The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] It is impossible to make real progress in penetrating to the higher worlds without going through the stage of imaginative knowledge. This by no means implies that during occult training the human being is compelled to remain for a certain time at the imaginative stage as though it were something like a class to be attended at school. In certain instances this may be necessary, but by no means as a general rule. It depends entirely upon what the occult student has experienced before entering upon his occult training. It will be shown in the course of this discussion that the spiritual environment of the occult student is important in this regard, and that depending on his orientation to this spiritual environment diverse methods have been instituted for treading the path of knowledge.

[ 2 ] It can be of the utmost importance to know what follows if one is preparing to undergo occult training. Not merely as an interesting theory does this come into consideration, but as something by which manifold practical points of view can be gained if one is to succeed on the “path to higher knowledge.”

[ 3 ] It is often said by those striving toward a higher development: I wish to perfect myself spiritually; I wish to develop the “higher man” within me; but I have no desire for the manifestations of the “astral world.” This is understandable when one takes into consideration the descriptions of the astral world found in books dealing with such things. There, to be sure, appearances and beings are spoken of that bring all sorts of dangers to men. It will be said that under the influence of such beings a man may easily suffer harm to his moral disposition and mental health. It will be brought home to the reader that in these regions the wall dividing “the good from the evil path” is as “a spider's web” in thickness, and that the plunge into immeasurable abysses, the fall into utter depravity, lies all too near.—It is, of course, impossible simply to contradict such assertions. Yet the standpoint taken in many cases as to treading the occult path is in no way a correct one. The only reasonable point of view is the one that says, rather, that no one should be deterred from traveling the way of higher knowledge because of dangers, but that in every case strict care must be taken to weather these dangers. It may happen that one who asks an occult teacher's guidance will be counselled to postpone actual training for a time, and first undergo certain experiences of ordinary life or learn things that can be learned in the physical world. It will then be the task of the occult teacher to give the seeker the right instructions for accumulating such experiences and learning such things. In most cases, by far, the occult teacher will be found to proceed in this way. If then the student now is sufficiently attentive to what happens to him, after he has come into contact with the occult teacher, he will be able to observe many things. He will find that henceforth things happen to him as if “by accident,” and that he can observe things that he would never have been exposed to without this link with the occult teacher. If the student does not notice this and becomes impatient, it is because he has not paid sufficient attention to what has happened to him. It is not to be believed that the influence of the teacher upon the student will show itself in distinctly visible “tricks of magic.” This influence is rather an intimate matter, and he who would explore its nature and essence without having first reached a certain stage of occult training will surely err. The student injures himself in every case in which he becomes impatient over the waiting time prescribed for him. His advance will be none the less rapid on this account. On the contrary, his progress would be slowed down if he were to begin too soon the training he often impatiently awaits.

[ 4 ] If the student allows the waiting time or the other advice and hints given to him by the occult teacher to influence him rightly, he will be actually preparing himself to hold his ground before certain trials and dangers that approach him when he encounters the unavoidable stage of Imagination. This stage is unavoidable for this reason: Everyone who seeks communication with the higher world without having passed through it can only do so unconsciously and is condemned to grope in the dark. One can acquire some dim sense of this higher world without Imagination; one can without it certainly attain to a sense of being united with “one's God” or “one's higher self,” but one cannot in this way come to a true knowledge in full consciousness and bright, luminous clarity. Therefore, all talk about coming to terms with the “inferior spiritual worlds” (the astral and the devachanic) being unnecessary, that the one thing needful is for man to awaken the “God within him,” is no more than illusion.—Whoever is satisfied with this approach should not be interfered with in his strivings, and the occultist would not so interfere. But true occultism has nothing at all to do with such strivings. It makes no demand upon anybody to become a pupil. But in him who seeks its discipline it will awaken no mere dim perception of himself as “godlike,” but will also try to open his spiritual eyes to what actually exists in higher worlds.

