a pain is inside us, in like manner after death beings appear in us as inner experience. That brings about the infinite intimacy of the experiences between death and rebirth, the fact of being so bound together with them that we actually have them as our own inner experiences. And here there is a certain distinction. Consider such a soul as I have instanced, which one begins to recognise and of which all one can know at first is: ‘Yes, it is there, but it has no form. It is not yet perceptible, but it is there.’ To make it perceptible one has to accomplish an inner activity, an activity somewhat like the following: Let us suppose ourselves placed in the spiritual. If I feel behind me something which I do not see, the following idea arises in me: It is there, but I must accomplish an activity in order to get some conception of it. I may say it is comparable to touching a thing so as to get an idea of it. This inner activity is necessary if the imagination is to appear. I know the being is there, but I have first to create the imagination by uniting myself inwardly with the being. That is the one way in which man can perceive souls. The other manner is this: that one does not oneself accomplish this inner activity with such intensity, but it arises of its own accord. It appears without one's having very much to do with it. It is somewhat like our perception of something here, only of course it is transferred into the spiritual. And this distinction can exist between two souls. Of the one, man receives a perception through being very active himself; of the other, through an imagination arising out of itself. You only need be attentive to recognise this distinction. For if you become acquainted with a soul that requires more activity to be perceived; that is the soul of one who has died. But a soul that appears more of its own accord is a soul which is incarnate here on the earth in a physical body. These distinctions are really there. Man stands—with a few exceptions, which we can mention at the proper time—man stands in union after death both with the souls who have died and those who are still here on earth. And the distinction lies in a man's knowing which kind of soul he has to deal with; he knows he must be active or passive, according to the way in which there arises the imagination of the soul which he faces.

Now, there is one idea, one characteristic, which has indeed been expressed many times already, but which we will once more bring forward in connection with the life which occupies a third of the earth-life just elapsed, and which we are accustomed to call the life in Kamaloka. If you are living here on the earth and somebody strikes you, you are aware of it. You perceive it, and say: he has struck me. And as a rule it makes a difference whether somebody hits you, or whether you hit him, and if you hear something said by someone, you have not the same experience as when you yourself say something. All this is quite reversed in Kamaloka life, in which we live our life backwards between death and rebirth. To use this rough illustration it is then as follows. If you have given anybody a blow in life, you feel what the other person felt through the blow. If you have injured another through a word, you experience the feeling you caused him. Thus you feel the experience of the other soul. In other words, you experience the results brought about by your own deeds. We experience in this journey backwards everything which other people have experienced through us during our life here, between birth and death. If you have lived here between birth and death with many hundreds of men, these men have experienced something through you. But here in physical life you cannot feel that which those others felt and experienced through you, you only experience what they make you go through. After death this is reversed, and it is essential that we should experience everything in this review which others have suffered through us. Thus we undergo the effects of the last earth existence, and the task of these years really lies in our experiencing them. Now, while we are undergoing these effects, the experience is transformed in us into forces, and it happens in the following manner: Suppose I have offended a man, who has thereby suffered bitterly. During Kamaloka I now experience this bitterness myself. I go through it as my own experience. And while I now experience it, it makes good in me the force which must work as opposition; that is, while I undergo this bitterness, I create in myself the force to wipe away from the world this bitterness. I thus realise all the effects of my deeds and thereby absorb the force to wipe them away. And during this time in Kamaloka—which lasts a third of the earth-life—I absorb all the forces which may be expressed as an intense longing in the now disembodied soul, to remove everything which destroys perfection by retarding the soul's evolution. If you ponder over this you will see that man himself makes his own Karma, that is, that he has in himself the wish to become such that everything undesirable may be wiped out. Thus is Karma prepared, during this particular time. We incorporate into our souls the force which we must take up between death and rebirth, in order to bring about in the next incarnation that configuration of our life which we are able to regard as the right one. This is how Karma is created. In order to understand these things aright—not only theoretically but so to grasp them that they may penetrate deeply into our forces of feeling and willing—we must be clear that the whole mode of feeling common to the dead is absolutely different from that of the living. The living may very easily say, ‘I pity this or that dead man because he has to suffer something from which he cannot escape!’ But suppose he has terribly wronged another and can do nothing to put it right, you may perhaps feel sorry for the dead man, but that is quite uncalled for; for he desires nothing more than to be able to evolve the forces whereby he can balance the wrong. That is the very thing which he regards as precious. You would thus be wishing that he should not reach what he himself most longs for. To attain this he must undergo all the aforesaid suffering, for the positive develops out of the negative. Through insight into that which we have done, we develop the power of making compensation.

Thus we may say that at the end of this Kamaloka period a man has already determined, in accordance with his last life and its recapitulation, how he will enter the next incarnation in his existence; and in what relation he will stand to this or that person in order to compensate this or that. There we actually determine our Karma for the life we are to enter.

The first part of our time is spent in assimilating from the spiritual world the forces through which we can build up humanity in general, and through which we can form for ourselves a body suitable for our own individuality. First we have the plan of our Karma. Then we must fashion the human body to this end. That requires a much longer time, and takes place later on. Now, you can see from this that the essential of the time in Kamaloka lies in the fact that it gives us the possibility of ethically preparing our next incarnation in the right manner. We must be quite clear that each following incarnation depends on the earlier ones. We see how our following incarnations are prepared. And we see that the entire mode of a man's life depends on the way in which he went through his former life. The objection is raised by persons who have not yet fully considered the matter, that this contradicts a man's freedom. I will return to this later—it does not contradict freedom.

If we thus observe individual persons in life we find that they are very, very different; no matter how many men there are on the earth, they are all different. Yet one may distinguish categories. There are, for instance, men who so behave that from their earliest youth we can see that as individuals they are specially suited for this, or that. As you know, there are such people. Even in childhood we can predict that they will accomplish some definite purpose. They thrust themselves into it, as it were. They possess activity. They have a special task, because they develop force for this end. Others we find who are interested in many things but have no definite inclination to any one thing. They take up many things. Perhaps later in life they may come to a definite task which is not specially suited to them; they might perhaps have been able to do something else quite as well. In short, people are quite different one from another in reference to the way in which they act in life. And this really makes life possible. There are men, for example, who enter life, and who do not seem to have much to do, externally. But they need only speak a word or two to have an influence on people. Such men work more through their inner being. Others work more externally. That is intimately connected with the manner in which they have lived through their previous incarnation. There are persons who die in early youth—before the age of thirty-five—in order to have these very limitations. Such men with regard to their death in this incarnation are in a quite different position from those who die after the age of thirty-five. One who dies before the age of thirty-five still stands nearer to the world from which he descended at birth. This thirty-fifth year is an important boundary. One then crosses a bridge, as it were. The world out of which a man has descended then withdraws, and he produces a new spiritual world from his inner being. It is important that we should distinguish this. And now suppose a man dies before the age of thirty-five. On reincarnating, those forces develop in him which he did not use in the years which would have followed his thirty-fifth year. Such men, who before the thirty-fifth year go through death in this way in one incarnation, thereby economise for the next incarnation certain forces, which would have been exhausted if they had lived till fifty, sixty or seventy years of age. The forces which they thus saved are added to those with which they incarnate in the next life. Thereby such souls are born into bodies through which they are in a position, especially in their youth, to confront life with strong impressions. In other words: when such souls, who in their last incarnation died before the thirty-fifth year, reincarnate again, everything makes a strong impression on them. They are deeply stirred by things, they enjoy things deeply, they have living feelings and are easily urged to impulses of will. They are those who take a strong position in life, and who receive a mission. A man does not die without cause before his thirty-fifth year; he will thereby receive a quite definite mission in his next life. These things are complex, and death before the age of thirty-five may also bring about other things—it is not absolute law, for these are only examples. But when a man dies after thirty-five it happens that in his next life he does not receive such strong impressions from the things in his surroundings. He cannot easily be stirred or roused. He becomes acquainted more slowly but more intimately with things, and he thus prepares himself for a life in his next incarnation in which he will work more through his inner nature, without being so definitely guided to a special task in life. He will so stand in life, that he would perhaps have preferred some other task, and is diverted from it in order to accomplish something perhaps absolutely against his will. Because through the previous earth incarnation he had accustomed himself to work more delicately, he can now be used in a wider sphere. And if a man—I have already mentioned this case earlier—if a man is led in very early youth through the gate of death, let us say in his eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth year of life, he then has but a short time in Kamaloka. But he remains very, very near the world which he forsook at physical birth. Everything appears different. After a life ending with the twelfth year, there follows the usual retrospect during the first days after death, but it takes place in such a manner that it appears more from outside. Whereas if a man dies at the age of fifty, sixty or seventy, he himself must do much more to bring about this retrospect. It must be brought about by his own activity. And because they have to experience this life after death in so many various ways, men are thereby differently prepared for their next life. It may be that in one life a man is especially active. Now, if an especially active man is summoned from life at an early age, it would then occur that in his next life his Karma would appoint him to a quite definite task in life, which he would certainly accomplish. He would be as if predestined. If, however, a man is especially active in one life and lives to a good old age, these forces are then intensified inwardly. He has then in his next life a more complicated task. Outer activity withdraws, and there appears in the soul the necessity to evolve inner activity.

Thus the life of man is complex as it develops from incarnation to incarnation. We shall continue these considerations in the next lecture. Now, I should like to conclude by saying one thing: When you face a whole epoch such as ours, in which in a relatively short time an exceptional number of men are led in abnormal fashion through the gates of death, then through this something quite exceptional is being prepared. And it was necessary that this should be prepared. You see each year how the time of blossoming comes to the world in intervals. If you look back in history you can also say that even there the blossoms appear at intervals. A great time of blossoming was the epoch of Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Fichte, Goethe. It is as if there was then a gathering of geniuses for a time, and it then ceased. And thus the world progresses in leaps. Such intervals of genius are recorded, and then these things change again. In the spiritual realms too, we have a blossoming, a special sprouting, at intervals. Now, in our days we have an interval of decay in the physical realm. Here you have again two things which you can place as pictures, side by side, and which as pictures are tremendously significant. Great physical decay—which is the seed for a later significant spiritual blossoming. Things have always two sides. From this standpoint, ever seeking again and again force and consolation—but also gaining confidence in our hopes—let us once more repeat in reference to our times, and from the consciousness of our spiritual science:

From the fighters' courage,
From the blood of battles,
From the mourners' suffering,
From the people's sacrifice,
There will ripen fruits of Spirit
If with consciousness the soul
Turns her thought to Spirit Realms.

Those days in which we have been able to meet together we have devoted to throwing light from one point of view or another on the connection between the life of man here on the physical plane and the life he leads between death and rebirth, as well as on the connection between the individual successive earth-lives through which man passes. We have seen that when the attempt is made to go deeper into these relations the investigation becomes very complicated; but, in reality, only then does it become fruitful for us, for it can then give many conclusions concerning the details of the riddles and questions of Life. We wish to go further into these considerations; in order to do this, we must to-day begin by penetrating a little into the structure of man, with which we are already acquainted, but which we must go over once again with reference to certain qualities necessary for the following considerations.

Now you will have seen from the various cycles, lectures and books, that we live here on earth as human beings in a quite definite epoch of the earth's evolution; and from the whole spirit of our consideration we have been able to gather that there is an inner purpose, a certain inner significance in the fact that we carry our souls through all these different epochs of the earth's evolution. From the descriptions which have been given, you will already have seen that not merely the external life, but the whole life of man here on earth is naturally different in the various epochs. We shall for the present only consider the life of the soul. The life of the soul was different—if we consider only the Post-Atlantean epochs—in the old Indian, old Persian, Egypto-Chaldean or the Greco-Latin age, and it is again different in our time. We carried our souls through all these epochs. In all of these epochs our souls sought bodies (most of us more than once in the same epoch) which gave them the possibility of taking up the world in the way best adapted to the forces of that particular epoch. If you remember what has been said about the peculiarities of the soul-life in the various epochs, you will be able to acquire a still more accurate insight. For example: when we regard the life of the first Post-Atlantean epoch, we find that the human soul during its life on earth was then chiefly occupied in working out the interaction of its own being with the etheric body; thus, as it were, experiencing in the right manner that which can be experienced here in the earth-life by a soul interacting chiefly with the etheric body. Then in the second Post-Atlantean period the soul went through everything which can be experienced through the interchange with the astral body. In the third Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation the soul lived through everything that can be experienced through interaction with the sentient soul; in the fourth epoch of civilisation it experienced the interaction with the rational or intellectual soul, and we in our time go through everything which can be experienced by means of the interaction with the conscious or spiritual soul. The soul, according to its experience while working in the different epochs on the various principles of human nature, makes a greater or less individual progress in the general development of the world. Man has completely different experiences during these different epochs; as regards the relation of his soul to the entire Cosmos, he changes absolutely. We must already have some idea of this, from what has previously been said. Thus we, in our epoch, are living in the conscious or spiritual soul, and the whole civilisation of our fifth epoch is devoted to teaching the whole human soul, the entire human Ego, to form such connections with the world as are possible with a self-conscious soul. In our epoch we gain our experience through adapting our forces to the conscious or spiritual soul.

Now, it is possible to look at the whole matter from another point of view. By what means does it come about in the general cosmic relations that one lives in the conscious or spirit-soul? As man, one naturally lives, not only in the spiritual soul, but also in the other principles of the human nature. In a narrower sense, in our age we build chiefly those capacities which humanity is at present acquiring—by our life in the spiritual soul—for through the medium of that principle we live in our Ego, in the physical life between birth and death. The Greek in the fourth Post-Atlantean period was not so entirely dependent on his physical body as we are. The Greek lived still more of an inner life in his body. This caused him to work in the rational or intellectual or mind-soul, (*Mind-soul in the old English sense: ‘I have a mind to do this.’) and he was thus in a position to fill out his physical body in quite a different manner than is possible to us. Each movement of the hand, for instance, produced a much stronger inner feeling in the Greek than in the body of to-day. External science cannot enter into these things, but they exist nevertheless. When he bent his arm the Greek felt the swelling of each single muscle, he felt the angle it formed. That is why the Greek as a sculptor was in a position to create quite differently. The present-day sculptor works from a model. He beholds the model and works accordingly. Not so the Greek. He had an inner feeling of the form of the arm, of the physiognomy, etc., and this to him was inner experience. But man when he lives in the consciousness soul is now torn out of that which can be experienced in the physical body. He has, as it were, penetrated more deeply into his physical body, he has become more closely united with it than the Greek could be, but he has, through this, become insensible to all that the physical body gives. He makes use of the organs of the physical body in a higher sense than did the Greek. The Greek could not see certain shades of colour, as we see them to-day, because he was not so much within the physical body as we are to-day. If you re-read Homer you will be able to notice that he mentions few colours. Everything is changed in like manner. Man allies himself more closely with his physical body, but he does not experience so much his own inner being in this physical body. Rather must one say that instead of perceiving his inner being in the physical body, he contacts the external world more. In short, there is a struggle for the capacities of the physical body, whereas in Greece there was rather a struggle for form. Thus we can say: we build up the consciousness soul because with our Ego we bring about a certain inner relation with our physical body, because we work our way so deeply into the physical body. In this way the time has come in which we no longer know very much of spiritual processes and things; the time of materialism, because man has urged himself so deeply into his physical body.

Now, within the physical body there naturally lies the etheric body. The Greek still knew much more of his etheric body. He dimly perceived, even though only as a reminiscence, that the etheric body always echoes the movements of the physical body. He still felt that it is not merely the physical hand which moves, but that the etheric hand moves with it, and lies at the basis of the physical movement. All this is now forgotten, but man, while he lived in the Greek age, so experienced it all that he felt himself much more intensely in this etheric body than he does now, and that knowledge is not utterly lost. As soul-beings, we have all gone through it, and it remains in our etheric body. It all remains there as preserved thoughts, and when we leave the world in which we dwell between death and rebirth, we leave behind, as if forgotten, everything which we were previously very well able to dominate in our etheric body. We now thrust ourselves so deeply into our physical body that we leave behind all we acquired in the Grecian epoch. From this you see that man's etheric body really contains much more than he now realises. At present he evolves his consciousness chiefly within his physical body, and in so doing he covers up what is in his etheric body. If he only possessed all the knowledge of the inner human organisation which is concealed in his etheric body, he could know infinitely more than he does now. For this etheric body has acquired a certain perfection, greater than man is at present aware of. In regard to it especially, much is driven back because it cannot be brought to consciousness in a suitable manner. Man knows very little of his etheric body.

Among other things in the etheric body—the astral body, as you know, is also at work there. Everything which the etheric body accomplishes must naturally be thought of as permeated by the astral body. If we could suddenly bring to the surface all that the etheric body contains we should be infinitely cleverer than we are at the present epoch, in which we have to struggle on with nothing but the physical body. For this etheric body contains much (naturally the astral body also shares in this), it contains infinite treasures of wisdom. These lie in the depths of our soul, within the etheric body. There we find a host of dexterities, a mass of information. For instance, in reference to Geometry. I have once before mentioned how much we all unconsciously know of Geometry. This is actually a fact. For when we learn Geometry we do not learn it from outside things, it is reached by bringing that which is in the etheric body to consciousness. If we draw external figures, they merely serve as an inducement. If I draw a triangle, of which I know that the angles = 180^o, I have the knowledge of this through the etheric body. We only draw figures in consequence of human laziness. In reality we know everything that can be learnt of Geometry. We know it unconsciously, it rests below in the depths of the unconscious soul-life. We have no idea how clever we are in the subconscious depths of the soul. Could we but know it! The evil in human evolution does not lie in man having little wisdom within him, but in his powerlessness to extract that wisdom out of his own soul. All educational development consists in bringing out the concealed wisdom lying in the depths of the soul. Now, if we were not obliged to bring up these things in this difficult way, we could not properly advance our evolution. Just think! If we were not to acquire such a relation to our physical body as we now have, we should really be born as terribly clever children, and it would not take much to bring out at a relatively early age that which lies within the etheric body. But man would then take far too little trouble to acquire wisdom, and it would thereby be too little his own, he would be too much a mere copy of wisdom. A personal assimilation arises through our having such a relation to the physical body as is ordained for this fifth epoch of culture. This personal assimilation causes knowledge to become our very own possession. When we delve for it in this fashion, our knowledge is then our own: we have it for ourselves. This holds good with reference to the etheric body.

With reference to the astral body something quite different holds good, and that is as follows: If we were able to draw forth everything lying in the astral body, everything which the astral body knows, in all its details, that would be of no advantage for our present life. For we should then really live amongst our fellow-men as automatons. Indeed, our astral body knows, though our consciousness does not, the relation in which, as astral body, it stands to all the individual persons it contacts in life. Our astral body has such a consciousness. So that if we could make use of everything the astral body knows, we should be absolutely aware for instance, that with this or that person we shall have trouble; and this person or the other will be a kind friend. Such knowledge would naturally change life utterly, but for our present earthly relations, not in a good sense. Now, I could relate still more concerning what the astral body knows (and unconsciously it does already use its knowledge), but it is a knowledge that really is very little noticed in the connections of human life. Suppose a man perishes through an accident. In ordinary human life it appears to us as if the accident had overtaken the man, for according to our present consciousness, man does not seek an accident. But if we investigate the astral body, we shall find no single accident which man, in so far as he is in the astral body, has not sought. That which is necessary for ordinary consciousness, is sought by the astral body out of a free inner choice. It is thus willed, actually willed by the astral body. Even if a man is run over by a railway train, that is brought about by the astral body, with regard to the whole connections of his life. It is not something which merely happens by accident. Thus we not only have our connection with our fellow-men as wisdom in our astral body, but in reality our connection also with the entire outer life, with that which runs its course as natural events, or other social happenings in which we are implicated. It is good that all this is purposely hidden from us, otherwise we should learn nothing for our further evolution: but there exists in the astral body a true thought, I mean a kind of knowledge of everything, which shows our connection with the events and human elements in which we are involved. Man takes little heed of this in ordinary life. For when anything happens to us, we say, ‘This has just occurred,’ and, as a rule, that is the only thing observed. We do not really consider what would have happened if that particular event had not occurred. I will bring forward a striking instance. At a particular time in his life a man is wounded. In ordinary life one merely thinks: Yes, he has been wounded, and that ends the matter. What would have happened if he had not been wounded? To this, one pays no attention, but through a wound the whole life may be altered, everything that follows may be different. Now, the astral body beholds the entire connection, before the wounding of the man. One may say the astral body is clairvoyant.