[ 5 ] Of course, the “divine self” is contained in every man. It is in every created being. In stone, plant, and animal, the “divine self” is also contained and active. But it does not so much matter to feel and know this in general as to enter into a living connection with the manifestations of this “divine self.” Just as one can mutter over and over again that this world contains the “divine self” veiled within it and know nothing thereby of the physical world, so does he who seeks the “divine kingdom of spirits” only in blurred and indeterminate generalities know nothing of higher worlds. One should open the eyes and behold the revelation of deity in the things of the physical world, in the stone, in the plant, and not merely dream away all these as only “appearances” with the true form of God somehow “concealed” behind them. No, God reveals Himself in His creations and whoever would know God must learn to know the true essence of these creations. Therefore one must also learn to behold what really goes on and is living in the higher worlds, if one would know the “divine.” The consciousness that the “God-man” dwells within one can at most provide a beginning. But this beginning experienced in the right way, rises to an actual lift into the higher worlds. But this is possible only for one in whom the spiritual “senses” have been developed. Any other view arrives only at the standpoint, “I will stay as I am and attain only what is possible for me to attain in this way.” But the aim of the occultist is to become a different human being, in order to behold and experience other things than the customary ones.

[ 6 ] It is precisely for this purpose that passage through imaginative knowledge is necessary. It has already been said that this stage of Imagination need not be conceived of as a school class that must be gone through. It is to be understood that, particularly in present-day life, there are persons who bring with them pre-conditions enabling the occult teacher to call forth in them inspired and intuitive knowledge simultaneously, or nearly so, with the imaginative. But it is not at all to be understood that any person could be spared passage through the imaginative stage.

[ 7 ] The cause of danger inherent in imaginative knowledge has already been pointed out in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. This cause is that upon entrance into that world the human being in a certain sense loses the ground under his feet. The source of his security in the physical world is for the moment to all appearances entirely lost. Upon perception of something in the physical world it is asked: Whence comes this perception? This is mostly done unconsciously. But it is quite “unconsciously” clear that the causes of the perception are objects “outside in space.” Colours, sounds, odours go out from these objects. Colours would not be seen floating free in space, nor sounds heard, without consciousness arising as to the objects to which these colours pertain as qualities, and from which these tones come. This consciousness that objects and entities cause physical perceptions gives to them, and thereby to man himself, his security and sure hold. Anyone having perceptions without outward causes is spoken of as abnormal and morbid. Such causeless perceptions are called illusions, hallucinations, visions.

[ 8 ] Now first of all, viewed entirely outwardly, the whole imaginative world consists of such hallucinations, visions, and illusions. It has been pointed out [in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds] how, through occult training, such visions, etc., are artificially produced. By focusing the consciousness on a seed or a dying plant, certain forms, which to begin with are nothing but hallucinations, are conjured up before the soul. The “flame formation,” spoken of as appearing in the soul through observation of a plant or the like, and that after a time completely separates itself from the plant, is, outwardly viewed, to be regarded on the same level as an hallucination. It is the same in occult training when the imaginative world is entered. What was customarily regarded as going forth from things “outside in space,” or “clinging to them” as properties—colours, sounds, odors, etc.,—now float free in space. Perceptions break loose from all outer things and swim free in space, or fly around in it. Yet it is known with strict accuracy that the things before us have not brought forth these perceptions, but rather that they are self-induced by the human being. So it is that one thinks one has “lost the ground under one's feet.” In ordinary life in the physical world those inner picturings that do not proceed from things must be guarded against and are without ground or foundation. But to call forth imaginative knowledge, the prime essential is to have colours, sounds, odours, etc., fully torn loose from all things, “floating free in space.”

[ 9 ] The next step towards imaginative knowledge is to find a new “ground and foundation” for the picturings that are thus adrift. This must occur in that other world that is now about to be revealed. New things and entities take possessions of these inner picturings. In the physical world, for instance, the color blue stays on a cornflower. In the imaginative world likewise it must not remain “free floating.” It streams, as it were, towards some being, and whereas it floated unattached at first, it now becomes the expression of a being. Something speaks through it that the observer can only perceive in the imaginative world, and so these “free-floating” picturings gather around definite centers. It becomes clear that beings are speaking to us through them. And, as in the physical world there are corporeal things and beings to which colours, sounds, odors, and so forth, are attached or from which they are derived, so now spiritual beings speak out through them. These “spiritual beings” are, in fact, always there; they hover continually around human beings. But they cannot reveal themselves to them if the occasion is not given them to do so. They are given this opportunity when one calls forth the capacity to let sounds, colours, and so forth, arise before one's soul, even when occasioned by no physical object.