And the true Ego, which rests still deeper in the subconsciousness, and which dwells in the inner depths of our being, is much more clairvoyant still. As you already know, we built up our physical body on old Saturn, our etheric body on the Sun, and our astral body on the old Moon. Our Ego is the baby among the human principles, it is the youngest. Not till the Vulcan period, after the Jupiter and Venus evolutions are completed, will the Ego be formed, as the physical body is fashioned now—but this Ego rests the whole time in the bosom of the spiritual world. Then, during the Vulcan epoch, an inconceivable knowledge of the connections of life will stream out of the Ego. But this knowledge is already now within us and the evolution on Jupiter and Venus will consist in drawing out the capacity for using it.

Thus, while we regard these depths of the soul's life, we see in a wonderful manner our connection with the spiritual world. We men in ordinary human life are only given what we are able to receive, because the Ego is reflected in the physical body: but behind this rests a widely extended earthly knowledge, which is in the etheric body. Behind this again rests a clairvoyant knowledge which is already in the astral body, and a still more clairvoyant knowledge which is in the true Ego. It is good to place these things before the mind, before going on to what I now have to say. Let us consider the case which at the present time is speaking so deeply to the soul in such manifold ways, of a man who in early youth is led through the gates of death from the battle-field. It then happens that the more deeply-lying principles of human nature (etheric body, astral body, and Ego), are torn out of their connection with the physical body, in quite a different way from what occurs when one becomes old and slowly dies in bed. A quicker separation from the physical body often takes place—I have already spoken of the prophetic nature of the etheric body. We have said that even in dreams if we were able in a sense to interpret the pictures we see, we should know that in our etheric body, through the dream which arises because the astral body turns to the etheric body, which then receives as a reflection what the astral body is experiencing—that in these pictures there is something which indicates our future life, something of a prophetic nature.

Now for the spiritual investigator who has to investigate those things, an important question arises out of such considerations. He has first to place this question before himself. And the posing of the question is then a kind of introduction to the answer which must then arise from the clairvoyant observation. For example; one must say: Here on earth, according to the normal course of life Man is destined to reach old age and to use up his life slowly. To this end his etheric body, astral body, and Ego are adjusted. This would occur, if the course of life were normal: but now, through a shell that suddenly strikes a man, the whole connection is disturbed. Through this, a certain faculty of the etheric body (I will for the present limit our consideration to the individual man), that force which would have been able to work as if prophetically through the entire life, which would have been able to lead him through many other relations in life—that force is torn out of life; it is separated from the physical plane. Just suppose that the shell had not struck the man. (We can put this hypothesis and not consider the fact that all this is of course karmic). Well, he would then have gradually used up that force in his etheric body, perhaps during many years. That force is nevertheless in the inner part of his soul. It does not cease to exist, and it may be perceived when the man, who has been killed by a shell, gazes on his life-tableau, looks back in the etheric body. I have already indicated that this life-picture has a quite special characteristic. It has the characteristic of seeming to come from the outer world, rather than of having to be produced from within.

In short, that energy, that force, which is then cut off, remains in the man. Observation reveals the fact that the force is there and transforms the entire life following after death. It is just the same with the force in the astral body. This, too, would have been used during the whole life. This also is still there. In short, a man goes in quite a different way through the gates of death, if he is violently torn out of physical life. If he has perhaps been struck by a shell, and loses his life in that manner, it is not the same as if he dies slowly in his bed. Now for the spiritual investigator there arises a great question: What is the actual significance of this? What does it mean for his epoch when a man, as in the case quoted, really brings something quite different into the spiritual world from what he would have brought if he had lived his life out? For such an epoch as the one in which we live, this question is of infinite importance, for much of what has just been described is being carried up into the spiritual world. What does this signify for the spiritual world? This is a tremendously significant question! When one studies a little the relation of the spiritual world to the physical world (as one can in the Vienna cycle: ‘Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth’), something becomes important which for a long time has not been believed, but which reveals itself clearly to spiritual investigation. It is the following. In reality all our conceptions and ideas change on entering the spiritual world; not only on entering the spiritual world through initiation, but also on entering it through the gates of death. You see, here on earth, man really evolves more and more in a definite direction. One might call it that of the so-called ‘concept of being.’ And to-day people are already greatly taken with this idea of ‘the concept of being.’ What do I really mean by this? Nowadays hardly anything is regarded as of value unless it is conceived as actually existing. When anyone comes who does not speak of something palpable, he is considered a dreamer. Men go about speaking of ‘reality,’ and compared to this, mere thought is nothing. Countless men do not value thought to-day because they cannot lay hold of it. ‘Existence’ means the forcible realisation of that which is perceived; one has nothing to do with bringing about the existence of a thing, its existence is obvious. And anything which cannot in this way be proved to exist, is held by man in ever decreasing regard.

In the evolution of the spiritual world the reverse is the case. There, that which exists and makes an impression, such as a physical object, is for the man in the spiritual world something inimical, something disturbing, something of which he knows that it pertains to the ‘nothingness,’ and that it is destined to disappear into nothing. And if one enters without further ado into a spiritual region in which there are perhaps rather undeveloped souls (souls who to the spiritual world are just as simple as many souls appear to be in the earthly world), then one finds the opposite opinion prevailing even there. Anything to which these dead souls attach value should not exist, as one speaks of existence here on the earth. Existence here, as such, is of no value to these souls. In the spiritual life it really is the case that one confronts pure spiritual beings. They affect one. But one must first acquire perception for them. It is thus: one stands in the spiritual world; behind one stand souls belonging to the spiritual hierarchies, Angels, Archangels, and so on. One knows they are there. But if a man is to perceive them, he must first arouse them into that which one here calls ‘existence.’ That which in the spiritual world works on one, must be brought into an ‘Imagination.’ That which is ‘non-awakened being,’ to which man does nothing, which simply exists of itself, that is of no value in the spiritual world. Here man stands on the earth, and is surrounded by nature. But the spiritual world demands that man should raise himself up to it, for it is not there without further ado. To have nature around one requires no special trouble. It exists, as it were, of itself. Therefore the materialistic love to have nature around them. But in the spiritual world nature is no longer there. For man, there only exists in the spiritual world that which he himself continuously works at. There he has to be continually active. That which is there, is the other world, that world which man has forsaken, to which he continually looks back, as though to a world of existence. The world, which carries the transitory within itself, continually battles with the non-existent. If for one moment the world so beloved by the materialists were to disappear, if men were to know nothing of their bodies, but first had to create the ‘imagination’ of them, if they were to know nothing of the table until they had created it for themselves in thought, but could instead see the spiritual world—then they would have in this life here below what they have there in the spiritual world. Those in the spiritual world can only bring it to perception by their own activity. The ‘other world’—our own world here below—is always present. Whereas here the heaven is hidden and only the world which is round us is always present, there the surrounding world is hidden unless we ourselves bring it into vision by our own efforts. For one who can have immediate cognisance of it, it is easy there to believe in the ‘world beyond,’ which is our present one. But consider from the standpoint of the spiritual that which makes this world of ours, I might almost say, disagreeable, is its permeation with existence. It is a disturbing fact that it is permeated with existence—that really is disturbing. Many say: ‘A spiritual world indeed!—I would willingly believe in one if I could only see it! If I could see it while here!’ We may compare that remark with what the souls in the spiritual world say: ‘We might endure that physical world continually existing down there if only it was not permanently present. If only it were not so permeated with being. We cannot look down on to the earth without seeing in every part of it this terrible existence.’

And if here someone is a practical materialist and does not believe in idealism, then he loves existence only. But in order that this conviction of the merely obvious existence may not spread, there continually arise from time to time the Idealists, who lead humanity to believe in ideals and their efficacy, in the power of Idealism in the progress of history. These ideals of the ethical, the beautiful, the religious, are carried into the world. Certainly the absolute materialists will have nothing to do with them; at most they dispose of them in a few words. But just that which in the material sense does not seem to exist, is carried into the physical plane as the most precious thing in life. And if the evolution of humanity on the earth be considered from a higher human point of view, then one may say: Certainly nature is there, great and significant. But what would this whole human life be if existing nature alone were there, be it ever so beautiful: if man were not capable of having ideals, if he could not be spurred forward, not by that which does not exist, but by that which ought to exist, the ethical, religious, artistic, and educational life. It is the non-existing, we might say, that presses in on us from a spiritual world, as the ideals of humanity, that which does not exist but that ought to exist, that alone makes life valuable. Everyone who is not utterly submerged in the swamp of materialism feels this very strongly. And so those who in the course of history are in a special sense the bringers of ideals appear as those who alone give value to the life of existence, out of that which ought to exist. And now to the spiritual investigator the following appears. From the spiritual world one looks back in like manner at the earthly life, but in such a way that, as a higher soul, one longs that everything on the earth should not merely exist; but that among the things on the earth there should be something which is not earthly, in the strictest sense of the words. Something else must be mingled with the earth-existence, which in the earth-sense has no existence. This appears as something infinitely significant, when the spiritual investigator perceives it in connection with those people who were destined for a long life, and were forcibly cut off. So that there is a portion of their life which from the spiritual standpoint was really destined for existence, and which has not lived it out. Let us take the case of a man who has lived in the world only to his twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year instead of to his seventieth or eightieth, for which he had the necessary life forces. Then, let us say, he is struck by a shell. The principles of his human nature are suddenly sundered from one another. The etheric body, astral body and Ego would still have been able for a long time to develop the faculty of maintaining the physical body. That which would have been able to continue but for the shot, was intended for the earth existence. It has not passed into existence. From the spiritual this appears so that one can say, ‘Down there is something which does not merely exist.’ Something else is mingled with the earth existence, something that was destined for existence, but which has not lived through it. It is existence, but merely in germ. Yet in a sense it is something that ought to exist. Therefore those whose life is thus ended at an early stage through an external happening, are to the spiritual world, when they go through the gates of death, in a similar yet not the same sense, spiritual messengers, as are the Idealists who come here on the earth, to mix with the existing that which ought to exist. Those who go early through the gates of death, ascend in order to announce to the heavens that on the earth there is not only mere existence, but also that which ought to exist.

An infinitely deep and significant discovery can be made on coming to this chapter of spiritual investigation, when one learns to know these idealists impelled to the heavens, who become what they are, by going through the gates of death in the manner indicated here. And in the present time it is very fitting that we really unite such a thought with our souls.

On entering the domain of spiritual life it is necessary that besides those who, as it were, accomplish their task in the spiritual life, there should be also those who point to the earth, who have really woven something into the earth evolution, but have taken it out earlier than should have been done according to plan. Thus we may say that those who go early through the gates of death become in many respects for the human souls in the spiritual world just those who make it possible to believe in the heights of earth-life. They make it possible for those yonder to believe that earth-life really contains something spiritual which is of value; for these souls adopt a similar position there to the idealists here on earth.

We must always bear in mind that we should not imagine men living on in the spiritual world as they last were, when here. The trivial ideas that people hold, as, for instance, that those who die as children continue to live on as children, are naturally incorrect. The imagination may picture the dead as we last saw them here, but that is not their true form; it is rather the expression of it. A child may die, but the human entity incarnated in the child may be a highly evolved soul, and continue its life after death as a highly evolved soul. I have often mentioned this. Thus we see something is carried up into the spiritual world which, being bound up with earth existence and nevertheless not consumed by it, should, in a sense not ‘be’ there. That works in the evolution which the human soul passes through between death and rebirth. Those men who have thus gone through death so pass through the intervening stage, between death and rebirth, that they there represent the humanity of the earth in a much richer and more comprehensive sense than one can do who has gone through a normal earth life. That has nothing to do with what is laid down for man through Karma. If one lives to be old, that is Karma. If one dies young, that is Karma. But just as on earth a man cannot make himself arbitrarily into this or that individuality which his consciousness on this side of the veil might select, neither can he determine from the earth-consciousness how the life between death and rebirth is to be fashioned. If one is taken forcibly from physical existence into the spiritual world, he then has a much more intense imaginative vision of everything human than one who enters the spiritual world in a different fashion. We say that those who pass thus through the gates of death, stand especially near, during their life between death and rebirth, to that which happens on the earth, as far as humanity is concerned. That can be seen by investigating the lives of persons who have accomplished something of a very special importance at a particular time of their life, something which could perhaps only be done by them. Suppose a man accomplishes something of great importance in a certain direction, at a definite epoch of his life, for example, in his forty-ninth year. (Naturally this can only be investigated occultly). If one traces this back, one finds that in an earlier incarnation, and perhaps just in his forty-ninth year, this man died a more or less violent death. He acquires this strong tendency towards the ideal evolution of the earth by having carried up ‘that which should exist’ into the spiritual world. Thereby he incorporated into his whole physical being the strong force wherewith to accomplish something definite in a definite year. We can again see from this, as I pointed out in the last lecture, that men who have to effect many things, especially through their will, and who thus live more for universal humanity, have carried up in some form, from some earlier incarnation, such life ‘which ought to exist.’

It is indeed specially difficult, while one only wishes to conceive of life in the spiritual as a somewhat more refined earthly life, to reconcile oneself to acquiring the following idea of the spiritual: Here on earth, physical life is always known of itself; while over there is the life which is unknown; and that in the spiritual, things are reversed. People do not take the trouble to understand that actually, unless one does something oneself, everything is dark and gloomy in the spiritual life; that one must first bring everything to light. Everything which is visible is on this side (the physical), but seen from that side. Also the most significant thing that is intermingled there consists in ‘something that should exist.’ This is a conception which one has to acquire if one wants to perceive aright the connection of physical life with the spiritual life.

In our time it is really a good plan to acquaint ourselves with such conceptions for, as I have said, suffering souls so frequently ask themselves to-day: Why must so many men be called into the spiritual world in the flower of their age? Why cannot they complete their life here? And wonderful as it sounds (though, as I have said, the spiritual truths may sometimes seem cruel) it is nevertheless true, that there must be carried into the spiritual world the possibility of so looking at the earth that this earth itself can be permeated by the spirit. If all men reached old age normally, if there were no martyrs, no men able to sacrifice themselves in youth, then would the earth, regarded from above, lapse into worthless existence. That which is here mingled with the earth as Ideal, is at the same time that which continually brings from out of the past something better for the future. That is connected with what is here sacrificed. Suppose a man at the age of twenty-six sacrifices his whole future life, which he otherwise would have employed in his external work, and would have devoted it to the progress of humanity. This lives further. In the forces of progress there live the lives that men have sacrificed, the lives which they would have been able to live here. The evolution of the earth needs this sacrifice of life. We can thus see how that which is otherwise merely an abstract idea in our materialistic age, becomes extremely concrete. In yet another sense than I developed it here in July, we can say, ‘Not only do these etheric bodies work in the entire connection of human progress, but the work of those who have gone early through death also lives on.’

The work of these individualities is such that we can ask: Who then are those who principally labour for the good of humanity in general, and who set themselves universal tasks in later incarnations? They are those who in earlier incarnations, have in some way or other died a death of sacrifice. The devotional natures, those given up to the spiritual here on the earth, owe this to their life of martyrdom in a previous incarnation. The earth could not progress unless people sacrificed themselves.

When we think of this, we can look away from the present into the future. Such an immense number are now being sacrificed and are sacrificing themselves. Painful as this is considered from many a personal standpoint, yet if we look at it from the standpoint of the wisdom of the Cosmos we may console ourselves. For in proportion to what is now sacrificed will the forces of progress be given to the future. Humanity requires such forces of progress. This is not considered deeply enough today, but it will be, when a sufficient number not of centuries but of decades, have come and gone in the present materialistic evolution. The consequence of materialism will follow with incredible rapidity. The zenith of materialism was really attained in the Nineteenth Century, and man would be swamped by it unless something occurred to arrest it. This conversion should be brought about by Spiritual Science. And this can only be done by strong forces, working for the ideal to be really worked into earth life. Many who are now called away will help to prevent the earth from falling a prey to materialism and being dominated by it.

Just read the course of lectures on the Apocalypse, in which this is indicated in broad outlines. You can then form some idea how great is the fruit of the sacrificial deaths that will be required by the earth in the future, to redeem it as far as possible from sinking into materialism, and the strife, hate and enmity, connected with it; so that it can pursue its further course in the Cosmos. Such a time as ours demands, more than other epochs that we should think, not only on what is taking place, but on the fruits of these happenings. And we can only recognise these fruits if we bear in mind the two sides of Cosmic existence, which shows us that we really experience two completely different poles of life: one here between birth and death and the other there between death and rebirth. Here, we are, in a certain sense, passive in our innermost being, and if we wish to raise ourselves to the perception of the spiritual world, we have to work so hard that many find it impossible. There, it is necessary to be active in order to have with us our vision of the immediately present spiritual world in which we find ourselves; on the other hand we always have, as a reminder, the existing world beneath. Here in this earthly world, the Idealists bear ‘that which should exist,’ which makes existence of value. Into that world to which men pass through the gates of death, which those enter whose life has run its regular earth course, come those who die more or less early as martyrs. And there they are: the witnesses, that below on earth, not merely the material exists, not merely that which is given over to the nothingness, to the transitory, and decaying—but that on this earth is also intermingled that which is retained by those who did not complete their life, whose life was indeed forcibly taken from them.

We must take such things not only intellectually but unite them deeply with our feeling, then may things become comprehensible. Certainly our present epoch contains many riddles, but some of them can be solved if we connect the present suffering with the great wisdom of the Cosmos. And this again is a chapter which if we apply what has now been said to our own times, may be embodied in the great truth:

From the fighters' courage,
From the blood of battles,
From the mourners' suffering,
From the people's sacrifice,
There will ripen fruits of Spirit
If with consciousness the soul
Turns her thought to Spirit Realms.

(Representation of a scene from Faust, Part II, Act II High-vaulted, narrow Gothic Room—Laboratory.)

It is to be hoped that the scenes just witnessed may have effect and meet with a really intelligent reception in the widest circles today. For these scenes contain many germs of the evolution within which also flows the stream of Spiritual Science. We can say that, in writing these scenes out of his long and varied experience, Goethe foreshadowed much that like a seed will spring up through Spiritual Science. These scenes from the second part of “Faust” stand before our souls not only as a record of cultural history, but also as an expression of deep knowledge. To help us to a full understanding in our approach to this deepest manifestation of Goethe's spirit we may now call to our aid the already familiar ideas of Spiritual Science. For, in these ideas, all that Goethe's inner imagination develop out of the experiences of his time is formulated and brought to full consciousness.

In the first of these two scenes, above all, we have an important document of cultural history. Goethe had been matured by all that he had absorbed from natural science, and by the deepening of all his concepts through his studies and mysticism as well as what he received from Grecian art. And, at the very time when he was giving form to the ideas thus living in him, the spirits of men were seeking with infinite enthusiasm for knowledge to grapple with the highest problems of existence. Something that should not, cannot, surprise people in our circle is the fact that a really intensive striving towards the spiritual world should actually promote caricatures of itself. Both mystical striving and the deeper striving after philosophical knowledge produce their caricatures. In Goethe's immediate circle a really important endeavor, that might be described as both philosophical and theosophical, was developing at the time when the scenes were living in unfolding in Goethe's mind. It was then that Johann Gottlieb Fichte was teaching with an immense enthusiasm for knowledge. From the brief account given in my book, and from what is said about Fichte both in the development of the “Riddles of Philosophy” and in the more recent “Riddles of Man,” you can see by all that is said there about him how he strove an elemental way to formulate the divine spiritual dwelling in man's innermost soul, in such a way that, by developing this in his soul, man may become conscious of his divine spiritual origin. Fichte tried to grasp the full life of the ego in the soul of man, the active, creative ego, and also the ego filled with God. By this means he sought to feel the union of the inner human life with the whole life of the cosmos. And out of this enthusiasm he spoke. It is very easy to understand how such a spiritual thrust should meet with opposition. Naturally Fichte could not then speak in the concrete way of Spiritual Science, the time was not yet ripe for this. We might say that he tried by abstract, all-round concepts, to give life to the feeling that can then be wakened to full life in man by the impressions of Spiritual Science. Hence his language has often much about it that is abstract; this is penetrated, however, by living feeling and experience. And for what Fichte had to say to be taken seriously at all, the strong impression was needed that a personality such as his could produce. He often expressed himself strangely and in paradox—to even greater degree than is necessary in Spiritual Science, for, to those unaccustomed to it, what is true often appears foolish. This is why such a great spirit as Fichte, who had at that time to express the truth in abstract form, was thought ridiculous.

On the other hand, those who had been strongly impressed by Fichte might easily have exaggerated things, as happens often in life. Then came caricatures of him, caricatures of others as well who, inspired by the same convictions were also teaching in Jena at the time. Among these was Schelling who, striving like Fichte, actually fought his way—as I have often stressed—to a very deep conception of Christianity, even to a very deep conception of the Mystery of Golgotha. This conception gradually developed into a kind of Theosophy then expressed—though without being understood by his contemporaries—in his “Philosophy of Manifestation.” It was embodied too in the treatise on human freedom and other subjects akin to it written round Jakob Boehme. It was already living in his discourse on Bruno, or on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things, and lived especially in his splendid treatise on the Mysteries of the Samothracian Divinities, where he gave a picture of what in his opinion had dwelt in those old Mysteries. Then there were such spirits as Friedrich Schlegel, who energetically applied to the different branches of human knowledge what to those more philosophically constituted natures sought to charm from the heart of the world order. Hegel had begun to formulate his philosophy. And all this had been going on around the Goethe. These men sought to penetrate beyond what is relative in the world, beyond all that controls mankind in day-to-day life, to the Absolute, to what is not merely the background of the relative. Thus, Fichte tried to penetrate beyond the ordinary, everyday ego to the absolute ego, anchored in the Godhead, and weaving its web in eternity. Thus Schelling and Hegel sought to press through to absolute Being.

All this was naturally taken at the time in various ways. Today, particularly, when Spiritual Science can penetrate our hearts, we are able to form a very clear idea of the frame of mind of men like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, when on talking about all that was so vividly before their spiritual eye people remained apathetic—apathetic and hostile. One can understand, too, how the youthful Fichte, meeting antiquated pedants in Jena, who each in their own way of thought they knew everything, might sometimes flare up. Fichte often flared up, not only when he was banished from Jena but also when he saw that, giving of his best, it found no entrance into any heart, any soul; for they all thought themselves wiser with their old traditional knowledge and ideas. So we can understand that when such a spirit as Fichte was faced with the pundits of Jena and had to deal with them, that he was driven to declare that everyone over thirty should be put to death!—It was a spiritual struggle of the first magnitude raging at that time in Jena, and everything going on there was vilified. Kotzebue, a poetaster who nevertheless had his public, wrote a very interesting and witty dramatic pamphlet—witty because it describes a type of young graduate educated at Jena, who when he goes home to his mother speaks in the empty phrases he learnt there. These are all given word-for-word in the pamphlet that is called “Hyperborean Ass or the New Education”. All this appears no doubt, very witty but it is really nothing more than a vulgar attack on a fine effort. We must not, of course, confuse it with what Goethe sought to denounce—the caricaturing of what is great—for we must be clear from the correspondence between Goethe and Fichte and between Goethe and Shelling, that Goethe was well able to appreciate the spirit striving after the Absolute. Although we did not find Goethe elaborating into a system any occult principles, yet we can say that he was a spiritual dwelling wholly within the aura of the occult, and knowing that what lives in the progress of good in world-evolution may incline on the one hand to the ahrimanic, on the other to the luciferic. He does not use these particular expressions but that is of no importance; he knew that actually the pendulum of world-evolution is always swinging between the ahrimanic and the luciferic. And Goethe wished to work everything out from its very depths, and everywhere to show how, fundamentally, even the striving after the highest may at the same time be dangerous. What is there that may not be so? It stands to reason that all that is best may be dangerous. And how dangerous the best may be when Ahriman and Lucifer take a hand in things, was precisely the problem Goethe had so vividly in mind.

Thus he had his Faust in mind—the Faust who strove after the deepest secrets of existence, who was to be the realisation of what stood ever before Goethe's soul, namely, the direct perception of the living and spiritual in all nature and in all history. Goethe himself was striving to find again the spiritual secrets of the early Greek days. He wanted to unite himself with all that was alive and creative in a past epoch—in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This is what he wanted to put into form in the striving of his Faust after what was still living in Helen. Goethe sought the paths by which he could lead Faust to Helen. But he was quite conscious of the danger here. However justifiable, however high-minded, the striving might be, because it could so easily lead into luciferic channels it meant danger.

Thus Goethe first showed us Faust being drawn into the luciferic channel, paralyzed by the sudden appearance of Helen, paralyzed by association with the spiritual. Faust has called up Helen from the ‘realm of the Mothers’, at first having her before him only as a spiritual force. He is paralyzed by what he experiences spiritually. Inwardly he is filled with what he has absorbed. He lives in a living, spiritual element of ancient Greece but through it becomes paralyzed.

And in this condition we find him when Mephistopheles has brought him back to his cell, to his laboratory, paralyzed by his contact with the spiritual element of the past:

“Whom Helen paralyzes, use
Not likely to regain their reason.”

as Mephistopheles says. We see, too, how a certain rift has arisen between Faust, who has been drawn into the luciferic channel, and Mephistopheles. Whether the experience is altogether conscious or not, Faust with his soul, through luciferic impulse, has entered a different spiritual channel from that of Mephistopheles. They are now separated as if by the limits of their consciousness.

Faust is dreaming—as ordinary language would have it. He knows nothing of his old world in which he is presently living. But Mephistopheles is in it, through him everything ahrimanic also comes to life. Thus, in this sense we have essentially the two worlds clashing, and this is in accordance with truth. This collision is made clear to us, and it is remarkable how deeply Goethe, in his instinctive way, goes deeper than what is Spiritual Science. This collision is made clear to us through the unsuspecting Famulus now introduced, who imperturbably swings like a pendulum between the tremendous dangers surrounding him.

We may regard him as representing the type of man who is the victim of an unimaginative, unobservant nature, from which, often, he cannot escape. He sees nothing of what goes on around him. It is in the sense that we must understand all he says.

The whole milieu in which we now find ourselves is changed by Mephistopheles meeting with his former pupil who has now taken his degree. It looks as if he were right outside the picture I have just given you; however, he represents a caricature of it. He has been infused with all that the Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel philosophy was able to give, and by Schlegel's interpretation of it all; but he takes this in a very narrow, egoistic sense. We may ask why he does so? This is indeed a pertinent question. Why has the graduate become what we now see? Is it possible that in him Goethe was wishing perhaps to make fun of the Jena philosophy he so much appreciated? Most certainly not! But in his opinion the student who had received from Mephistopheles the precept Eritus sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum, would have been on this philosophical channel:

“Follow the ancient saw, follow the snake, my cousin,
God's image as thou art, thou'lt rue the way thou'st chosen.”

This impulse of the one-time student received from the Mephistopheles himself. Mephistopheles cannot complain if this old student gives him occasion to say: “How crude thou art, my friend, thou scarcely know'st” for he himself has planted all that in his soul, it is a seed of his sowing. This matured scholar has indeed taken the advice and followed Mephistopheles' cousin, the famous snake. And to begin with he has no qualms; they will come later. He is not made uneasy by the thought of his affinity with God, that he clearly refers to when announcing that he has created the world, it is he who has fashioned it.—This indeed has been accepted as the Kantian philosophy by many caricature-lovers, and even today it is still widely accepted.

Yes, my dear friends, we may indeed get to know people who take the philosophy of Kant even more egoistically than this scholar. We once knew a man who was so infected with this philosophy of Kant and Fichte that he did actually believe he had created the whole world. It had become an idée fixe with him that he had created it. I said to him at the time: Why, yes, certainly an an idea, as your idea, you have created the world, but there is something to be added to the idea. You created the idea of your own boots, but it was the shoemaker who made those boots of yours. You cannot say you made your own boots, though you may have created the idea of them.—Fundamentally, every genuine refutation, even Schopenhauer's philosophy of The World as Idea, is based on this problem of the shoemaker. Those things, however, are not always seen in the right light.

Thus the scholar meeting Mephistopheles in this way, is to some extent his victim. Philosophers have striven after the Absolute. In this man the striving after the Absolute has become a caricature. Mephistopheles has to caution him:

“Pray don't go home quite absolute.”

We see the connection with the spiritual culture of that time represented by Goethe in a very witty way. It is because the scenes are based on living reality that they are so vivid and so extraordinarily dramatic. Goethe strove again and again lead men beyond the ideas that savour rather of the tavern, ideas so often heard, such as: Ah, we should like to keep to what is good and to flee from Lucifer and Ahriman, have nothing to do with them.—It is because Goethe does not like these notions that he sometimes makes Mephistopheles quite sympathetic and kindly. For how pleasant it all is when the scholar, becoming altogether too absolute, the good Mephistopheles turns his chair round from this one scholar to the general public, to the younger pit-goers, looking there, as Goethe imagined it, for sympathy. And he makes Mephistopheles speak not merely like a devil but in a very apt way, because he knows how much of what belongs to Mephistopheles must be mixed with life for life to thrive at all, and how unwholesome are the ideas which, in the way we have shown, smell of the tavern. It is quite worth-while for once to reflect how Goethe himself did not remain cold with the coldness of the apathetic crowd. For this reason he makes his Mephistopheles expressed itself rather heatedly about the people who, as he observes, receive his wise maxims so indifferently. Goethe even then wanted to point out this coldness, though it was a long way from being as cold as the usual opinions and mood of soul today towards all that can penetrate to man from the spiritual life.

And now we see a genuine ahrimanic activity developing in the creation of Homunculus. It was not easy for Goethe to write a particular part of his Faust we have had before us here. Poets of a lesser degree can accomplish anything; circumstances permitting, such a poet would easily solve the problem of bringing Faust and Helen together. But Goethe was not a poet of that calibre; poetical creation was to him difficult and harassing. He had to find a way to bring Faust with all reality together with talent, with whom, as we have seen, he lived in another state of consciousness. He had to find some way, but was by no means clear how to find it. Faust had first to be taken down to the underworld, there to beg the help of Persephone in procuring him Helen in bodily form. But when Goethe wish to show Helen being fetched by Persephone, he felt that no ideas or concepts from the scene were forthcoming. For just think what was involved. Faust has got as far as reaching Helen imaginatively, in his soul's subconscious; he had, however, to reach her with those faculties natural to him in life. For that, Helen had to enter this sphere of consciousness. Therefore Goethe had to bring about, to a certain degree, Helen's embodiment. To this end he had recourse to what he knew from Paracelsus, whose works he had really studied, the treatise De Generatione Rerum being especially useful to him. There Paracelsus shows how homunculi may be produced by means of certain processes. It is easy, of course, for the modern man to say: Yes, but that was merely a mediaeval pre-possession of Paracelsus'. It is also easy for him to say: surely no one is asked to believe this phantasy of Paracelsus'.—True, as far as I'm concerned nobody need believe it. But it is well to consider that in this treatise De Generatione Rerum Paracelsus expressly assures us that by means of certain processes it is possible to produce something having indeed no body—mark that, please. Paracelsus expressly says that it has nobody, but faculties similar to those of the human soul, and rising to clairvoyance. Thus, Paracelsus was of the opinion that there were certain devices enabling men to produce a being that, without a physical body, develop a kind of understanding, a kind of intellectuality like human beings, and even something higher. It was of this that Goethe made use. Perhaps he thought to himself: Helen has entered the sphere of Faust's consciousness in a purely spiritual sense, but she must become more substantial.

This substantiality he brought about through the kind of being we have in Homunculus, who is as it were a bridge between the purely spiritual and the physical; for he himself has no physical body but a favorable moment originates from physical devices. So that we may say: The presence of Homunculus makes it possible to bring a quite spiritual Helen into the corporeal world where Faust has his home.

Now for all this Goethe naturally needed some kind of error, and this error is brought about in a roundabout way through Wagner. Through his materialistic mind Wagner is misled into the belief that Homunculus is entirely a material production. He could not have brought a real homunculus into being; for that, there would be required spiritual forces not at his disposal. These spiritual forces are supplied when Mephistopheles, the ahrimanic element, appears. For the ahrimanic impulse is given when something actually comes into being out of what Wagner has compounded. Had Wagner—either alone or perhaps with the help of the everywhere latent forces—succeeded in his experiment, it might have happened to him as it did to a man who wrote me some time ago saying that, at last, after endless effort, he had really brought little men to life in his room, but then could not get rid of them, he could not escape them. He wanted advice as to how he could save himself from these creatures, these living mechanisms, he had produced. They have since pursued him everywhere. One can well imagine what happens to the mind of such a man. There are, of course, still men today who have these adventures, just as there are still those who scoff at such things.

Through a coincidence, but only coincidence, at the time Goethe was writing the scene Johann Jakob Wagner, in Wurzburg, was maintaining that homunculi could be produced, and he gave the method for doing this. But it goes without saying that it is not true that Goethe took the name from him; for the name Wagner come from the old “Faust” then still in existence. This scene was first written down when Johann Jakob Wagner was still an infant.

It is due to Mephistopheles that, out of what Wagner has achieved, the Homunculus comes into being. But he does come into being, and is represented in the way Goethe had learnt from Paracelsus' instructions. And Homunculus does in fact immediately become clairvoyant, for he is able to see Faust's dream. he describes what Faust—more or less under the influence of Lucifer—is experiencing in another state of consciousness—how he has actually gained access to the Grecian world. In the description Homunculus we recognise the meeting of Zeus with Leda, the mother of Helen.

Thus we see how Goethe places a close juxtaposition the spiritual that lives in Faust, and Homunculus who knows how to grasp and interpret it. We see how Goethe works round to the ordinary physical world so that Helen can then enter it. And for all that is pictured later in the “Classical Walpurgis-night”, we see how Goethe tries to form the physical out of the eternal spiritual in Helen, with whom Faust has lived, while Homunculus traverses all the kingdoms of nature, and now taking to himself a physical body unites with Helen's spiritual element. By dint of Homunculus traversing the rounds of nature Helen becomes, externally on the physical plane, all that we find her in the third Act of the second Part of “Faust”. Thus Helen is born anew through Homunculus, through the metamorphosis is able to bring about in conjunction with all Faust is living through spiritually. This is what Goethe had in mind. This is why he introduces Homunculus and why he shows the relation between what Faust is, in a way, is dreaming, and what Homunculus sees.

With all this, Goethe comes very near true Occultism, that through Occultism of which I have often spoken, from which we are led away by abstract thinking and the desire to live in abstract concepts. I have often called attention to the way a certain one-sided cultivation of the principles of Christianity leads to the maturing of unreal, shadowy concepts as world-outlook, that are powerless to come to any understanding of real-life. And men stands to-day at the mercy of such concepts. On the one hand they have a purely mechanical knowledge of nature that, however, is no knowledge but merely a system out of which all life has been driven.

“Encheiresis naturae, Chemistry calls it,
Mocking itself, not knowing what befalls it.”

says Mephistopheles. This on the one hand that wants merely to copy down what happens outwardly, and on the other hand concepts drawn from any kind of spiritual source, either represented pantheistically or existing in some cloud-cuckoo-land of shadowy concepts, neither capable of entering right into life, nor of grasping its reality.

It is for this reason I have been pointing out how Spiritual Science is able to understand once again the real, actual, human being, for example, and to say: This human head is, from one point of view, only what the anatomist makes of it by describing it purely externally, but it is not merely what is outwardly the body for an abstract concept of a soul floating in cloud-cuckoo-land; this head must be understood as having undergone a transformation, a metamorphosis, from the body of a previous incarnation and is formed, as I have explained in recent lectures, out of the spheres of the entire cosmos. The essential thing for which concrete spiritual science must strive is to fit what is thus formed into the material world by means of concepts—concepts that do not float in the general and abstract. For what is most feared today by many bigotted Christian pastors, and people of that kind, with their unsubstantial abstractions of God and eternity, is precisely this living comprehension of the world, this concrete grasping of the material that is, indeed, at the same time a revelation of the spiritual. This diving into the real world with concepts is what man today will not have. And it is just this to which Goethe wants so vigorously to point. Hence he contrasts the spirit of Homunculus, the real, genuine spiritual that then lives on, though in a different way, in the consciousness of Faust, this way of beholding, he contrasts with the world as Mephistopheles would have it—a world derived from the association-forming tendency of the Christian middle-ages, in which is extinguished everything spiritual that approaches man's soul. Therefore Homunculus sees what is visible neither to Wagner not to Mephistopheles. Hence because Mephistopheles says:

“Marry, what moonshine dost thou not narrate!
Small as thou art, thou art a dreamer great.
Naught see I—”

Homunculus answers:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,
The waste of priesthood and of chivalry.
And how should there thine eye be free?
In murkiness thou art at home.”

Goethe is consciously striving for a concrete grasp of reality.

I have drawn attention to the fact that here, in the passage of course where Homunculus is speaking to Mephistopheles, by some mischance a line has been left out. For in all the editions we read:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,
The waste of priesthood and of chivalry.
And how should there thine eye be free?
In murkiness thou art at home.”

The rhyme to ‘home’ is missing.

“Dingy-brown stone-work, mouldered, horrid,
And Gothic-arched, ignoble, florid.”

Now there is no reason why the rhyme here should be missing; it must have happened therefore by some accident in the dictation that a line was missed that must perhaps have run like this:

“But what we make of this gloom?”

Thus Homunculus, having seen that Mephistopheles does not understand him, shows him clearly how by living in abstractions men have separated themselves from the concrete, spiritual world. This has arisen through the misty concepts that have been developed and have led to the narrowness in all the affairs of life in which Faust grew up, from which, however, he grew away. But the devil in Mephistopheles feels at home there. This is perhaps why Homunculus says:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,”

By the ‘misty ages’ he means the Middle Ages, but with a play upon the old German name Nivelheim. (The line in German runs Im Nebelalter jung geworden.) Jung geworden (grown young) is an old expression—and a very good one. Just as one grows old in the physical world, so one grows young when one is born into the spiritual world. Thus, in the old German expression, to ‘become young’ meant to ‘be born,’ and is clear evidence that in language there was an understanding of the spiritual.

And now he looks about him in the gloom and sees all that is there:

“Dingy-brown stone-work, mouldered, horrid,
And Gothic-arched, ignoble, florid.”

Then:

“Awakens he here, new cares we've got.”

for he must be brought into a life that is fully living if he has no wish for merely abstract concepts. Faust has no desire, for example, to have ancient Greece pictured according to the humanists or philologists; he wants to live, really live, within ancient Greece, by having Helen, as its representative, appearing bodily before him.

Thus throughout this scent we see Goethe's wonderful feeling for the concrete. We may say indeed that every word of the poetry Goethe wrote in his old age came out of a profound experience of the world. And that gives weight to these words, enormous weight, and gives them also immortality. For how fine in this respect are the words here spoken by Mephistopheles—words acquiring their special colouring from this fact:

“Alack! Away! Forbear of yonder squabble
'Twixt tyranny and slavery to babble!
It irks me. Scarce 'tis ended when de novo
With the whole farce they start again ab ovo,
Yet none doth mark he is but made a fool
By Asmodeus who the strings doth pull.”

(By the devil of discord, with whom Mephistopheles feels himself thoroughly akin.)