[ 10 ] The “spiritual facts and beings” are entirely different from the objects and entities of the physical world. In ordinary speech it is not easy to find an expression that even remotely describes this difference. Perhaps it can best be approached by saying that in the imaginative world everything speaks to man as if it were directly intelligent, whereas in the physical world intelligence can only reveal itself in a roundabout way through corporeality. Exactly this makes for mobility and freedom in the imaginative world—that the medium of the outer object is missing, and the spiritual lives itself out with full immediacy in the free-floating tones, colours, etc.

[ 11 ] Now the basis of danger threatening the human being in this world lies in the fact that he perceives the manifestations of “spiritual beings”, but not the beings themselves. This is the case as long as he remains only in the imaginative world and rises no higher. Only Inspiration and intuition lead him gradually to the beings themselves.—If, however, the occult teacher should awaken these faculties prematurely, without having thoroughly introduced the pupil to the realm of Imagination, the higher world would have for him only a shadowy and phantasmal existence. The whole glorious fullness of the pictures in which it must reveal itself when one really enters into it, would be lost. Herein lies the reason why the occult student needs a “guide.”

[ 12 ] For the student, the imaginative world is at first only a “picture world” of which mostly he does not know the meaning. But the occult teacher knows to what things and entities these pictures pertain in a still higher world. If the student has confidence in him, he can know that later connections will be revealed to him, which he cannot yet penetrate. In the physical world, the objects in space were themselves his guides. He was in a position to prove the accuracy of his inner picturings of them. The corporeal reality is the “rock” upon which all hallucinations and illusions must be shattered. This rock disappears into an abyss when the imaginative world is entered. Therefore the teacher must serve as another such rock. From what he is able to offer, the student must sense the reality of the new world. From this it can be judged what great confidence in the teacher must exist in any occult training worthy of the name. When he can no longer believe in the teacher, it is exactly the same in this higher world as if in the physical world everything on which his faith in the reality of his perceptions had been built were suddenly taken from him.

[ 13 ] Apart from this fact, there is yet another through which the human being might be thrown into confusion if he were to enter the imaginative world without guidance, for the occult student has in the first place to learn to know himself as distinct from all other spiritual beings. In physical life man has feelings, desires, longings, passions, ideas, and so forth. True, these are all caused by things and beings of the outer world, but the human being knows quite definitely that they form his inner world, and he distinguishes them from the objects of the outer world as what is happening within his soul. But as soon as the imaginative sense is awakened, this ease of differentiation completely ceases. His own feelings, ideas, passions, and so forth, literally step outside him and take on form, color and tone. He stands before them now as before wholly strange objects and beings in the physical world. It will be understood that the confusion can become complete if it is remembered what has been said in the chapter, “Some Results of Initiation,” in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. The way in which the imaginative world appears to the observer is described there. All appears there reversed as in a reflected image. What streams out from man appears as if it were coming toward him from outside. A wish that he cherishes changes into a shape—for example, into the form of some fantastic looking animal, or again into an entity resembling a human being. This appears to assail him, to make an attack on him, or to cause him to do this or that. So it can happen that the human being appears to himself as surrounded by a wholly fantastic, often charming and seductive, often also horrible, world of fluttering forms. In reality these are nothing other than his thoughts, wishes, and passions, transformed into images.—It would be a great error to believe it easy to distinguish between this self transformed into images on the one hand and the real spiritual world on the other. At first it is downright impossible for the student to make this distinction. For the identical picture can come from some spiritual being that speaks to men or from something in the interior of the soul, and if one's development is unduly precipitate at this point, there is danger of never learning to separate the two in an orderly fashion. The greatest caution is to be the rule in this regard.—Now the confusion will be still greater in that the wishes and desires of the soul clothe themselves in images of an exactly opposite character from what they really are. It may be assumed, for instance, that vanity clothes itself in a picture in this way. It may appear as a charming shape promising the most wonderful things if its dictates are carried out. Its pronouncements seem to set goals thoroughly good and worth striving for; if followed, they plunge one into moral and other kinds of ruin. Conversely, a good soul quality can clothe itself in unprepossessing garb. At this point only the real knower can differentiate, and only a personality unsusceptible to weakening in respect to a right aim is steady in face of the seductive artifices of his own soul's imagery.—From these considerations it will be recognised how necessary is the guidance of a teacher who, with a sure sense, makes the pupil attentive to what in this realm is phantasm and what is truth. There is no need to believe that the teacher must always stand just behind the pupil. The presence of the teacher close to the occult student in space is not what matters most. Certainly there is the moment when such spatial presence is desirable, and also when it is absolutely necessary. But on the other hand, the occult teacher finds means of remaining in touch with the pupil even when spatially far removed. Besides, it must be observed that much of what takes place between teacher and pupil in this sphere when they meet can go on working often for months and perhaps for years afterward. But there is one thing that must surely destroy the necessary link between teacher and pupil. This happens if the pupil loses confidence in the teacher.—It is particularly bad if this bond of confidence is broken before the pupil has learned to distinguish the illusory reflections of his own soul from true reality.