“They fight for freedom—so themselves they flatter.” We feel ourselves transported almost into the present, for now too we fight for freedom. But Goethe retorts:

“Slaves against slaves, if you but sift the matter.”

To sum up, my dear friends, we might say: If only the time might come when all the striving of such a poem, as we find it revealed in Goethe by this scene, might be continued on into what should arise through present-day Spiritual Science, if only what lies in such a story of endeavour might take more hold on men, might find a haven in their souls—then we might indeed go forward as real men.

But instead, since the days of Goethe, the abstraction of all endeavour has made infinitely greater progress. Here is the point where the striver after Spiritual Science—whether or not he rises to Goethe's level—should try to become clear as to the difference between concrete spiritual endeavor and the spiritual endeavor that is abstract. You see, the study of Spiritual Science gives us concepts by means of which we can really immerse ourselves in reality and learn to understand it. Materialism gives no real concepts only the shadows of them. So how can materialism understand the difference we have made clear between the human head and the rest of the body? Or how can it understand the following, for example. Let us take a concept that is infinitely important.

We know that man has his physical body, his etheric body, his astral body and his ego. The animal has its physical body, etheric body and astral body. Let us look at the animal. It is interesting to watch animals when, having eaten their fill in the meadow, they lie down to digest. It is very interesting to watch this—and why? Because the animal with its astral being has withdrawn entirely into the etheric body. What then is its soul doing while the animal is digesting? The soul is taking part with infinity satisfaction in what is happening to the body. It lies there and watches itself digesting and this gives the animal immense satisfaction. It is interesting to see a cow, for instance, digesting spiritually as she lies there, to see how all the processes involved when foodstuffs are received into the stomach and utilised in the other parts of the body are inwardly visible to her. The animal looks on at these processes with inner satisfaction, because of the intimate correspondence between her astral and ether bodies. The astral is living in what the etheric body reflects of the physico-chemical processes whereby the foodstuffs are introduced into the organism. It is a whole world that the cow sees! True, this world consists only of the cow and the processes taking place within her, but truly, though all that this astral body perceives in the etheric body of the cow consist sonly of the processes within her own horizon, within her sphere, everything is so magnified that it is as large in the consciousness of the cow as our human consciousness when it reaches to the firmament. I should have to draw the processes taking place between the stomach and the rest of the cow's organism as a large sphere growing and expanding to a vast area, since at this moment for the cow there is nothing beyond the cow-cosmos—and this is of a gigantic size.

This is no jest but a fact. And the cow has a feeling of exaltation when seeing her cosmos thus, seeing herself as cosmos. Here we have an insight into the concrete nature of animals. For, man having an ego, the astral body is torn by it from that intimate union with the etheric body existing, for example, in the cow. Astral body and etheric body are torn asunder. Hence, when man digests after a meal he is deprived of the capacity to survey the whole digestive process of the cosmos. He remains unconscious of it all. Against that, the ego by its activities so restricts the impulses of the etheric body that they are only grasped by the astral body in the region of the sense organs. So that what in the animal forms a whole with the astral body is in men concentrated in the sense organs. That is why the sense-process in man is as great as in certain moments the animal process is for the animal.

It is in a measure a defect in man that, when he begins his afternoon nap, he cannot as he dreams look on at his digestion, for he would then see a whole world. But the ego tears man's astral body away from that world, and only allows him to see as cosmos what is going on in his sense organs.

I wanted to refer to this merely as an example, for from it we see that concrete Spiritual Science mut enter into the very essence of things with concepts that are not shadowy but go deep into reality. All concepts of Spiritual Science should be such that they go deep into reality. It is a characteristic phenomenon, however, of the materialistic age that it despises concepts of this nature; it will have nothing to do with them. Where knowledge of nature is concerned this leads in reality to lack of any knowledge at all. In life it leads to a much greater lack. It makes it impossible for man to have any sense of concrete concepts, concepts full of content. Hence, materialistic education is at the same time an education in shadowy concepts, empty of content. The two things run absolutely parallel—not to be able to understand reality in a spiritual way, to lack upon everything as a mechanism; and to be incapableof forming any concepts that can really enter into the connections of the world or of humanity.

And it is from this point of view that the present time must be understood, for that is precisely where the difficulties today arise. There are now, certainly, people with idealistic natures, but they are the idealists of a materialistic age, and for that reason talk in shadowy, general concepts, unable to gras reality, or at best grasping it only indirectly through emotion, and these idealists blow their own trumpets in the world as loudly as possible. While on the other hand as regards knowledge of nature the capacity to understand her is lacking, on the other hand we have the inevitable parallel phenomenon—the holding forth of shadowy concepts. And when men talk so, they are indeed not talking of anything that is unreal in itself but of what is connected in the worst possible way with the painful events of the present time.

In Goethe's day things had not gone so far, but today we are confronted with a wide-spread lack of power to see any difference at all between a shadowy and a real concept. Wagner, as pictured by Goethe, lives entirely in shadowy concepts, and Homunculus even tries to prove to him that he does so. For instance, when Wagner has anxiously asked:

“And I pray
What becomes of me when you all go away?”

Homunculus answers:

“Oh
Thou'llt stay at home, most weighty work to do.
The ancient parchments thou'llt unroll, no doubt,
The elements of life by precept single out,
And each to other fit with foresight due. Ponder
The what, more to the how thy thoughts apply.
Whillst through a portion of the world I'll wander
Belike I'll find the dot upon the i.”

When I read this passage it always makes me realise anew how it is taken straight from life, particularly the life of the pundits. For I know of a medical examination in which a young student came up before a very learned man, a historian, and as such pre-eminently an authority on old documents, and a professor of Historical Science. It was chiefly under him that the young medical student had studied. Among the questions he asked was this: Now, tell me, Mr X, in which papal Bull was the dot over the i first used? The student knew that at once and answered: Innocent IV's. Now another historian, of a different kind, was present. He wanted to play the part of Mephistopheles a little, so he said: Look here, my dear colleague, as I am the other examiner let me now ask the candidate a question. Tell me, Mr. X, when did this Innocent IV ascend the Papal Chair? The student did not know. Then when did Innocent IV die? The student did not know. Well then, tell me anything else at all you know about Innocent IV beyond the fact that in his Bulls the i was first dotted. But the candidate again could give no answer. Then the Professor who had to do with ancient documents and parchments said: But Mr. X, you seem to be a complete blockhead today. Then the other, still wishing to play Mephistopheles, replied: But, my dear colleague, is not this your favourite pupil? What can have turned him into a blockhead?

So then, the good Wagner, being different from Homunculus, was able to discover the dot over the i in his parchment. But since that time, thought that is abstract and purely conceptual has become universal and historic. Thus it has become possible for us to see the spectacle playing a profound part in the whole world-history—that, in an important affair, there appears before the world a document living entirely in shadow concepts. Nothing more unreal and less in conformity with the actual can be imagined thatn the note recently sent by Woodrow Wilson to the Senate of the United States of America. Today when it is only of use to understand the realities of the world, weakness is found in high places. Something different is needed from shadowy concepts, concepts that are mere shadows.

And here we may well ask ourselves whether suffering is to continue endlessly because in high places men of a materialistic civilisation flee reality, and can only grasp shadows instead of concepts? I know, my dear friends, that when we are comng up against events of such sadness as those of the present, there is little understanding to be found, for today there are very few men who can grasp the difference between shadowy concepts and reality. For the pure idealist—naturally idealism is always worthy of recognition—not understanding spiritual reality, will think it fine, infinitely fine, when people speak beautifully of Freedom and the Rights of Man, of International Federation and things of the kind. They do not see where the harm lies in these things; the lack of such insight is wide-spread.

So little understanding is there, that it makes us see the meaning of what Mephistophleles says after leaving Nicodemus. For, after all, many who rank today as people of importance speak as the scholar spoke, and even if they do not claim to have created the whole world, at any rate wish to govern it according to their dreary shadow concepts. Men have no wish to make progress in such things. They remain children forever, children who can believe that it is possible to rule the world with dummy concepts. Hence we can appreciate the meaning of those words of Mephistopheles:

“I see my word hath left you cold,
Ye artless bairns. Yet I'll not take it evil.
Think though, the Devil is old; grow old
If ye would understand the Devil.”

Those who believe the world can be governed by shadow concepts, do not understand anything of what Goethe is saying through the mouth of the Devil when the Devil speaks the truth.

We may take the Homunculus scene in the second Part of Goethe's Faust as a lecture on the understanding of the real, the actual, in our age that is dominated by dummy concepts. But these matters must really be taken very seriously. And for us in particular, my dear friends, it is most important to form really clear concepts about all the various pronouncements so plentiful in the world today and during many past decades, which have finally brought us to the present situation.

IT WILL be my task today to proceed in our spiritual observations from the foundations which we laid here the last time to such spiritual processes which lie immediately behind the events our age that speak so seriously to our souls.

If we live, in the sense of our spiritual science, with the forces that stream from the so-called dead into the realm in which we dwell during our incarnation, it is possible to observe with great vividness what it is spiritually that under-lies such a difficult time. To be sure, people of the present age have little longing to know the spiritual background of existence. Such lack of interest is closely connected with the fact that his great catastrophe has befallen mankind in the present age. I have drawn your attention to the fact that in the last third of the nineteenth century, in contrast to earlier periods of time, great changes took place in human evolution. I have repeatedly pointed to the end of the seventies of last century and have shown that the end of the seventies was an incisive moment in the evolution of mankind. Very few people of the present time are aware of the fundamental difference in the spiritual life since the end of the seventies as compared to the spiritual life that preceded it. Human beings lack the perspective to see this; for such a thing only becomes apparent if one is able to observe the differences from a certain distance. If mankind is not to expect still greater misery, this perspective must be gained as soon as possible. For, my dear friends, our present age is governed by a strange and very vivid contradiction. I shall describe this contradiction to you, and you will find it very grotesque: There is no time within historical human evolution that is so spiritual as the time in which we live, the time since the end of the 70's. From a historical point of view, we live in the most spiritual of times. Still, it is an undeniable fact that people who consider themselves spiritually developed believe that our time is completely materialistic! As far as life is concerned, our time is not materialistic; but as far as the belief of many people and its results are concerned, our time is certainly materialistic. What do we really mean if we say: “ours is a spiritual time”?

Well, my dear friends, consider the natural-scientific world conception of the present day; compared to it, the natural-scientific world conception of the past is materialistic. Today we have a natural-scientific world conception which rises to the most subtle, the most spiritualized concepts. We see this if we observe existence beyond the immediate physical present.

Most spiritual conceptions today, although well-meant, mean very little to the so-called dead. But the natural scientific conceptions of the present age, if reflected upon without prejudice, mean extraordinarily much to them. It is an interesting fact that so-called materialistic Darwinism is conceived of and employed in a completely spiritual fashion in the realm of the dead. In full life things appear quite different from the way they appear in the frequently erroneous belief produced by what people experience in the body. What do I really mean by pointing to the natural-scientific spiritual? Well, in order to be able to form these concepts, to rise to such thoughts as are developed today in regard to evolution, and so forth, a spirituality is needed which did not exist in previous ages. It is much easier to see ghosts and to take them for something spiritual than to form sharply defined concepts for that which seems to be only material. This has brought about the fact that human beings develop in their soul life the most spiritualized concepts, and then proceed to deny them. These spiritualized concepts are mistakenly believed to relate only to material things. The materialistic interpretation of the present natural-scientific world conception is nothing but a denial of its true character. It has sprung from a tendency to cowardice, pure cowardice! One cannot bring oneself to live with one's feelings in these spiritualized concepts and to grasp this spirituality in the rarefaction needed for the forming of clear-cut concepts about nature. One does not dare to acknowledge that one lives in the spirit when one develops these rarefied, spiritualized concepts. One deceives oneself by saying: these concepts relate merely to material things; for this is not true, it is mere self-deception.

The same holds good for other spheres of life. As I pointed out to you the day before yesterday, {Rudolf Steiner, Das Sinnlich-Uebersinnliche in seiner Verwirklichung durch die Kunst. Not yet translated. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} many artistic creations of the present time show values through this spiritualized, refined feeling which did not exist in the art development of earlier epochs. This change in the spiritual life has been brought about through a quite definite spiritual event which I should like to characterize today from a certain point of view.

At the beginning of the forties of the nineteenth century, when the middle of that century had not quite been reached, the Archangel Michael gradually rose from the rank of an Archangel to that of a Time Spirit. He began at that time to undergo an evolution which enabled him to work into human life not merely from the super-earthly standpoint, but directly from the standpoint of the earthly. He had to prepare himself to descend to the earth itself, to emulate, as it were, the great procedure of the Christ Jesus Himself, to take his starting point here upon the earth and to be active henceforth from the point of view of the earth. From the forties to the end of the seventies of the last century this spiritual being prepared himself for this task. Thus it may be observed that the period between the forties and the year 1879 presents a significant battle in that super-earthly sphere which borders immediately on the earthly sphere. {See Rudolf Steiner, Geistige Wesen und ihre Wirkungen, Vol. II: Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis. (Not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.} This spiritual being whom we call the Archangel Michael had to fight a hard battle against certain opposing spirits. If we wish to understand what actually happened there, we must consider these opposing spirits.

These spiritual beings who had to be fought by the Archangel Michael becoming a time spirit have always affected the life and evolution of mankind; during the past millennia, prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, their task in the spiritual world was to create differentiation among human beings. Those spiritual beings who are the direct followers of the Archangels strive to lead human beings back to the group soul, to spread uniformity over the whole of mankind. If these beings alone had been active, mankind would have become one indistinguishable species, similar to the animal species, but on a somewhat higher level. These spiritual beings, however, against whom the Michaelic principle had to fight had the task of spreading differentiation among mankind, to split humanity into races and peoples; to bring about all those differences that are connected with the blood and with the nerved temperament. This had to happen. They may be called Ahrimanic beings, and we must realize that the Ahrimanic principle was a necessity in the course of mankind's evolution.

Now at time of great significance arrived in the evolution of mankind, beginning with the forties of the nineteenth century. The time arrived when the old differentiations had to vanish, when the divided human race had to be formed into a unity.

You see, the cosmopolitan views which, to be sure, sometimes turned into cosmopolitan slogans in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century are simply a reflection of what occurred in the spiritual world. The tendency exists in mankind to wipe out the various differences which were fostered by the blood and the nerve temperament. It is not a tendency of the spiritual worlds to create further differences among mankind, but it is a tendency of the spiritual worlds to pour a cosmopolitan element over mankind. Although, under the impressions of our catastrophic times, people have little understanding for this, still it has to be stated as a true fact. If this fact, mirrored in the earthly events, is observed in its spiritual background, clairvoyant vision shows that it was the spirit who was to become the time spirit of the modern age that from the forties onward fought against the race spirits, the folk spirits that produced the difference between peoples. What has always been represented by a significant symbol took place here, although at a different stage. The symbol refers also to other stages of evolution, for matters repeat themselves at various stages, and what I am telling you now is only a repetition at a certain stage of a spiritual event that took place at other stages. It is the event that is represented by the symbol of the conquering of the dragon by the Archangel Michael. This conquering of the dragon by the Archangel Michael, which means that the counter-striving powers have been cast out of the realm in which the Archangel Michael rules, took place in a certain sphere, beginning with the forties of the last century. Certain spiritual beings whose task in the spiritual world it was to divide mankind into races and peoples were cast out of heaven down upon the earth. These spiritual beings who up to the forties produced these differentiations among mankind have no longer any power in the region bordering the earthly world. They have been cast down among men upon the earth with everything they could bring with them.

This is what spiritual science designates as the victory of the Archangel Michael over the counter-striving spirits, which took place at the end of the seventies; the pushing down upon the earth of certain spirits resisting him.

Thus, since the end of the seventies, since 1879, we have two things: we have on earth for those who may be said to be of good will—if we understand the expression in a qualified sense—the rulership of the Time Spirit Michael who enables us to acquire spiritualized concepts, a spiritualized intellectual life. We also have on earth the counter-striving spirits who deceive us into denying the spirituality of the present time. If we fight against the materialism of our time, we should be constantly aware of the fact that we must not fight against what is good in our age but against the lies of our age. For the spirits that have been pushed out of heaven down upon the earth are chiefly spirits of falsehood who, as spirits of hindrance, prevent us from looking for the spiritual in our grasp of natural existence.

If one learns to know those human beings who descended to earthly incarnation from the spiritual world after the year 1841 and who have died since, one can indeed see how these things are considered from the other side, as it were. One is then in a position to correct much of that which here in the physical world, is very difficult to see through.

You see, at the beginning of the twentieth century it gradually became apparent how necessary it is to point again to the most varied fields of spirit in life; and those who drew attention to this fact were the human beings who, after the year 1848—more precisely, after 1840—had participated in the hard battle which was carried on by the Archangel Michael in the spiritual world and which ended in 1879 with the casting down of the counter-striving spirits into the life of the earth, where they now are among human beings. One participates in the battle of the Archangel Michael if one rises against these spirits and tries to drive them from the field. {See: Rudolf Steiner, Goethestudien und goetheanistische Denkmethoden. (Not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.}

Now, there exists a certain law which states that from every point in world history evolution may be traced in two directions: backward as well as forward. If we focus our attention on any point in the historical development of mankind, we may say: At this point of time this or that happened. Now, as time goes on, the events may be observed; but time may also be observed retrospectively. We may go back from 1879 to 1878, 77, 60, 50, and so on, and may then observe the spiritual world in retrospect. The following then presents itself: In the deeper structure of events as they proceed we may discover a repetition of what preceded them. If one expresses something great in a simple way, it may easily sound trivial. But I shall speak simply. If we consider the year 1879, we can proceed to 1880, or we can go back to 1878. If we proceed to 1880, we shall observe in the deeper spiritual structure of that year that what has happened in 1878 is still active within it; behind the events of 1880, there stand, as active forces, the events of 1878, and behind the events of 1881 there stand, as active forces, the events of 1877. As we go back, it is as if the line of time reversed itself, and the events which lie back of a certain point of time placed themselves behind the events which lie ahead of that point of time. Much can be understood if we grasp these things.

Now I beg you to remember that I have for many years spoken about the year 1879, and not only since 1914, which would be cheap. This is important, my dear friends, and I ask you now to make a simple calculation with me. Count back from the year 1879, count back to the year which I have often designated as the other boundary. I have always stated that the battle of which I am now speaking started at the beginning of the forties, around 1840, 1941, count back: 1879, 1868, 1858, 1848, and 8 or 9 years more; this is 38 or 39 years. Now count forward: 1879, 1889, 1899, 1909, 1914, and right up into our days (1918), and you also have 38 or 39 years. If you observe the year 1917, you will find a surprising result. You will realized the deep significance of the occultist's statement that, in starting from an incisive historical event, you will find the preceding spiritual event repeated in the subsequent one. Behind the earthly events of our days there stand the spiritual events that began in the forties and which we designate as the Archangel Michael's battle against the counter-striving spirits. These events stand behind present-day events. We have a repetition today of what took place at the beginning of the forties. You can imagine how differently one looks at the events of our time if one pays attention to this law. One will develop a deeper understanding of events that now pass unnoticed, that do not penetrate into one's soul. One will realize that the battle of the Archangel Michael against the counter-striving powers has, to a certain degree, returned to its starting point.

It is, in general, very difficult to speak to human beings of the present day about these deeper relationships, because they violently reject that which would help them to understand the present time and enable them to act in the proper manner. It is necessary today to rid ourselves of old prejudices and consciously to understand the facts.
For things happen here on the physical plane which are of a much more spiritual nature than events in general. This is connected with the descent of the Archangel Michael into our earth region. Many people speak of this descent. But if they are seriously called upon to take this fact on its true background, then they do not follow, they do not want to follow. Yet it is extremely necessary that a spiritual understanding of the most important impulses of our age lay hold of ever more extended circles of our contemporaries. Therefore it was very important, during all these years of our group meetings, to draw attention to the necessity of not sleeping away the stream of events which in our time is so strongly influenced by the spirit. For to sleep away events is a characteristic trait of our time. People pass by the events as though asleep, and it can be said that the more incisive, the more significant an event is that enters the physical plane, the more human beings sleep through it.

The events of March, 1917—if I may indicate a concrete fact {Outbreak of the Russian Revolution. Abdication of the Czar. (Editor)}—were of tremendous significance and will produce results of such great importance of which mankind does not even dream today; and it is really unbelievable how little understanding exists among people for the necessity of a complete revision of their judgments, of a complete revision of all that people have believed prior to 1914.

On this occasion, I may perhaps be permitted to point to the fact that in 1910 I delivered a number of lectures in Kristiania (Oslo) about the European folk souls. In the first of these lectures you may read that human beings will soon be called upon to understand something about the relations of the European folk souls. {Rudolf Steiner, the Mission of Folk Souls in Connection with Germanic-Scandinavian Mythology. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} The following has been repeatedly emphasized in our lectures: turn your gaze toward the immediate East; what happens there is important for human evolution. How often has this been said! Every one of my listeners has heard it. And in the spring of 1914, in my Vienna lecture cycle about the life between death and a new birth, {Rudolf Steiner, The Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} I dared to make the emphatic statement that the social life of our time may be compared with a special form of disease, namely, with a carcinoma; I stated that a creeping cancerous disease permeates social life. Naturally, my dear friends, under our present conditions these things cannot be stated in another form; but they must be understood.

We must not think of world events following one another in continuous progression, as historians imagine. They believe that the later event develops out of the preceding one, which has in turn developed out of the one preceding it, and so forth. The prejudice which maintains that the later must develop in the most tranquil fashion out of what preceded it we may leave to those who do not have the sense for reality which is expected of the anthroposophist. We may leave this prejudice to the politicians. Reality, however, is quite different. We must think of the course of events as of a pair of scales in full motion, the scale-beam descending first on the right side, and then on the left. Therefore, the time since the beginning of the forties may be characterized as follows: Great possibilities existed if only the attempt had been made during the period from 1840 to 1914—the year 1879 divides this period into two parts—to prepare in an adequate manner the spiritualization of mankind which is striven for by the Archangel Michael; if the attempt had been made on a larger scale to imbue mankind with spiritual concepts, spiritual ideas. Mankind, however, must depend in our age on its own free will; and if, out of its own free volition, mankind fails to grasp such possibilities, then the scale-beam sinks to the other side. What could have been reached on the spiritual path is now discharged through the blood. What we experience in our catastrophic times is an equalization of the scales. Mankind who has rejected spiritualization must be forced to accept it. This can happen through a physical catastrophe.

This idea may be verified if we place ourselves upon the following firm foundation: We live here in this physical world; but we are awake in this physical world only through our perceptions and our concepts, as I described the day before yesterday. We dream with our feelings and sleep with our will impulses. This is a matter of course for man. But if we familiarize ourselves, through imagination, inspiration and intuition with the spiritual world which is always around us like the air, and in which the so-called dead exist, together with us, in which their impulses are active, then we perceive how life, here in the physical world, is connected with the life of the so-called dead. The dead are able to receive from human hearts only spiritual thoughts.

Recall what I told you the day before yesterday. I said: If a human being dies in his youth, he has, in a spiritual sense, not actually left his family; he has, in reality, remained here. Something of great importance to the dead is connected with this and I beg you to take this very seriously. For the departed one it is not merely a question of being here. For him it is a question of being able to bear this existence. If the dead person is present in a materialistically inclined family which does not cultivate spiritual thoughts, he is constantly oppressed and distressed; the family constitutes a nightmare for him, comparable to the nightmare we experience when we inhale too great an amount of air. Only spiritual thoughts among those with whom he has remained can rid him of this nightmare and make life among them bearable for the departed one.

And again, I told you: If an older person is torn from his family, he takes their souls with him, in a certain respect. He draws them after him; but if they are not permeated by spiritual thoughts, they likewise constitute a nightmare for him.

Now let us consider the following: We can learn a great deal if we observe the sudden death of a human being caused by outer or abnormal inner conditions. Let us say, a human being is slain or shot. In such an instance, death is brought about in a way which is very different from gradual death through illness. Imagine the following case: A human being is shot in his thirty-fifth year; his life is destroyed through outer circumstances. If the bullet had not struck him (certainly, there are karmic connections, but what I am going to say nevertheless holds good) this human being's constitution might have enabled him to live another thirty-five years. He bears within him the constitution for another thirty-five years. This, now, produces a quite definite effect.

My dear friends, if a human being dies by violence with his life forces are still very active, he has tremendously significant experiences at the moment of death. Condensed into one moment, he experiences things which would have been spread over long periods of time. What he could have experienced during the next thirty-five years he now experiences in a single moment. For the important experience in the hour of death is the following: the human being sees in truth his body from outside; he sees the transition it passes through; he sees that it relinquishes the control of the forces it possessed when the soul dwelt in the body, and that it now becomes a nature-being, given over to the nature forces, to the external physical forces. The tremendously significant experience at the moment of death is that the human being then beholds the relinquishing of his organism to the physical nature forces. If a human being suffers a violent death, he is suddenly delivered not only to the normal nature forces, but his organism is treated by the bullet shot as if it were an inorganic, lifeless body; it is completely relegated to the inorganic world. There is a great difference between a slow death through illness and a sudden death through the interference of the external world with the human organism, be it in the form of a bullet or in any other form. In this moment there is a sudden flaring up, a sudden flashing forth of a tremendous amount of spirituality. The flaming up of a spiritual aura takes place, and the one who has passed through the portal of death looks back upon this flaming up. This flaming up greatly resembles the event that takes place only when the human beings devote themselves to spiritual concepts. These are values, my dear friends, which are interchangeable. It is extremely interesting to see the following similarity: the departed one perceives from the other side the sentient thought which arises in a person when he enjoys or creates an image, a painting, that is born out of spiritual life; the departed one then sees how similar this sentient thought, seen from the beyond, is to the sensation a person has (who is of course unconscious of this) when he suffers an external injury, let us say, to his arm and pain arises from it. There is a great relationship between the two events; one may take the place of the other.

Now you will grasp the karmic connection between the two events. Naturally, quite a number of people knew the “aspect of the stars” when the forties of last century approached. If occultists wish to designate such an event as the battle of the Archangel Michael with the dragon, they do so by using the technical expression: “this is the aspect of the stars.” There existed at that time quite a number of people who knew that such a significant event was taking place. There were some who wanted to take precaution, but one of the scales of the balance was too heavily weighted: the materialistic inclination was too strong. Thus the worse measures possible were restored to. People who understand the signs of the times were fully aware of the fact that spiritual life must enter mankind. If this spiritual life had entered mankind from the beginning of the forties onward, mankind would have been spared many catastrophes. For what took place would have taken place, but in another form. What is karmically necessary happens; but it may occur in various forms. This must always be kept in mind.

I shall express myself more explicitly. There are two ways of thinking about what ought to happen in the social sphere or any other field. We may present a program, may form programmatical concepts; we can think out how the world should develop in a certain field; this can be presented in beautiful words. We can swear by these words, take them as dogmas, but nothing will result from them, nothing at all! We might have the most beautiful ideas about what ought to happen, but nothing will come of them. Ideas, however beautiful, need not result in anything. Thought-out programs are the most worthless things in life. In contrast to this, we can do something else, and many a person does it without any special clairvoyance. We may, simply through a naive, intuitive knowledge of the condition of the times, ask ourselves: What is bound to happen in the next twenty or thirty years? What is it that in our time wishes to become reality? Then, if one has discovered what will inevitably happen, one can say to oneself: Now we can choose; people can either come to their senses and guide the course of events in the direction it must take in any case: then matters will turn out well. Or they can fail to do this by being asleep and simply allowing matters to run their course: in which case that which must take place will be brought about by catastrophes, revolutions, and cataclysms. No statistics, no programs, however well thought out, are of any value. Only the observation of what wills to appear out of the hidden depths of the times is of value. This must be taken up into our consciousness; by this the intentions of the present must be governed.

In the forties of the last century the many people who adhered to programs have won the victory over the few who understood what I have just stated. From this sprang all kinds of attempts to spiritualize mankind: spiritism (spiritualism,), for instance, is one of them; it is an attempt to spiritualize and reform mankind with inadequate means; to reveal the spiritual worlds materialistically. Even our thinking may be materialistic. It is a materialistic thought that says: This or that particular group of mankind is in the right. Why do the spiritual powers not intervene and help them vindicate their rights?—How often do we hear people say today: Why do the spiritual powers not intervene? The day before yesterday I gave an answer to this in a more abstract form: Mankind today must rely on its own freedom. Those who ask: why do the spiritual powers not intervene? proceed from the assumption that ghosts instead of men should make politics. That would certainly be easy progress if ghosts instead of human beings were to introduce the necessary reforms. This, of course, they do not do, because human beings must rely on their freedom. The expectation of help from ghosts is what most decidedly confounds human beings; it draws their attention away from what ought to happen. Thus the period in the life of mankind in which refined spiritual concepts were gradually developed was precisely the time when mankind was exposed to the strongest materialistic temptations. Human beings simply are unable to distinguish between refined spiritualized concepts and sensations on the one hand and that which, on the other hand, approaches them as temptation and counter-acts the grasping of the spiritualized element within them. Therefore, because people did not comprehend at the right time how evolution must proceed, our catastrophic age, our present difficult times have become a necessity. Without the present hard experiences mankind would have sunk still deeper into doubt of itself. To be sure, it would have developed spirituality, but it would have rejected it to a still greater degree.

This is part of the background of historical development. I should like very much, indeed, to throw light from this background upon much that lies in the foreground; but you will appreciate the reasons why this cannot be done in our present age. I must leave it to the individual to illuminate for himself what lives in our immediate present, seen from the background I have just described.

You see, my dear friends, the sleeping away of events which I have characterized causes an inward overlooking of the sharp angles and contours of life. But if we overlook the sharp angles and contours of life, compromises arise. Now, there may be times which are suitable for compromises. The time that preceded the forties of the nineteenth century was one; but this is not true of our time. Our time demands that we see things as they are, with all their angles and contours, in sharp relief; but it also arouses in the human soul the urge—just because of the presence of these sharp angles and contours—to close its eyes sleepily to them. What I have just stated may be observed even in regard to the greatest, the most significant events in human evolution.

In regard to the greatest event in world history, human evolution has brought about just these angles and contours! Indeed, even in regard to the greatest event of world history, namely, the Mystery of Golgotha. We know all the observations made in the course of the theological development of the nineteenth century concerning the Mystery of Golgotha. From the time Lessing began to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha right up to the time of the theologian Drews, all kinds of statements have been made regarding it. And it may well be said that the whole theological development of the nineteenth century offers complete proof of the fact that people have entirely forgotten how to understand the mystery of Golgotha. But there are some very interesting publications concerning the Christ Jesus. Very interesting publications, indeed! Take for instance, a Danish one {Emil Rasmussen Jesus, A Comparative Psychopathological Study.} This Danish publication is written entirely from the standpoint of the modern natural-scientific thinker. The author states: I am a psychologist, a physiologist, and a psychiatrist; I observe the Gospels from this standpoint. And at what conclusion does he arrive? Quite factually, in the sense of modern psychiatric judgment, he arrives at the following one: The picture which the Gospels sketch of the Christ Jesus is a pathological one. We can only conceive of the Christ Jesus as a person suffering from insanity, epilepsy, morbid visions, and similar conditions; he possesses all the symptoms of a serious mental illness.—If one reads the most important passage of this book to people, as I have recently done, {See: Rudolf Steiner, Geistige Wesen und ihre Wirkungen (Spiritual Beings and Their Effects), Vol. IV, first lecture (not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.} they are shocked. This is comprehensible; for, if what they consider sacred is described as a pathological case, people are horrified. But what are the real facts in the matter? My dear friends, the facts are as follows; Among the great number of dishonest compromisers one arose who takes his stand completely upon the natural-scientific viewpoint; he makes no compromises whatsoever but states: I am a scientist: therefore I must speak as I do; for these are the facts.—If people would place themselves honestly upon the standpoint of natural science, they would have to hold such views. There are these sharp angles and contours from which they cannot escape. They cannot escape unless they forsake the natural-scientific standpoint and go over to the spiritual-scientific standpoint: in this case they will remain honest,—or they may choose to remain honest upon the natural-scientific standpoint; then they are obliged to observe matters, without compromising, in the way of such a scientist who, although entirely honest in his field, is thoroughly limited in his views and does not try to conceal his limitations. He is thoroughly limited, but consistent. This has to be understood. If people would see today what must of necessity result if certain things are consistently carried through, they would see life without compromise.

Someone recently handed me an interesting slip of paper mentioning a book that is already known to me, but since I do not have it with me here, I can only read you what is written on this slip of paper. It was handed to me in order to show me what things are possible today.

“Anyone who has attended high school will remember the unforgettable hours when he had to ‘enjoy’ in his studies of Plato the conversations of Socrates with his friends. Unforgettable because of the fabulous boredom which was engendered by these conversations. He will perhaps remember that these conversations of Socrates struck him as extremely stupid; but, of course, he did not dare utter this opinion, for after all, the man in question was Socrates, ‘the greatest philosopher.’ Alexander Moszkowski's book, Socrates the Idiot, (published by Heysler & Co., Berlin) completely does away with the unjustified overestimation of the good Athenian. In this small, entertainingly written book, the historian Moszkowski undertakes to divest Socrates thoroughly of his philosophical honors. The title, Socrates the Idiot, is to be taken literally. We shall not go wrong in assuming that this book will call forth scientific discussions.”

Now, you will think it dreadful that such things are written. But I do not find it dreadful at all. I think it is self-evident and quite honest of Moszkowski; for, according to his concepts and sentiments, he cannot do otherwise, if he wishes to remain consistent, than to call Socrates an idiot. In doing so he is more honest than many others who, in keeping with their views, should call Socrates an idiot, too, but who prefer to make compromises instead.

I do not need to say, my dear friends, that you should not go out now and spread the news that I am in agreement with Moszikowski when he declares Socrates to have been an idiot. I hope that you understand what I really mean.

But I must acknowledge the fact that people arrive at certain judgments in our time because they make dishonest compromises. It is impossible to think about soul-pathology as modern psychiatrist do and not write a book such as that by the Danish author concerning the Christ Jesus. It cannot be done. One is dishonest if one does not either reject these concepts and replace them by spiritual concepts, or take the standpoint that the Christ Jesus was a mental case.—If one is acquainted with the views of such people, if one knows Moszkowski's opinion concerning the whole structure of the universe, his peculiar views about the theory of radiation and the theory of the quantum, one can appreciate why he, if he wishes to remain honest and consistent, must consider Socrates and also Plato idiots.

What is especially necessary for mankind is the rejection of compromises. Human beings should not make compromises, at least not within their souls. It is very important to consider this as a demand of our age, for it belongs among the most significant impulses of the Time Spirit, Michael, to pour clarity, absolute clarity into human souls. If one wishes to follow the Archangel Michael, it is necessary to pour clarity into human souls, to overcome sleepiness. This sleepiness arises in other spheres also, but above all it is an absolute necessity today to gain insight into the consequences of things. In previous ages this was different. During the centuries prior to the Michael age, in which European mankind was governed by the Archangel Gabriel, the compromises which human beings made in their thinking were lessened by the influence of the spiritual world. Michael is the spirit who works, in the most eminent sense, with the freedom of man. Michael will always do what is necessary. You must not believe that Michael fails to do the right thing. In the unconscious regions of the soul of every human being there is today, sharply outlined, every contour and angle of the spiritual life. It is there. Anyone who is at all capable of bringing to the surface what exists in the depths of the soul life as latent visions knows what it is that lives today in the souls as discrepancies and unrelated facts. He knows that in the souls there live side by side the modern materialistic psychiatry which does not shrink from seeing an epileptic in the Christ Jesus, and even the acknowledgment of the Christ Jesus. Anyone who is at all capable of raising these things into consciousness becomes aware of these facts. It would be interesting if a good painter, with a real understanding of our present time, would paint “Christ, seen from the point of view of a modern psychiatrist,” depicting it expressionistically. The result would be very interesting if the painter had a real understanding of what takes place at the present time in the depths of human soul life.

You see, in our time we have to plumb the depths if we wish to grasp what takes place at the surface of existence. But one can understand, on the other hand, that people are seized by a certain cowardice and discouragement if they are to approach the indicated matter.

This is the other quality necessary today: courage, even a certain audacity, in perceiving, in thinking; an audacity that does not dull our concepts but makes them highly acute. Everything that has to be said today may be found in outer events; the spiritual researcher simply describes it more precisely because he sees it against its proper background. And if the spiritual researcher then describes this background, the outer events will corroborate all the more what has, for example, been indicated today.

Many people ask: “What shall I do?” It is so obvious what one should do! One should open one's eyes! One's spiritual eyes, to be sure. If one opens one's eyes, the Will will follow. The Will depends upon our life situation. It is not always possible in one's particular circumstances, according to one's karma, to do the right thing; but one must try to open one's eyes spiritually. Today, however, the following often happens: If one tries to impart to people in words what is necessary for the present age, they quickly close their eyes, they swiftly turn their minds away form it. This is the descending of the scales on the other side.—What I am saying here might be considered a criticism of our age, but this is not my intention. My purpose is to draw attention to the impulses that must enter human souls, human minds out of the spiritual world, if we wish to get beyond the catastrophic times in which we live. As I have stated, it is not possible to enter into concrete details. Each of you can do that for himself.

This is the 8th of 17 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities, in 1911. The title of this series of lectures is: The Mission of the New Spiritual Revelation. This address was given following a Concert at the Berlin Group of the Anthroposophical Society, at which Mendelssohn's Overture of the Hebrides had been played).

Through the tones and harmonies of this Overture we have been led in spirit to the shores of Scotland, and in our souls, we have thus followed again a path of travel which, during the course of human evolution, has been deeply influenced by the secrets of karma. For, from entirely different parts of the western hemisphere of our earth, as if through a karmic current of migration, various peoples were once transplanted into that region, and its vicinity, to which these tones now lead us. And many strange destinies are made known to us. We are told, both by what Occultism relates as well as by outer historical documents, of what these peoples experienced in very ancient times on this particular part of the earth.

A memory of the mysterious destinies of these peoples arose again, as if newly awakened, when about 1772 the cave on the Island of Staffa belonging to the Hebrides, known as Fingal's Cave, was rediscovered. Those who beheld it were reminded of mysterious ancient destinies when they saw how Nature herself seemed to have constructed something which may be likened to a wonderful cathedral. It is constructed with great symmetry in long aisles of countless pillars towering aloft: above there arches a ceiling of the same stonework, while below the bases of the pillars are washed by the inrushing foaming waves of the sea which ceaselessly beat and resound with a music which is like thunder within this mighty temple. Dropping water drips steadily from strange stone formations upon the stalactites beneath, making melodious magical music.

A spectacle of this kind actually exists there. And those who, upon discovering it, had a sense for the mysterious things which once took place in this region, must have been reminded of the hero who once upon a time, as one of the most famous individualities of the West, guided destiny here in such a strange way, and whose fame was sung by his son, the blind Ossian, who is like a western Homer—a blind singer.

If we look back and see how deeply people were impressed by what they heard about this place, we shall be able to understand how it was that Macpherson's revival of this ancient song in the 18^th Century made such a mighty impression upon Europe. There is nothing which may be compared with the impression made by this poem. Goethe, Herder, Napoleon harkened to it—and all believed to discern in its rhythms and sounds something of the magic of primeval days. Here we must understand that a spiritual world such as still existed at that time, arose within their hearts, and felt itself drawn to what sounded forth out of this song! And what was it that thus sounded forth?