[ 14 ] Now it could perhaps at this point be argued that if a connection with the teacher occurs in this way, the occult student loses all freedom and independence. He gives himself, so to speak, wholly into the hands of the teacher. This is in truth, however, not at all the case. The various methods of occult training certainly differ from one another with respect to this dependence upon the teacher. This dependence can be required to be a greater or a lesser one. It is relatively greatest in the method that was followed by the Oriental occultists, and even today is taught by them as their own. This dependence is already proportionately less in the so-called Christian initiation, and, properly speaking, its complete omission comes on the path of knowledge that, since the fourteenth century, has come to be advanced by the so-called Rosicrucian occult schools. On this path the teacher can by no means be disregarded; that is impossible. But all dependence on him ceases. How this is possible will be presented in the continuation of these thoughts hereafter. Therein we shall explain precisely how these three paths of knowledge differ: the oriental, the Christian, and the Rosicrucian. In the Rosicrucian approach there is nothing at all upsetting in any way to a modern man's sense of freedom. It will also be described in this continuation how one person or another as an occult student, even in present-day Europe, may travel, not the Rosicrucian, but the Oriental path, or the old Christian; although today the Rosicrucian is the most natural. This way, as will be seen in due course, is not at all unchristian. A man can go this way without endangering his Christianity, as can also he who supposes himself to stand at the pinnacle of the modern scientific world-conception.

[ 15 ] But perhaps one other explanation is needed. One might feel tempted to ask whether the occult student could not be spared going through the delusions of his own soul. But if this happened, he would never attain to that independent discernment so desirable for him. For by no other means can the singular nature of the imaginative world be so well grasped as by the observation of one's own soul. To begin with, man knows the inner life of his soul from one side. He is immersed in it, and this is just what the occult student has to learn—not only to look at things from outside, but to observe them as if he himself were within all of them. If his own thought world now meets him as something foreign, and he already knows a thing from one side, he can still learn to know it from another. He must himself become to a certain extent the first example of such knowledge. Here in the physical world he is accustomed to something quite different. Here he looks upon all other things only from outside, but he experiences himself only from the inside. As long as he remains in the physical world, he can never see behind the surface of things. He can never go outside himself, “slip out of his skin,” as it were, to observe himself from outside. This objective observation of himself is literally his first obligation in occult training, this helps him learn also to look beneath the surface of outer facts and beings.

Esteemed attendees! Among the ideas that the theosophical movement is trying to bring to people's attention again, the two words “reincarnation” and “karma” are combined in the title of today's lecture as the solution to the human riddle. Our contemporaries have very different interpretations of these two words. Some are quick to declare Theosophy fantastic and nonsensical; they say, “How can anyone possibly know something like that?” For others, this knowledge is a kind of deliverance; the word to the riddle is the riddle's solution, which they have found; the nightmare under which they have been suffering has been lifted. The mystery of why some people are in deepest misery while others seem to walk in the highest happiness is solved when we consider that in times gone by the foundations were laid for both the abilities with which a person is born and his destiny in this life on earth.