We must now turn our gaze to those times which fall together with the first impulses of Christianity and the few centuries which followed. What happened up there in the vicinity of the Hebrides, in Ireland and Scotland—in ancient Erin, which included all the neighboring islands between Ireland and Scotland, as well as the northern part of Scotland itself. Here we must seek for the kernel of those peoples, of Celtic origin, who had most of all preserved the ancient Atlantian clairvoyance in its full purity. The others who had wandered farther to the East had developed further, and so no longer remained in connection with the ancient gods. The western peoples, however, had preserved for themselves the possibility of experiencing an ancient clairvoyance now entirely immersed in the personality, in the individuality. And they were led to this particular part of the earth, as if for a special mission, where a structure confronted them which mirrored their own music's inner depths and was itself architecturally formed entirely out of the spiritual world, a structure which I have just tried to characterize with a few words—Fingal's Cave. We shall imagine these events rightly if we realize that the cave acted as a focus point, mirroring what lived in the souls of these human beings who, through their karma, were sent hither as to a temple erected by the gods themselves. Here those human beings were prepared who should later receive the Christ Impulse with their full human being and were here to undergo something extremely strange by way of preparation.

Again we shall be able to imagine all this if we realize that here particularly those ancient folk customs were preserved whereby the tribe was divided into smaller groups based upon family. Those who were related by blood felt themselves closely connected, while all others were looked upon as strangers, as belong[ing] to another Group Ego. During the migrations from Atlantis toward the East, all that the Druid priests, who remained behind here in the West, were able to give to the people poured itself out over these individual groups as a harmonizing influence. And what they were able to give still lived on in the bards. We shall only rightly understand what worked through these bards, however, if we make clear to ourselves that here the most elemental passions met together with the ancient powers of sight into the spiritual world, and that those who, with powerful life forces, sometimes with rage and passion, fought as representatives of their clan against other clans, perceived at the same time impulses working out of the spiritual world which directed them in battle.

Such an active connection between the physical and the soul realms cannot be conceived of today. When a hero raised his sword he believed that a spirit out of the air guided it, and in the spirit he beheld an ancestor who had fought upon this same battlefield in former times and who had gone up yonder to help now from over there. In their battle ranks they felt their ancestors actively aiding them, their ancestors on both sides—and they did not only feel them ... they heard them clairaudiently! It was a wonderful conception which lived in these peoples, that the heroes had to fight upon the battlefields and to shed their blood, but that after death they ascended into the spiritual world, and that their spirits then vibrated as tone—sounding through the air as a spiritual reality.

Those who had proven themselves in battle, but had trained themselves at the same time so that they could listen to what sounded out of the winds as the voice of the past, who were blind for the physical world, who could no longer see the flashing of the swords but were blind for the physical plane—these were highly honoured! And one of these was Ossian. When the heroes swung their swords, they were conscious that their deeds would resound further into the spiritual world and that bards would appear who would preserve all this in their songs. This was perceived in living reality by these peoples.

But all this creates an altogether different conception of humanity. It creates the conception that the human being is united with spiritual powers which sound forth out of the whole of Nature. For he cannot look upon a storm or a flash of lightning, he cannot hear the thunder or the surging of the sea without sensing that out of all the activities of Nature spirits work who are connected with the souls of the past, with the souls of his own ancestors. Thus the activity of Nature was at that time something altogether different than for us today. And it is for this reason that the rhythms and sounds of this song are so important, which, after being handed down for centuries through tradition only, were revived by the Scotsman Macpherson so that they create for us again a consciousness of the connection of the human being with the souls of his ancestors and with the phenomena of Nature.

We can understand how this Scotsman had in a certain sense a congenial feeling when he described how a line of battle stormed into the field, sweeping darkness before it, even as did the spirits who took part in the battle. This song is in reality something which was able to make a great impression upon spiritual Europe. The whole character of the description, even though given in a rather free poetical form, awakes in us a feeling for the kind of perception which lived in these ancient peoples. There was active in them a living knowledge, a living wisdom, concerning their connection with the spiritual world and the world of Nature in which the spiritual world works.

Out of such wisdom the finest sons from the different tribes—that is, those who had the strongest connection with the spirits of the past, who more than others allowed these spirits of the past to live in their deeds—were chosen as a picked band. And those who had the strongest clairvoyant forces were placed at its head. This band had to defend the kernel of the Celtic peoples against the peoples of the surrounding world. And one of these leaders was the clairvoyant hero, who has come down to us under the name of Fingal. How Fingal was active in the defense of the ancient gods against those who wished to endanger them—all this was handed down in ancient songs, heard out of the spiritual world—the ancient songs of the bard Ossian, Fingal's son, so that it remained alive even into the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. What Fingal achieved, what his son Ossian heard when Fingal had ascended into the spiritual realm, what their descendants heard in the rhythms and sounds of Ossian's songs with which they ever and again ensouled their deeds, this it was which worked on so mightily even into the 18^th Century. And we shall win a conception of this if we realize how Ossian allowed the voice of his father, Fingal, to sound forth in his songs.

We are told how the heroes find themselves in a difficult position. They are almost overthrown ... when new life fills the band: “The king stood by the stone of Lubar. Thrice he reared his terrible voice. The deer started from the fountains of Cromia. The rocks shook on all their hills. Like the noise of a hundred mountain streams, that burst, and roar, and foam! Like the clouds, that gather to a tempest on the blue face of the sky! So met the sons of the desert round the terrible voice of Fingal. Pleasant was the voice of the king of Morven to the warriors of his land. Often had he led them to battle; often returned with the spoils of the foe.”

“‘Come to battle,’ said the king, ‘ye children of echoing Selma! Come to the death of thousands. Comhal's son will see the fight. My sword shall wave on the hill, the defense of my people in war. But never may you need it, warriors; while the son of Morni fights, the chief of mighty men! He shall lead my battle, that his fame may rise in song! O ye ghosts of heroes dead! Ye riders of the storm of Cromia! Receive my falling people with joy, and bear them to your hills. And may the blast of Lena carry them over my seas, that they may come to my silent dreams, and delight my soul in rest’ ...”

“Now like a dark and stormy cloud, edges round with the red lightning of heaven, flying westward from the morning's beam, the king of Selma removed. Terrible is the light of his armor; two spears are in his hand. His gray hair falls on the wind. He often looks back on the war. Three bards attend the son of fame, to bear his words to the chiefs. High on Cromia's side he sat, waving the lightning of his sword, and as he waved we moved ...”

“Fingal at once arose in arms. Thrice he reared his dreadful voice. Cromia answered around. The sons of the desert stood still. They bent their blushing faces to earth, ashamed at the presence of the king. He came like a cloud of rain in the day of the sun, when slow it rolls on the hill, and fields expect the shower. Silence attends its slow progress aloft: but the tempest is soon to arise. Swaran beheld the terrible kings of Morven. He stopped in the midst of his course. Dark he leaned on his spear, rolling his red eyes around. Silent and tall he seemed, as an oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven. It bends over the stream: the grey moss whistles in the wind: so stood the king. Then slowly he retired to the rising heath of Lena. His thousands pour around the hero. Darkness gathers on the hill!”

“Fingal, like a beam from heaven, shone in the midst of his people. His heroes gather around him. He sends forth the voice of his power: ‘Raise my standards on high, spread them on Lena's wind, like the flames of an hundred hills! Let them sound on the winds of Erin, and remind us of the fight. Ye sons of the roaring streams, that pour from a thousand hills, be near the king of Morven! Attend to the words of his power! Gaul, strongest arm of death! O! Oscar of the future fights! Connal, son of the blue shields of Sora! Dermid, of the dark brown hair! Ossian, king of many songs!—Be near your father's arm!’ We reared the sunbeam of battle; the standard of the king! Each hero exulted with joy, as, waving, it flew in the wind. It was studded with gold above, as the blue wide shell of the nightly sky. Each hero had his standard, too, and each his gloomy mien!”

Thus Fingal stormed into battle, thus he is described by his son Ossian.

No wonder that this life, this consciousness of a connection with the spiritual world which sank deep into these peoples, into the souls of the ancient Celts, is the best preparation whereby they could spread the personal divine element throughout the West in their own way and from their own soil. For what they had experienced in the form of passion and desire, what they had heard sounding forth in the melodies of the spiritual world, prepared them for a later time when they brought into the world sons who revealed these passions in their souls in a purified and milder form. And thus we may say—it seems to us as if Erin's finest sons were to hear again the voices of their ancient bards singing of what they once heard out of the spiritual world as the deeds of their forefathers, but as if in Erin's finest sons the ancient battle cries had now been formed and clarified, and had become words which could express the greatest impulse of mankind.

All this sounded forth out of olden times in the songs about the deeds of the ancient Celts who fought out many things in mighty battles in order to prepare themselves for further deeds of spiritual life in later times, as we recognize them again today in that which the finest sons of the West have achieved. These were the impulses which flowed into the souls of human beings in the 18^th Century, when these ancient songs were revived. And it is this which was remembered by those who saw again the wonderful cathedral, built as if by Nature herself, and which caused them to say to themselves—“Here is a site, a gathering place, given to man by karma, in order that what the bards were able to sing about the deeds of their ancestors, about all that the heroes did to steel their forces, might sound back to them as in an echo out of this temple which they themselves did not have to build—out of their holy temple which was built for them by the spirits of Nature and which could be an instrument of enthusiasm for all who beheld it.”

So the tones and harmonies of this Overture which we have just heard offer an opportunity which allows us to sense, in our own way at least, something of the deep and mysterious events which do indeed reign in the history of mankind, events which occurred long before our present era on almost the same soil upon which they now continue to live. As we must deepen ourselves in all that lives within us, and as all that lives within us is only a further resounding of what was there in the past, so this feeling, this sense, for what once was and now works further in mankind is of great significance for occult life.

Thoughtful statesmen and observers of world-politics know full well that the greatest and most real problems of the present, and of the immediate future, concern the relationship of the East and West. They are problems of life and death, in the material as well as in the spiritual sense.

Our Western scientific civilisation, with its commerce and industrialism, must expand. Its inner impulse is to expand over the earth; moreover, it has apparently the outward power so to do. But the East is not meeting this expansion passively. On the contrary, there is every sign that the East is awakening to take a very active part in determining the forms and conditions under which this expansion shall take place. Here arises a question fraught with the gravest possibilities for good or evil. Will the Western and Eastern civilisations, deeply different as they are, blend and harmonise? Will a fuller humanity arise and develop in this process? Or will they clash in spiritual conflict, and at last in external warfare?

A spiritual humanity movement in our time—and such is the movement which has arisen out of Anthroposophy—must meet this question in full consciousness. For it is, ultimately, a spiritual question. It can never be answered in the sense of progress, unless and until something of a spiritual knowledge of humanity filters down into our public life. ‘The public affairs of today,’ says Rudolf Steiner, writing on the eve of the Conference at Washington, ‘comprising as they do the life of the whole world, ought not to be conducted without the infusion of spiritual impulses.’¹

We, in the West, are carrying our industrial civilisation farther and farther, more and more intensely, to the East. We are accustoming the Eastern peoples to deal with us in the forms in which we are familiar both as regards political and economic intercourse. These outward forms of our civilisation, from railways and banks to Parliaments and Conferences, the Eastern peoples may or may not be ready to accept. Whether they harmonise with us in inner impulse, or whether the very contact with these external Western features rouses in them a deep and fiery resistance, is a very different question. Here, again, it is well for us to hear the warning and the hopeful summons conveyed in the words of Rudolf Steiner. To quote again from the above-mentioned article:—‘Asia possesses the heritage of an ancient spiritual life, which for her is above all else. This spiritual life will burst into mighty flame if, from the West, conditions are created such as cannot satisfy it ...’

The Asiatic peoples will meet the West with understanding if the West can offer them thoughts of an universal humanity thoughts that indicate what Man is in the whole universal order and how a social life may be achieved in conformity with what Man is. When the peoples in the East hear that the West has fresh knowledge on those very, subjects of which their ancient traditions tell, and for the renewal of which they themselves are darkly striving, then will the way be open for mutual understanding and co-operation. If, however, we persist in regarding the infusion of such knowledge into pubic activity as a fantastic dream of the unpractical, then in the end the East will wage war upon the West, however much they may converse about the beauties of disarmament.

The West wishes for peace and quiet to achieve her economic ends and these the East will never understand unless the West has something Spiritual to impart.

In the West there is the potentiality of a living, spiritual development. From the treasures she has collected by her natural-scientific and technical mode of thought, the West has power to draw forth a spiritual conception of the world, though what she has drawn forth in the past has led her only to a mechanistic and materialistic conception.

‘On the redemption of spiritual values in the West it will depend, whether mankind will overcome the chaos of today or wander in it helplessly.’

These are inspiring words; we feel that they give expression to world impulses, world dangers, and world destinies. They are an adequate indication of the task that an anthroposophical movement must set out to perform, or, at any rate, to place before the men and women of today. It is the potentiality of a living, spiritual development, the treasure that lies hidden beneath the cold exterior of Western scientific intellectuality—it is this that Anthroposophy seeks to reveal: it is this to which it would awaken the consciousness and conscience of the world. As a result of the methods of development that have so often been described in these pages, Anthroposophy arrives at a transformation of Western science into a ‘higher science’: one that is not merely ‘scientific’ and ‘technical’ (able to grasp the dead and inorganic world of our immediate environment), but cosmic and all-human. Thoughts of a universal humanity, thoughts indicating what Man is in the whole universal order—these are the fruits of Anthroposophy. And it is from such thoughts alone that an all-human society—a thing absolutely that necessary in our age for the survival of civilised mankind—can receive life and form and impulse.

Our age has a fundamental striving towards internationalism. Internationalism, as men like Wells have pointed out, is, if nothing else, a necessity imposed on us by our economic development; though, indeed, our need and striving for it are far more deeply rooted. But the international ideal has so far only been expressed in abstract forms. Wilsonian idealism and Marxian idealism alike are born of an intellectual and abstract consciousness. The good intention is there, but the means for its fulfillment are lacking.

For the forces that make for harmony between men and nations live deeper than the intellectual mind. They are far more deeply situated in the souls of men. I may be intellectually convinced that ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is the most excellent of moral precepts; I may have the sincerest ethical intention to live according to it; and yet, if I do not understand my neighbour, I may find myself unable to suffer him, or to restrain my aggravation with him. Once, however, I understand him—not an abstract, but a concrete and individual understanding—I have planted in my soul a force that is deep enough to dispel aggravation, and make for harmony and love.

An individual and concrete understanding of the nations is what we need an understanding that is intimate and sympathetic, like the understanding of an individual man. Nothing short of a spiritual science can provide us with such an understanding. For a nation is not manifested as a physical entity; it lives in what is spiritual. We may know it to be real by its effects, but we can never grasp it, define it, and see it, in the physical. The artist alone, short of the spiritual scientist, will come near to understanding it, for he is gifted to perceive, in the physiognomy of things, the signature of the spiritual being that lies beneath them. Hence, even in our time, the works of great artists—Dostoievsky, for instance—are the most valued means we have of fostering a true and real internationalism. But the artist's instinct and expression are not enough for us; we need a definite knowledge and enlightenment—one that contains the artistic, perceptive, imaginative quality, it is true, but a conscious knowledge, firmer than instinct, more universal than isolated genius.

Mention has often been made in these pages of the threefold constitution of the human being. It has been indicated how the human, physical organism shows this threefold nature in the system of nerves and senses, the rhythmic system, and the assimilative system. These three systems, with their characteristic processes, are the physical counterparts of the three main activities or functions of the soul: thinking (conception, ideation, including sense perception), feeling, and willing respectively. Anthroposophical science shows how the different human races and peoples are by no means identical with respect to their development of the three systems in the human organism. Without going into the more intimate differentiations, which exist, three main types may be distinguished. These are first, the Eastern, or Oriental; secondly, the Middle European and thirdly, the Western, or Occidental (West European and American).

The Eastern peoples, especially those of Southern Asia, live essentially in connection with the inner forces of the earth. The forces which seethe and surge beneath the surface of the earth, and in the roots and fruits of plants and trees; the thriving, living forces of the earth: these have, as it were, their continuation in the assimilative, digestive system of the human being, and are connected with the surging and flowing of the human will. The Oriental is especially related to the assimilative system. He lives naturally and instinctively in the will process, that is related to the surging inner forces of the earth. His peculiar spirituality is like an expression of the earth itself. And when he forms a conscious ideal of higher striving and development, it is in connection with the next ‘higher’ system of the human being: the rhythmic Organisation. For man, when he seeks a conscious ideal of development, reaches out to what lies just beyond his natural instinctive gifts. The Eastern man, who lives naturally in the assimilatory-digestive system, seeks an ideal in the development of the rhythmic life. The paths of Yoga, all the characteristically Eastern paths of higher training, seek a spiritual development through the rhythmic man, through the special regulation of the breath, the circulation of the blood.

Now, if we consider the Mid-European, we find that he lives instinctively and naturally in that very element which the Oriental seeks to cultivate when forming a conscious ideal of higher development. The Mid-European is essentially the rhythmic man; his natural element is a certain inner harmony and rhythmic wholeness. The ancient Grecian civilisation essentially belongs to the Mid-European element in this respect. The balance and control, the aesthetic harmony of the spiritual and material that is evident in Grecian art (by contrast with the more uncontrolled imaginativeness of Oriental art), already indicates this great Mid-European impulse. In Goethe, the representative man of Middle Europe, we find it developed to the highest degree This natural development of the rhythmic, or middle, man tends to make the Mid-European (like the great German idealists of a hundred years ago, and unlike the external Germany of recent times), if he remains true to himself, the mouthpiece of a certain all-humanity; just as the Eastern man, in his great spiritual productions, is the mouthpiece of the Earth. The tendency to understand and to express man as man, this is characteristic and natural for the Mid-European element. The Mid-European has a feeling for the human relationship of ‘I’ and ‘You,’ the rhythmic interplay between men.

As the Eastern man, who lives naturally in the life of the assimilatory system, idealises the rhythmic element in his conscious striving for higher development, so does the Mid-European strive upwards, from the rhythmic organisation which he has by nature, to the conscious development of the life of thought connected with the Head system, the system of nerves and senses. The Mid-European idealises the life of thought. Dialectic, logic, scientific education, the development of pure thought and philosophy—through these, the Mid-European seeks consciously for a higher spiritual development. He works from the rhythmic system, in which he lives, into the life of thought: like the Eastern man, who works from the assimilatory system in which he lives into the rhythmic life. And as the Eastern man, as a result of his spiritual striving, comes to express the Earth forces with which his connection is so intimate, so as to be, as it were, the Earth's interpreter to humanity, in like manner the Mid-European, as a result of his development, comes to be the interpreter to mankind of Man as such.

The Western man, the man of Western Europe and America, has by nature what the Mid European seeks consciously. He lives in the system of nerves and senses: in the thought process, in intellectuality. He is essentially the Head-man. He tends instinctively into the region of abstraction. Thus it is that Rabindranath Tagore, speaking as a thoughtful Eastern observer, though not with any antipathy, compares him to a ‘spiritual giraffe.’

For the Western man, when he seeks a conscious ideal, the danger lies near at hand to leave the human sphere altogether, to lose himself in abstractions. There is in effect only one possibility for the fruitful development of our Western humanity; it is, to find the connection with the spiritual cosmos. What lives in man's thought life is cosmic in its origin. Starting from the thought-life, the nerves and senses organisation in which he naturally lives, the Western man must find a conscious relation to the spiritual universe. The Western man can be, as it were, the interpreter of the Universe, as the Mid-European is the interpreter of Man and the Easterner of the Earth.

We should find all this confirmed if we compared, for example—not pedantically, but with a certain artistic perception—the quality and colouring of Western and Mid-European science. What lives in the great scientists of Western Europe is a certain cosmic feeling; their whole manner of expression shows that the revelation of cosmic facts is to them a cherished element. With the great Mid-European scientists, on the other hand, though they be dealing with, or even discovering, facts of the same cosmic order, we feel that they live more in the formalistic element of thought; it is this that they chiefly feel and value,

The Natural Science of our times, however, has no means to penetrate and interpret the cosmos save by a few mathematical formulae and mechanistic abstractions. Hence the Western man finds himself starved by the materialistic and intellectualistic age. The result is that he is driven to seek refuge in experiments, speculations, and extremes of every kind. He tends to become sectarian, and to devote himself to ‘crank pursuits’; he seeks through a materialistic ‘spiritualism’ the spiritual life that he needs, but has not the means to reach. It is only the Spiritual Science cultivated by Anthroposophy that reveals and provides what he requires. Hence the immense significance of this Spiritual Science for Western peoples.

On the other hand, the Western man, living instinctively and naturally in the thought process with its cosmic origin, turns and finds an outlet in economic and industrial life. And with his economic greatness he expands his sphere of influence over the whole earth. By virtue of the cosmic quality, which is his, he becomes the ‘man of the world’ par excellence. He comes in touch with all the different peoples, and inspires a certain respect and confidence wherever he goes. From his contact with the Eastern peoples, there is kindled in him a great longing for what he lacks—the ever-present sense of the spiritual and the divine in things. He brings back Oriental cults and teachings, and begins to idealise various kinds of Eastern mysticism, by very reaction from his own matter-of-factness and intellectuality.

It is here that the necessary union of all three sections of mankind must set in, essentially a spiritual union, not founded, like racial kinship, on ties of blood, but founded on a common spiritual understanding. The individual man—be he a member of East, Middle, or West—who has, through Spiritual Science, begun to learn and to understand the nations, has an impulse of love and harmony implanted in him—an impulse far more powerful, more lasting, and effective than was ever possible by the mere recognition of an abstract ideal of internationalism. A nation to him is no longer a mere name or collective term, associated, perhaps, with strong sympathies or antipathies. It means a reality, which he knows, and of whose being he is convinced.

He stands in awe—as, learning Spiritual Science, one cannot but stand in awe—before the wisdom that is poured out into the World, manifesting as it manifests in the diversity of plants in outer Nature—in the diversity of human races and peoples of the earth, with their gifts and possibilities and missions. He has the foundation of knowledge for intelligent co-operation with other nations. From the thankfulness and reverence inspired by the contemplation of this wisdom, the seed of spiritual Love is born in his feeling. This is the ‘Holy Spirit of Truth,’ the real liberator of man.

• 1. See Dr. Steiner's articles in the Goetheanum weekly, and translation of an article published in The Threefold Commonwealth journal, Vol. II, No. I. This article also appeared in The New Age

In our consideration the day before yesterday, we arrived at the conclusion that the Gospel of John contains many great aspects. Today we want to talk about the relationship between man and the world that surrounds us here on this earth. Man usually sees himself as a much too simple being. In reality, however, he is a very complicated entity. One of the characteristics of the modern human being is their laziness, which extends to our way of thinking. The truth is simple only for those who have first made their way through the complexity. It is like a thread with many, many pearls strung on it.

From the public lectures, we have already seen how man is related to the cosmos that surrounds him, to the earthly nature that surrounds him. Through his physical body, he is related to the mineral, so-called inanimate world; through his etheric body, to the whole world of plants, to vegetation; and through his astral body, to all animal beings. It is only through self-awareness that he rises above the other three realms. Without a thorough understanding of this development, and without understanding what an initiation or awakening is, we cannot penetrate the depths of the Gospel of John.

Consider the three kingdoms of nature around us. The crystal has no self-consciousness, no ego in the physical world. This assertion is based on clear insights that come from occult research. But only here on this earth do the stone, the plant, and the animal have no self-consciousness. The question arises: are they not conscious? How this is to be understood can only become clear to us through occult study. Let us start with the consciousness of the human being. The nature of the human being in his fourfold nature is based on the fact that he has his consciousness in this physical world, that he has his four members in this world. Let us make this clear with a diagram:

The animal has its three bodies here, its I in the astral world; therefore the animal has no individual soul, but a group soul. If you look at a person's ten fingers, they are all animated, but not independent - they are only one part of the whole body. Just as we have to search for the ego of the fingers within us, so we have to go up into the astral world to find the common soul of the animals. The individual lions are members of the Lion-I, the Lion-Soul. All lions are connected in the astral, a thread goes from each of them into the astral world, where the ego is.

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For the materialist this is incredible; but the spiritual researcher must say: it is true! One can ascribe exactly the same evolution to the group soul of animals as to the human ego in the physical world. When we follow groups of animals on the astral plane, we see their development taking place there in the same way as that of human beings on the physical plane as individuals.

The plant has its astral body in the astral world, its physical and etheric body in the physical world and its I in the lower devachan. But what is the entity of such a group of plants? Similar plants have their I, their group soul in the devachan. A human being in dreamless sleep is in exactly the same situation as a plant throughout its entire life. The entire plant world on earth is a sleeping being; the plant leads a dream life.

Let us consider the sleeping human being: the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed, the astral body is on the astral plane and the I in dreamless sleep in Devachan. Let us now turn to the mineral. Its physical body is in the physical world, its etheric body in the astral world, its astral body in Rupa-Devachan, and the I at the very top in Arupa-Devachan.

Lower Devachan, Rupa: the world of spiritual forms
Upper Devachan, Arupa: the world that has not yet been formed.

The mineral thinks, feels and wills like a human being, not on the physical plane, but in Devachan. It extends only its inanimate parts into the physical world. The mineral's relationship to its soul is the same as a human being's relationship to its nails and bones to its self. An insect crawling over a finger nail and mistaking it for inanimate because it does not see the whole individual, would be comparable to a person mistaking a crystal for inanimate. The crystal is therefore an object that belongs to a being that reaches up into the spiritual world; so is the connection of its physical appearance with the spiritual world.

Man has his four essential elements on the physical plane. What is physical in man remains a physical body, but in Devachan it has a consciousness of its own, of which man knows nothing, though it haunts his limbs. The etheric body has a different consciousness, which is realized in the lower devachan. Finally, the astral body also has its own consciousness on the astral plane. So man is a very complicated being. The following scheme may serve as an explanation:

Upper Devachan: physical body
Lower Devachan: etheric body
Astral plane: astral body
Physical plane: self.

His ego is at home in the physical world; no one can dispute that. Furthermore, that part of his astral body lives in man and belongs to him, which has an unconscious consciousness and is at home on the astral plane. Furthermore, an unconscious consciousness of the etheric body exists on the lower devachan plan, and one of the ego in the upper devachan plan. The most important thing now is that the human being works from the ego into the other bodies, and that only through this does he become aware of the different consciousnesses.

There is a peculiar connection between man and the different worlds, which is a most important mystery. If one learns to recognize this, then one gradually knows what an initiation is. When man works from his I into his astral body, then he rises up to the astral plane and becomes a companion of all astral beings. Everything that has an astral consciousness is around him. When he works with his I into his etheric body, then he rises at the same time into the lower parts of Devachan; then etheric beings emerge around him. This is a great and powerful moment: he sees light not only as light, but as the bearer of light-filled entities; with the physical rays of the sun, angelic beings approach that have light as their body. This is one result of initiation.

When a person ascends or descends even higher, let us remember the words of Goethe:

”It is all one..."

- then the moment has come when he first becomes one with the world's forefather. Then he can say: ‘I and the Father are one.’ Then entities emerge that are even higher than those described. Now imagine a personality who is so highly initiated that he consciously bears the nature of the higher beings in his own body, as John experienced with Christ Jesus. In the one Christ Jesus, the author of the Gospel of John sees the beings of the three worlds. And he has Philip say to Nathanael (John 1:45-51):

"We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.

And Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’

Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said of him: Behold, a true Israelite (that is, an initiate of the fifth degree), in whom there is no guile.

Nathanael said to him: How do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him: Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Being under the tree is the occult expression for initiation, the secret of multiplying and expanding consciousness. Only now does Nathanael reply:

“Master, You are the Son of God” - thus an even higher initiate - “and a king in Israel.

Jesus answered and said to him, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.

And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, from now on you shall see the sky open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’

That means: to see that which permeates his four consciousnesses. Man becomes a ladder on which one can see the angels of God ascending and descending. In this physical world, too, there are higher beings than man. Man used to have a group soul on the astral plane before he descended to the physical plane, at the time when the “blood Rubicon” had not yet been crossed. The entire tribe lived in this group soul. Likewise, the animal group souls will later descend and individualize. Here we touch on a great mystery, which belongs to the seven secrets that are called the unspeakable.

One of these secrets is the secret of numbers. It is true that whole groups of people had one soul. The secret is: From the One it flows and becomes a number: numerous like the grains of an ear of corn. When such a group soul descends, the same thing happens as with a seed: a grain is placed in the earth, and from it arises the ear of corn with many grains.

But everything in the world exists only once in a certain way. So this humanity, as it is now, is also only here once. Nothing in the world repeats itself in the same way. In the group souls of animals, we see some that will later become individual souls, but under very different circumstances than humans, in a very different nature. Are there also souls that have already been individual souls and then ascended to the astral plane again and became group souls? Yes, there are such souls. They arise when a number of people come together cosmically around an initiate and become like the members of a common body. Initiates thus become folk souls. Thus the Jewish people, the chosen people, had a common soul that united the individuals, which was once human and had ascended again and become the folk soul. In the bosom of Father Abraham it could rest.

Now imagine that a person undergoing initiation goes through his development more quickly. He then goes the same way as that folk soul as an individual soul: He becomes a group soul. The individual is absorbed in such an expanded consciousness. In truth, as an initiate, he has the cosmic value of an entire folk soul. You can still see this in the old terms. This stage of development was called by the name of the whole people, for example, Israelites.

In the Persian Mithras initiation, seven levels were distinguished. The initiate of the first degree bore the name of the raven. He is the messenger between the physical and the astral world. The symbol of the raven has been attributed significance since the most ancient times. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah was provided for by the ravens. Ravens are the messengers of Wotan, who fly over the world every day and report to him what they have perceived. The Kyffhäuser mountain, where Barbarossa slumbers, is also circled by ravens, which are supposed to give him news when the hour of awakening has come.

The second degree is that of the Occult. This may already live in the inner sanctuary.

The initiate of the third degree, the warrior, may represent the occult wisdom he has absorbed in the world. Such a warrior is Lohengrin. This degree is alluded to in Mabel Collins' book “Light on the Path”.

The fourth degree is that of the Lion. This is the designation for an initiate who has ascended with his consciousness to the tribal soul. Hence the expression: Lion of the tribe of Judah.

In the initiate of the fifth degree, the consciousness of the people itself has awakened. He bears the name of his people; in the Mithras initiation, he is called the Persian.

The initiate of the sixth degree is the solar hero. He can deviate from his path no more than the sun itself.

The seventh degree is that of the Father. It is the union with the original spirit.

Thus the “Persian” bears the name of the entire nation; his individual soul becomes a national soul. The image that this level of initiation expresses is sitting under the tree. You will find this expression everywhere in the occult language. For example, Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree. The tree comes from the one seed and has become many. Such is the process with the initiate; he has gained the ability to empathize with every single soul. So how would such a person have been called by the Israelites? “Israelite,” of course. As we have seen, Jesus recognizes Nathanael as an initiate of the fifth degree, as one who has attained a national consciousness. Nathaniel recognizes in Christ the higher initiate: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Christ is an initiate of the seventh degree, who has expanded his consciousness to include the Father: “I (or the I-Am) and the Father (or the Divine) are one.” He is the life and light of men, for he has brought his high consciousness into the physical body.

Some will think that such an interpretation is being spun into the gospel. Many, and mostly today's theologians, believe that the Bible should be interpreted “simply,” which actually means conveniently. But the gospel is not written in the usual way and for people who are accustomed to reading a book only once and then putting it down again. The Gospel was written for a time when the content was a book of life that was read again and again. It must be read and received in this way, because only then will one learn to recognize that each of these great truths contains an even greater truth, and that even the wisest never stop learning in the knowledge of the religious scriptures and in their full understanding. In the past, these writings were approached by learning a sentence; afterwards, one allowed it to live in the soul over and over again, and if one then had the good fortune, the rare opportunity to meet an initiate, one allowed him to explain it. For religious documents, and especially the Gospel of John, are written from the depth of wisdom, and therefore cannot be grasped deeply enough. But wisdom is not there for the comfortable. Wisdom is there for those who seek and search.

The person to be initiated undergoes the first five stages of initiation while ascending or descending the astral plane. This is completely irrelevant, because the Hermetic saying applies here: “Everything above is as below.” Everything in the spiritual has its counterpart in the physical. If you ascend to the astral plane, you will find yourself in a national soul, for this lives on the astral plane.

The sixth stage means as much as the other five combined: here the human being ascends in his etheric body and brings about its development. One nation always arises out of another through the astral body becoming different; astral entities are always to be found behind the national soul. But the etheric body of humanity and that of the individual remains unchanged from nation to nation; a new etheric body only arises with the ascent from race to race. Even the physical body is subject to change. The ancient Atlanteans had a very different physical body, and the first Lemurians had no real physical body at all. The solar hero encompasses in his consciousness an entire human race like individual atoms. He grasps the whole race with his consciousness. The seventh stage, the Father Initiation, leads beyond the race to all mankind on earth, to all peoples and races of the whole planet. Christ Jesus is the representative of this; he carries all mankind within himself. That is why in the Gospel of John humanity is called the bride, and the initiated Son of Man is called the bridegroom. Christ Jesus is the one who, in the essence, encompasses the consciousness of all humanity. This brings us to where we left off from the previous lecture when we were considering the wedding at Cana.

A room for meditation. The background is a great purple curtain. The scene is purple in colour with a large yellow pentagonal lamp suspended from the ceiling. No other furniture or ornaments are in the room except the lamp and one chair. Benedictus, Johannes, Maria, and a child.

Maria:
I bring to thee this child who needs some word
From out thy mouth.

Benedictus:
My child, henceforth each eve
Thou shalt come unto me to hear the word
That shall fill full thy soul ere thou dost tread
The realm of souls in sleep. Wilt thou do this?

Child:
Most gladly will I come.

Benedictus:
This very eve
Fill thy soul full ere sleep embraceth thee,
With strength from these few words: ‘The powers of light
Bear me aloft unto the spirit's home.’
(Maria, having taken the child away, returns.)

Maria:
And now, that this child's destiny doth flow
Harmoniously through future days beneath
The shadow of thy gracious fatherhood,
I too may claim my leader's kind advice,
Who am its mother, not by bond of blood
But through the mighty power of destiny.
For thou hast shown to me the way wherein
I had to guide its footsteps from that day,
When I discovered it before my door
Left by its unknown mother desolate.
And wonder-working proved themselves those rules
Whereby thou madest me train my foster-child.
All powers, that deep in body and in soul
Lay hidden, issued forth to light and life:
Clear proof it was that all thy counselling
Sprang from the realm which sheltered this child's soul
Before it built its body's covering.
We saw its early promise blossom forth
And radiate more brightly each new day;
Thou dost know well how hard it was for me
To gain the child's affection, at the first.
It grew up 'neath my care, and yet nought else
Save habit chained its soul at first to mine.
It only realized and felt that I
Gave it the nurture and the food that served
The needs of body and the growth of soul.
Then came the time when in the child-like heart
There dawned the love for her who fostered it.
An outer incident brought forth this change—
The visit of the seeress to our group.
Gladly the child did go about with her
And soon did learn full many a beauteous word
Steeped in the mystic charm that graced her speech.
Then came the moment when her ecstasy
Descended on our friend with magic power.
The child could see her eyes, strange smouldering light,
And, terrified unto the vital core,
The young soul found itself.

In her dismay she fled unto mine arms;
And from that hour did grow her love for me.
Since that same time she doth accept from me
The gifts of life with her full consciousness
Not with blind instinct: aye, and since that day
When this young heart first quivered into warmth,
Whene'er her gaze met mine with loving glance,
Thy wisdom's treasures of their fruitage failed,
And much already ripe hath withered up.
I saw appear in her those tokens strange
That proved so terrible unto my friend.

A dark enigma am I to myself,
And grow still darker. Thou wilt not deny
To solve for me life's fearful questionings
I Why do I mar the life of friend and child,
When I in love attempt to work on them
According to the dictates of my heart
By spirit-lore instructed and inspired?
Oft hast thou taught me this exalted truth—
Illusion's veil o'erspreads life's surfaces—
Yet must I see with greater clarity
Why I must bear this heavy destiny,
That seems so cruel and that works such harm.

Benedictus:
Within our circle there is formed a knot
Of threads that Karma spins world-fashioning.
Thy sufferings, my friend, are links in chains,
Forged by the hand of destiny, whereby
The deeds of Gods unite with human lives.—

When in life's pilgrimage I had attained
That rank which granted me the dignity
To serve with counsel in the spirit-spheres,
A godlike Being did draw nigh to me,
Who would descend into the realms of earth,
And dwell there, veiled in form of flesh, as man.
For just at this one turning-point of time
The Karma of mankind made this demand.
For each great step in world-development
Is only possible when Gods do stoop
To link themselves with human destiny.
And this new spirit-sight that needs must grow
And germinate henceforth in souls of men
Can only be unfolded when a God
Doth plant the seed within some human heart.
My task it was to find that human soul
Which worthy seemed to take within itself
The powerful Seed of God. I had to join
The deed of heaven to some human lot.
My spirit's eye then sought, and fell on thee.
Thy course of life had fitted thee to be
The mediator in salvation's work.
Through many former lives thou hadst acquired
Receptiveness for all the greatest things
That human hearts can e'er experience.
Within thy tender soul thou didst bring forth,
As spirit heritage, the noble gift
Of beauty, joined to virtue's loftiest claim:
And that which thine eternal Self had formed
And brought to being through thy birth on earth
Did reach ripe fruitage when thy years were few.—
Thou didst not scale steep spirit-heights too soon,
Nor grew thy yearning for the spirit-land
Before thou hadst the full enjoyment known
Of harmless pleasures in the world of sense.
Anger and love thy soul did learn to know
When thy thoughts dwelt yet far from spirit-life.
Nature in all her beauty to enjoy,
And pluck the fruits of art,—these didst thou strive
To make thy life's sole content and its wealth.
Merry thy laughter, as a child can laugh
Who hath not known as yet life's shadowed fears.
Thus thou didst learn to understand life's joy,
And mourn in sadness, each in its own time,
Before thy dawning conscience grew to seek
Of sorrow and of happiness the cause.
A ripened fruit of many lives that soul,
That enters earth's domains, and shows such moods.
Its childlike nature is the blossoming
And not the ground-root of its character.
And such a soul alone was I to choose
As mediator for the God, who sought
The power to work within our human world.
And now thou learnest that thy nature must
Transform itself into its opposite,
When it flows forth to other human souls.
The spirit in thee ripens whatsoe'er
In human nature can attain the realm
Of vast eternity; and much it slays
That is but part of transitory realms.
And yet the sacrifices of such deaths
Are but the seeds of immortality;
All that which blossoms forth from death below
Must grow unto the higher life above.

Maria:
E'en so it is with me. Thou giv'st me light:
But light that doth deprive me of my sight,
And sunder me from mine own self in twain.
Then do I seem some spirit's instrument—
No longer master of myself. No more
Do I endure that erstwhile form of mine
Which only is a mask and not the truth.

Johannes:
O friend, what ails thee? Vanished is the light
That filled thine eye: as marble is thy frame.
I grasp thine hand and find it cold as death.

Benedictus:
My son, full many trials have come to thee;
And now thou stand'st before life's hardest test.
Thou seest the carnal covering of thy friend;
But her true self doth float in spirit-spheres
Before mine eyes.

Johannes:
See! Her lips move; she speaks.