Those, however, to whom this seems so fantastic, do not consider that their environment is not the only one on earth. There are many people who believe in repeated lives on earth, just as many as those for whom this idea has been pushed out of their field of vision. For the Asian peoples, re-embodiment is not a dry theory, but a truth of life from which they draw vitality. In earlier times, until the advent of Christianity, this view was widespread in Europe, even in the early days of Christianity. It was not just a view for visionaries; the best of the leaders professed this view. Plato, Giordano Bruno, who was executed for standing up for Copernicus, stood up for it. Their doctrine cannot be separated from the concept of repeated lives on earth. Lessing professes it in his “Education of the Human Race”. It is not just the fanciful spirits of some subordinate religious system that advocate this, but great minds such as Goethe and Jean Paul, because this is the only way they can explain life. One behaves remarkably against the great spiritual heroes such as Plato, Lessing and so on, whose names one mentions with more or less feigned reverence – there is even a tie named after Giordano Bruno – when one comes across their deepest conviction of repeated life on earth and then shrugs and says: That is one of the weaknesses of this great man. – Is there a greater immodesty than to judge like this? I ask anyone who speaks in this way where they learned the best things they know. It was probably from those whose names are associated with this teaching. Yet they claim to be their judges! They accept from them what suits them and discard what does not.

The theosophical movement seeks to bring the awareness of repeated earthly life to people in a modern way. Science still resists recognizing this teaching. If only they would accept it as a hypothesis, the time will soon come when they will see that without this teaching they cannot solve the mystery of man. Every human being carries within himself an imperishable core of being. What is born and dies with him is only the shell of this core of being. This was there before birth, will be there after death. This core of being has already repeatedly lived on earth and will be born again and again in the womb. The present life is only one among many.

This is not immediately apparent when considered superficially. On first glance, the teaching may seem improbable. The naturalistic way of thinking in the West makes it impossible for us to grasp the matter correctly. There is a certain higher spiritual teaching, as it was cultivated in the East. Many Westerners who have received this teaching have naturally come to separate their outer appearance from their inner core of being in their thoughts when they are alone or with those who have undergone the same schooling and know about this inner core of being.

They think or say: “It is not my actual core of being that is walking around the room, but my body. My body is hungry, my brain is thinking, and so on.

There are spiritual teachings that teach us that the physical body is only a tool for the spiritual essence, that all sense organs only serve to enable it to occupy itself on earth. The average person thinks of their body as “I”; the spiritually trained person has the sensation of a duality, a spiritual “I” that has nothing to do with the external one; more and more, they distinguish the imperishable core of their being from the physical body. What was there before birth has nothing to do with the physical body, but a lot to do with physical needs.

The idea that it is Mr. Smith or John Doe who returns is wrong. Only someone who can detach himself from the idea that he is his body can recognize what it is that reincarnates itself as Fritz Schulze or Johann Maier. Only when he is able to do this can he begin to understand what it is that reincarnates itself.

Now we must once again briefly consider what remains and returns to earthly existence and what passes away. Firstly, the physical body disintegrates at death because it consists of physical matter – it passes away.

Secondly, the etheric body, the life body: this is what enables the physical organs to perform their function; the moving, the invigorating in the body. The clock also moves, it consists of a wheel train; if I take out a wheel, it stops working; if I put the clock down and the wheel next to it, they can lie there for a long time, they do not change. But if I cut off a hand from the human body, it does not remain as it was; it withers away because it was connected with the body, of which I have separated it, in a living, organic way. This etheric body also disintegrates. It merges into the general ether.

The third body can be recognized when we consider what lives in the human being – not just the connection between skin and bones – but what he carries within him in terms of suffering and joy, desires and passions; these are things that live in him just as much as blood and heart; they are just as alive. This is the astral body.

Fourthly, there is the I, which distinguishes human beings from the creatures of the other realms. The physical body is shared with minerals, the etheric body with plants, and the astral body with animals.

The I works on the astral body. We must keep reminding ourselves of this. The example often given can make this clear to us. What Darwin experienced with a “savage” who eats his own kind: this “savage” also consists of the four basic parts of the human being mentioned; but his astral body still differs little from that of the animal. He still blindly follows his instincts. Darwin tried to make it clear to the “savage” how wrong it was for him to eat his brother. The “savage” said that Darwin could not possibly know whether it was bad or good before he had eaten it. — From this we can see that this “savage” had no concept of right and wrong at all; he could not yet make a distinction between good and evil. What he likes, what tastes good to him, is good for him; what tastes bad or displeases him is bad for him. His ego has not yet worked on his astral body; he has not yet ennobled it. Culture ennobles the instincts and makes them subservient to duty. The ideal of duty teaches man to distinguish between what attracts him and what he should avoid. In this way he recognizes right and wrong. When man has come so far that he is able to distinguish between what he may follow and what he may not follow, he has learned to control his astral body from the ego.

When we look at people today, we find that they have worked on one part of their astral body and not the other. We must make a strict distinction between these two parts of the astral body. One part is still like that of an animal, blindly following its inclinations and impulses. The other part is the part of the astral body that man has transformed from a purely natural state into something nobler. There is a sharp and important boundary between these two parts. The part that the human being has not yet worked on will be lost after a short time when he dies. The part of the astral body that we have not made our own is given back to nature. What we have purified and transformed from astral matter remains our imperishable property. The unrefined part of the instinct must fall away; what has been refined remains and is incorporated into the ego. Thus man works on the immortalization, on the making immortal of his astral body. It is obvious that this work cannot be completed in one life. Logically structured, the doctrine of repeated earth lives appears through this contemplation.

For anyone who, through personal insight, knows the inner life of man, re-embodiment is a fact as certain as the fact that there are so and so many people sitting here in this hall. He knows of this fact through higher vision; he has not arrived at it through logical speculation.

But this evening we want to make clear to ourselves the logic of the matter. — Let us compare the “savage” who has done very little work with, say, St. Francis of Assisi, who had almost nothing left in him that he had not ennobled. He had brought the remainder of the earth down to the smallest degree. To reach this level, he must have had completely different abilities and powers at his disposal than that “savage”. Would it not be just as nonsensical to assume that these abilities came out of nothing as it would be to assume that a lower animal could arise from the mud, or that a lion did not descend from a lion? If you wanted to claim that, you would consider it foolish in the physical realm. We are reluctant to assume miracles in the physical realm, but not such a much greater miracle in the higher realm! What is inherited in the animal, so that only lions descend from a lion, only tigers from a tiger, and so on, are generic characteristics. But in the individual human being, there can be no question of the genus. Every human being has individual characteristics; only someone who chooses to ignore them can fail to see this. For human beings, the individual is as important as the species is for animals. An animal repeats the species, a human being repeats the individual. The individual human being not only displays the characteristics of his parents, but is also something in itself.

This must be explained. In addition to what we have inherited from our parents, something spiritual lives in us; that is, something spiritual lives in each of us that can be traced back to a previous existence. Just as the physical person has acquired physical characteristics through heredity, so the spiritual person has acquired spiritual qualities. And he has acquired them in previous lives by learning to control his astral body. And he has brought this ability with him into this life. It is always only the core of his being that reappears on earth.

Some might well object: Yes, if that is so, then shouldn't a person remember their previous lives? The question is wrongly put. Imagine you have a four-year-old child in front of you and someone asks: Why can't people do arithmetic? Of course, the four-year-old child can't do arithmetic. Let him reach the age of ten and he will be able to do it. There comes a time for everyone when they will realize that the more they ascend, the more they will also come to understand their previous lives on earth. For the majority it is still quite impossible. One must first know what is embodied before one can recognize what happens to it. Man desires to remember, but that which he wants to remember has fallen away from him, that which has significance for him. Only when he can grasp himself as a spirit can there be any question of remembering.

Whoever needs external impressions to feel does not become aware of the immortal, cannot learn anything about it. It only shines forth in the one who conquers the spiritual core. Certain phenomena occur here and there where memory becomes clairvoyant; for example, in the face of mortal danger, the whole of life sometimes arises in memory.