Maria:
Thou gav'st me clearness yet this clearness throws
A veil of darkness round on every side.
I curse thy clearness; and I curse thee too,
Who didst make tool of me for weird wild arts
Whereby thou willedst to deceive mankind.
No doubt at any moment hitherto
Had crossed my mind of heights thy spirit reached;
But now one single moment doth suffice
To tear all faith in thee from out my heart.
Those spirit-beings thou art subject to,
I now must recognize as hellish fiends.
Others I had to mislead and deceive
Because at first I was deceived by thee.—
But I will flee unto dim distances,
Where not a sound of thee shall reach mine ears;
Yet near enough that thy soul may be reached
By bitter curses framed by these my lips.
For thou didst rob my blood of all its fire,
That thou mightst sacrifice to thy false god
That which was rightly mine and mine alone.
But now this same blood's fire shall thee consume.
Thou madest me trust in vain imaginings;
And that this might be so, thou first didst make
A pictured falsehood of my very self.
Often had I to mark how from my soul
Each deed and thought turned to its opposite;
So now doth turn what once was love for thee,
Into the fire of wild and bitter hate.
Through all worlds will I seek to find that fire
Which can consume thee—I curse—Ah, woe!

Johannes:
Who speaketh here? I do not see my friend.
I hear instead some gruesome being speak.

Benedictus:
Thy friend's soul hovers in the heights above.
Only her mortal image hath she left
Here with us: and where'er a human form
Is found bereft of soul, there is the room
Sought by the enemy, the foe of good,
To enter into realms perceptible,
And find some carnal form through which to speak.
Just such an adversary spake e'en now,
Who would destroy the work imposed on me
For thee, my son, and millions yet unborn.
Were I to deem these wild anathemas,
Which our friend's shell did utter here and now,
Aught else but some grim tempter's cunning skill,
Thou durst not follow more my leadership.
The enemy of Good stood by my side,
And thou hast seen into the darkness plunged
All that is temporal of that dear form,
For whom, my son, thy whole love burns and glows.
Since through her mouth spirits spake oft to thee,
The Karma of the world could not restrain
Hell's princes also speaking thus through her.
Now only mayst thou seek her very soul
And learn her nature's inmost verity;
For she shall form for thee the prototype
Of that new higher life of humankind
To which thou dost aspire to raise thyself.
Her soul hath soared aloft to spirit-heights,
Where every man may find his being's source
Which springs to life and fullness in himself.
Thou too shalt follow her to spirit-realms,
And see her in the Temple of the Sun.—
Within this circle there is formed a knot
Of threads which Karma spins, world fashioning.
My son, since thou hast now attained thus far,
Thou shalt still further pierce beyond the veil.
I see thy star in fullest splendour shine.
There is no place within the realm of sense
For strife, such as men wage when they do strive
And struggle after consecration's gift.
Whate'er the outer world of sense begets
Of riddles soluble by intellect,
Whate'er this world engenders in man's heart
Born tho' it be of love or bitter hate
And howsoever direful its results:
The spirit-seeker must attain the power
In all these things to stand unmoved, serene,
Casting his gaze all unperturbed and calm
Upon the scene where such contentions rage.
For him must other powers unfold themselves
Which are not found upon this field of strife.
So didst thou need to fight to prove thy soul
In combat such as comes to him alone,
Who finds himself accoutred for such powers
As do belong unto the spirit-worlds.
And had these powers found thee not ripe enough
To tread the path of knowledge, they needs must
Have maimed thy powers of feeling, ere thou daredst
To know all that which now is known to thee.
The Beings, who can gaze into world-depths,
Lead on those men, who would attain the heights,
First to that summit whence it may be shown
Whether there lies in them the power to reach
To conscious sight within the spirit-realms.
And those in whom such powers are found to lie
Are straightway from the world of sense set free.
The others all must wait their season due.
But thou, thou hast preserved thy Self, my son,
When Powers on high stirred to its depths thy soul,
And potent spirits shrouded thee with fear.
Right powerfully thy Self hath fought its way
E'en though thy very heart was torn by doubts,
That willed to thrust thee into darksome depths.
True pupil of my teaching hast thou been,
First since that hour, so fraught with fate for thee,
When thou didst learn to doubt thy very self,
And gavest up thyself as wholly lost,
But yet the strength within thee held thee fast.
Then might I give thee of my treasured store
Of wisdom, whence to draw the strength to stand
Assured, e'en when mistrusting thine own self.
Such was the wisdom which thou didst attain
More steadfast than the faith once given to thee.
Ripe wast thou found, and thou may'st be set free.
Thy friend hath gone before and waits for thee
In spirit-worlds, and thou shalt find her there.
I can but add this guidance for thee now:
Kindle the full power of thy soul with words
Which through my lips shall grant to thee the key
To spirit-heights, and they will lead thee on
When naught else leads, that eyes of sense can see.
Receive them in the fulness of thy heart:
‘The weaving essence of the light streams forth
Through depths of space to fill the world with life;
Love's grace doth warm the centuries of time
To call forth revelation of all worlds.
And spirit-messengers come forth to wed
The weaving essence of creative light
With revelation of the souls of men:
And that man, who can wed to both of these
His very Self, he lives in spirit-heights.’
O spirits, who are visible to man,
Quicken with life the soul of this our son:
From inmost depths may there stream forth for him
That which can fill his soul with spirit-light.
From inmost depths may there resound for him
That which can wholly wake in him his Self
To the creative joy of spirit-life.

A Spirit-Voice behind the stage:
To founts of worlds primeval
His surging thoughts do mount;—
What as shadow he hath thought
What as fancy he hath lived
Soars up beyond the world of form and shape;
On whose fulness pondering
Mankind in shadow dreams,
O'er whose fulness gazing forth
Mankind in fancy lives.

Curtain

Goethe has in various ways expressed a certain feeling he has often had, he says: When I observe the inconsequence of human passions, desires and actions, I experience the strongest impulse to turn to nature and seek support against the structure of her consequence and logic.—The arrangement of our festivals rests upon the endeavour of humanity since the earliest day to raise their eyes from the chaotic life of human desires, impulses and actions to the great consequential facts of all powerful nature. It is admirable, how well the big festivals are directly related to corresponding phenomena of nature. One such is the Easter festival, representing for the Christian a commemoration of his Redeemer's resurrection, and was earlier celebrated as the awakening of something of especial importance for mankind.

We look back to ancient Egypt with its Osiris-Isis-Horus cult expressing the uninterrupted rejuvenation of eternal nature. We then consider Greece, and find there a festival in honour of the God bacchus—a spring festival, connected in one way or another with the awakening of nature in spring. In India we have a spring festival dedicated to Vishnu. The Godhead of the Brahman is divided into three aspects—Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahman is rightly called the Great Architect of the universe bringing thereinto order and harmony. Vishnu is described as a kind of redeemer, awakener of slumbering life, rescuer, and Shiva is he who sanctifies and elevates the life awakened by Vishnu to the highest possible perfection. A sort of festival was also dedicated to Vishnu. It is said he falls into a sleep at the time of the year when we celebrate Christmas, to awake again at Easter. Those calling themselves his servants celebrate the entire intervening time in a most significant manner: they abstain from certain foods and drinks, and also meat. In that way they prepare themselves for gaining an understanding of the meaning involved when, at the Vishnu-festival, the resurrection is celebrated,—the awakening of entire Nature. The Christmas festival also has a significant relation to great natural phenomena—the power of the Sun becomes weaker, days shorter, and also that the Sun radiates more heat from Christmas onwards, so that Christmas becomes the festival of the reborn Sun. In this sense the Winter festival was felt by Christians. When Christianity, in the 6th and 7th centuries, wished to connect itself with ancient, holy events, the birth of Christ was transformed to the day on which the Sun again rose to a higher altitude. The spiritual significance of the World redeemer was brought into revelation with the physical Sun and awakening, resurrected life.

The Easter festival of spring also is brought into connection—as is usual with other festivals—certain solar phenomenon, one coming into expression even in common custom. During the first Christian century the symbol of Christianity was the Cross, at the foot of which is the lamb. Lamb and Ram are synonymous. During the time when Christianity was in preparation, the Sun appeared in the constellation of the Ram or Lamb. The Sun passes through the signs of the Zodiac; each year the Sun advances some distance. About 600-700 years before Christ the Sun had advanced into this zodiacal sign. For 2500 years it advances through it. Before that the sun was in the constellation Taurus—Bull. In those days the nations celebrated events which appeared significant to them in connection with human evolution through the Bull, because the Sun occupied that sign or constellation. As the Sun enters the sign of Aries—Ram or Lamb—the myths and legends the people contained references to the Ram as something significant. The Ram's skin brings Jason across from Kolchis. The Christ Jesus speaks of himself as the Lamb of God, and during the early period of Christianity is symbolised by the Lamb at the foot of the Cross. Thus can Easter be brought into relation with the constellation of the Ram or Lamb, and be considered the festival of the Redeemer's resurrection, because he summons everything to a new life after the death of Winter.

With these characteristics only in your mind, the two festivals Christmas and Easter seem rather similar, for the Sun has gained more power since its own festival of resurrection—the Christmas festival; therefore something more should be expressed by Easter. The festival of Easter in its deepest meaning will always be felt to be the greatest festival of the greatest mystery humanity—not merely as a sort of nature-festivity, related to the Sun, but essentially something more; It is indicated in the Christian meaning of resurrection after death. Also in the awakening of Vishnu the awakening after death is indicated. The awakening of Vishnu falls into the period in which the Sun in winter resumes its ascent, and the festival of Easter is a continuation of that ascending solar power which commenced at the festival of Christmas. We must look into the mysteries of human nature very deeply if we would understand the experiences of the old initiates when trying outwardly to express the essentials of the festival of Easter.

Man appears as a dual being, connecting a psycho-spiritual essentiality on one side with a physical substantiality on the other. The physical part is convergence of all other natural phenomena in the environment of man; they all appear as a delicate extract in human nature. Paracelsus significantly describes man as a confluence of all outside nature which is like letters of which man forms the word.

The sublimest wisdom lies in his organisation; physically he is a temple of the soul. All the laws we can observe in the lifeless stone, the living plant, the animal as subject of pleasure or pain, all these are compounded together in man: in wisdom they are there fused into a unity. When we contemplate the wonderful structure of the human brain with its countless number of cells working together so that all the thoughts and feelings of man may be expressed—everything that, in one way or another, affects the soul—we realise the all-ruling wisdom in the construction of his physical body. When we look out upon the entire outer world we perceive crystallised wisdom. And if we would penetrate all the laws of our surrounding world with our perceptive faculties and then look back upon man, we see concentrated in him the whole of nature, as a microcosm in a macrocosm. It was in this sense that Schiller said to Goethe: “You take into consideration the whole of nature in order to gain light concerning the detail. In the totality you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organism you pass step by step to the more complex, so to finally arrive at the most complex of all—man—and construct him genetically from the materials of the all-embracing structure or Nature.”

It is by means that marvel of construction the human body—that the soul can direct her eye upon her environment. Through the senses the psychic man observes the world around him, seeking slowly and laboriously—to fathom the wisdom by which it has been built.

Let us consider an as yet very undeveloped human being from the following point of view:—his body is the most reasonable creation possible; it is a concentration of the entire Divine reason. But in it resides a very immature soul incapable of developing even an initial thought for the comprehension of the mysterious power ruling in the heart, brain or blood. Very gradually this soul develops to an understanding of the forces which have worked in the construction of this human body. But upon it is impressed the soul of a remote past; man stands there as the crown of creation. Aeons had to pass away before cosmic wisdom was united within that human body.

But in the soul of the undeveloped man the cosmic wisdom first begins to grow. At first she barely dreams of the profound thoughts of the universal spirit—the architect of the human being.Yet, everything lying within man in a state of sleep—the psycho-spiritual constitution will in future be understood by man. Cosmic thought has worked through countless ages,—worked creatively in nature in order ultimately to build the crown of its age-long activity—the human body. In it slumbers the cosmic wisdom, so as to recognise itself in the human soul, to construct in the human being an eye with which to perceive itself. Cosmic wisdom without,—cosmic wisdom within—operative in the present as in the past—operative far into a future whose sublimity may only be surmised. The most profound human emotions are evoked when we thus ponder the past and future.

When the soul begins to understand the wonder constructed by the wisdom of the cosmos—when she attains thoughtful clarity and illumined knowledge then the sun may represent the most glorious symbol of this inner awakening which opens for the soul the outer world through the medium of the senses. Man receives the light because the sun illuminates objects. What man sees in the outer world is the reflected sunlight. The sun awakens in the soul the power to perceive the outer world. The awakening sun-soul in man, beginning to discover; cosmic thought in the seasons of the year, recognises in the rising sun her liberator.

When the sun again begins to ascend in the heavens and the days lengthen, the soul looks towards the sun, saying: To you I owe the possibility of seeing cosmic thought spread out in my environment—cosmic thought that sleeps in me as in all else.—Then man looks upon his earlier existence—the ages preceding his groping search for the cosmic thought.

Man is indeed very, very much older than his senses. Spiritual investigation enables us to arrive at the point of time when the senses are only beginning their development,—when they are at their weakest. At that time the senses were not yet the doors through which the soul could perceive her surroundings. Shopenhauer realised this fact and described the turning-point where man became able to use his sense perceptions in the world. That is his meaning, when he says:: The visible world came into being only when an eye existed with which to perceive it.—The sun formed the eye—light created light. Formerly, before any such outer vision existed, man possessed an inner light. In the remote past of human evolution no exterior object stimulated man to outer perception, but from his inner self arose imaginations, ideas, the primitive vision was a vision in the astral light. Humanity possessed a dull, dim clairvoyance.

In the Germanic world of the Gods man could also perceive the Gods through a sort of dim, misty astral light. But it gradually became more dim and dark and slowly vanished; It became extinguished by the fierce light or the physical sun which appeared in the heavens and the physical world it illuminated. So the astral vision of man receded, declined. When man looks to the future, it becomes clear that this astral sight must return upon a higher level; all that which has become extinguished by physical vision, must again live, so that a fully conscious clairvoyance may be developed in mankind. To the normal vision of day will be added a still brighter and more luminant human life in the light of the future. To physical vision will come vision in the astral light.

The leaders of humanity are those individualities whose renunciations during earth-life enabled them to experience—before death—the state of consciousness called “passing through the portals of death”. This contains all those experiences which later will be the possession of all humanity when they have evolved astral perception which makes visible the psychic and spiritual. This making visible of the psycho-spiritual environment was always called by the initiate the “awakening”, “resurrection”, “spiritual rebirth”—giving to man—a supplement to his gifts of the physical senses, the senses of the Spirit. He celebrates an inner Easter festival who discerns within him the awakening of the new astral vision.

So we can understand why this spring festival is related to symbolic ideas such as death and resurrection. In man, the astral light is “dead”. It sleeps. But it will again be resurrected in man. Easter is the festival indicating this future awakening of this astral light.

The sleep of Vishnu begins at the Christmas time when the astral light sank into sleep and physical light awoke. When man has advanced sufficiently far to renounce the personal, the astral light re-awakens in him; he can celebrate the feast of Easter,—Vishnu can again awaken in his soul.

In cosmic spiritual perception the Easter festival is not connected with the awakening of the sun only, but with the reappearance of the world of plant life in the spring also. As the seed is laid into the soil and there decays in order to awaken to a new life, so had the Astral light to sink into sleep in the human body so that it may be rejuvenated. The symbol of Easter is the seed which sacrifices itself so that a new plant may arise. It is the sacrifice of one phase of nature for the sake of creating a new one. Sacrifice and becoming (germination of the new)—these two are intimately linked together in the Easter festival. Richard Wagner felt this thought profoundly. When he lived in a villa on the banks of the lake at Zurich in 1887 and looked out upon awaking nature, his thoughts concerning it gave rise to others—the deceased and resurrected World saviour, the Christ Jesus, and the thought of Parzifal seeing the Holy of Holies in the soul.

All leaders of mankind, who were aware of how the higher spiritual life of man arises out of his lower nature, have comprehended the significance of Easter. Dante therefore described his awakening—in his Divine Comedia—as taking place on Good Friday. That is clear at the very beginning of the poem. Dante experienced his sublime vision in the 35th year of his life; that is the middle of a normal human life. So he reckons 35 years for the development of man's physical perceptive powers; till then he continues absorbing new physical experiences. After that, man is sufficiently matured for spiritual experience to augment the physical; he is ripe for spiritual perception. When the growing, evolving physical powers in man are united, the time is ripe for the awakening of the spiritual. For that rise Dante's vision falls into the period of the Easter festival.

A certain contradiction has been said to exist between the Christian conception of Easter and the idea of Karma inherent in Spiritual Science. Certainly, Karma and redemption through the Son of man do appear to oppose one another. This state of indecision is common with people who know little of the basic idea of this anthroposophical thought—a paradox seemingly existing in the simultaneous acceptance of salvation through Christ Jesus and the idea of Karma. Such people say: the ideas of a redeeming God contradicts self redemption through Karma. They fail to understand, in the true sense, the Easter of redemption, nor can they grasp the idea of Karmic justice. It would be wrong to withhold aid from someone suffering by saying: “You yourself are the cause of the trouble,” refuse him help because it must work itself out. That is a misunderstanding of Karma. Karma, to the contrary, says to you: “Help him, who suffers, for you exist to help”. You help to improve the credit balance of the Karmic account of necessity when aiding your fellow man. You give him the opportunity and the strength to carry his Karma; and you, to that extent, are a redeemer from evil .

In a similar way, instead of helping the single individual, one can come to the assistance of a whole group or nation of man.

When a mighty individuality like that of the Christ Jesus comes to the aid of entire humanity, it is his sacrifice in death which permeates the Karma of mankind. He helped to carry the Karma of the whole of humanity, and we may be quite sure that redemption through Christ Jesus was absorbed and assimilated by the totality of human Karma.

The fundamental significance of the resurrection and redemption-concept will be made really comprehensible only through Spiritual Science. A Christianity of the future will unite Karma with redemption. Because cause and effect are complementary in the spiritual world, this great act of sacrifice must also have its effect upon human life. Upon these thoughts of the Easter festival also does Spiritual Science have a deepening effect. The thought of Easter which appears to be written in the stars and which we believe to (we) read in them, is fundamentally deepened by Spiritual Science. We also see the profound meaning of the Easter-concept in the ascendance of the spirit about to be realised in the future.

At present, mankind exists amidst inharmonious, disordered conditions. But man knows how the world has emerged from chaos, and that out of his chaotic inner being harmony will ultimately arise. Like the regular paths of the planets round the sun, so will the inner saviour of mankind arise,—herald and creator of unity and harmony amid all disharmony. All humanity shall be reminded by the Easter festival of the resurrection of the spirit from the present obscurity of human nature.

The Calendar of the Soul

Inner life changes along with the changing seasons of nature, as the two are intimately connected. The verses commence in the spring, at the time of the vernal equinox, the full moon, and Sunday, which by definition is Easter. This is when the sun’s path, the ecliptic, viewed from earth, crosses the heavenly extension of the Earth’s equator and so starts to leave Pisces and enter Ares. Similarly, summer begins when the sun starts to leave Gemini to enter Cancer, fall begins when the sun starts to leave Virgo to enter Libra, and winter begins when the sun starts to leave Sagittarius to enter Capricorn. The verses are paired 26 weeks apart, for spring in one hemisphere is autumn in the other. These verses are mantic, from the muse, with their own rhythm, beauty, and meaning. Although Christmas and Saint John’s Day are fixed by the solstices (Christmas being 4 days off since the correction of the Julian Calendar), both Easter and Michaelmas move, as they are connected not just with the earth-sun-stars axis, but also with moon rhythms and planetary human rhythms. Everything is in flux, moving always, and so each of us will have to fit the 52 verses of the year into the rhythms of the universe, which are actually our inner rhythms also. In some years, if Easter comes early after the equinox, verses will have to be doubled up. In other years, if Easter comes later after the equinox, verses will have to be held over for another week. And as always, the dating and significance of Easter and of Michaelmas create lots of discussion. “Human beings are able to develop the consciousness soul precisely through the exertion of energy required to penetrate such riddles”.¹ The celestial equator and the ecliptic:²

—Translation by John Riedel MD - 6 May 2023

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• 1. Rudolf Steiner in Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse, 5/23/09.
• 2. Tau’olunga https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/