We must be clear about this. If man, as he is now, is to remember, he must call upon the etheric body for help. Memory lies in the etheric body. The instincts are in the astral body. We could not have memories without the etheric body, but they are clouded and inadequate because they are hindered by the physical body and drowned out by the surging feelings of the astral body. During sleep, the etheric body remains connected to the physical body and causes dreams. Shortly after death, the astral and etheric bodies separate from the physical body; then the magnetic bond that tied them to the body is broken. In the short time between the lifting of the finer bodies and their separation from the physical body, the whole of life flashes before the soul as in a great painting. It is written in the etheric body; memories emerge of long, long times; there is a dead calm over the soul; it is blind and deaf to its surroundings; deep inside, it comes to life with a sublime content.

Thomas a Kempis, in his “Nachfolge Christi” (The Imitation of Christ), has much to say about this language of the soul. His book is almost on a par with the New Testament.

When this spiritual power arises deep within us, it gradually allows us to recognize our spiritual essence. It is a very specific experience, the inner realization of the self-generating thought. We can get some idea of the process if we become completely absorbed in a work of art, to the extent that we forget ourselves completely. If you want to know yourself, your innermost self, there must be perfect calm. Nothing, absolutely nothing of the personal ego must interfere. This requires a degree of living in the object that takes place in the chaste ether element. When a person has learned to let the divine thought live in him and is able to trace his life back to his birth, then an image appears before his soul. It is the image of what he saw at the hour of death in the previous life, the overview of the previous earthly life. He cannot remember the whole earthly life; that comes only later.

At first, this memory will be repeated until it becomes certain, before the memory goes back further and further. Anyone who knows what happens to a person will understand the context. Anyone who believes that a person receives everything from nature will find it strange. But to those who believe in the work that man has to do, it will be clear. What a person's character is, that person has created for himself: What you think today, you will be tomorrow. — Beautiful, pure thoughts, often, often cherished, duties faithfully fulfilled, will pass into character. Thought forms character.

On the other hand, it is obvious – and easy to notice – that a person's environment, their surroundings, their occupation, has a great influence on their character. On closer examination, we will find that the opportunities offered to people in life are related to their inclinations, desires and cravings. Compare a North American bank official with a botanist. The botanist draws very different things to himself than the bank official. This is quite natural and natural. They are the consequences of the innate dispositions that each person has acquired in their previous life. The actions are the counter-shock to the environment. An example: a carpenter has worked all day. The half-finished table that he finds in the morning causes him to continue working on this table. He does not work out of nothing. The half-finished table determines my fate for tomorrow, the carpenter can say. So the previous day is the karma for the next.

Those animals that crawled into a dark cave and could not find their way out again gradually lost their eyesight because they could not use it in the dark. Their offspring lacked the organs of sight altogether; in the dark they needed other organs. These animals prepared their own fate. Their migration into the dark cave was their karma. In the past they created their future. What I do changes the outside world. If I break off a twig, I have changed the course of the world. The tree does not continue to grow as it was in its nature to do. With every deed we change the course of events; it would have been different if I had not done that deed.

The same applies to the spiritual life. Through our feelings and thoughts, we change the world. Because all my actions have an influence on the world, my karma consists of the changes that I have brought about in the world through my actions. Thoughts form character; actions form counter-actions. They fall back on the doer in the next life.

Example: I have offended a person. By doing so, I have brought about a change; now I am obliged to restore the world to the state from which I disturbed it. I have made the world imperfect; it demands that I make it perfect again. I am bound by my obligation until I have restored the disturbed harmony. If the harmony is not restored in this life, the guilt remains until the next life on earth and must be compensated for.

This is how repeated lives on earth are connected. If I was born into hardship and misery in this life, it was because I had previously brought disharmony into the world. This is how world justice is administered. Man is answerable for his actions; there is no other forgiveness for these than the counter-action that is performed as atonement. This is the unpardonable sin against the spirit. What he does in the lower world must be made good by him in the lower world. Natural life brings about nature in him; if he errs there, it will be forgiven him. Man is answerable for what he has done himself. If he does evil, consciously goes against the cosmic order, it is a sin against the self, against the spirit. The self has been violated by the conscious act. Theosophy is not dogma, it does not form a sect. It is life, full life. Mere theory is of no use. Even if I knew everything perfectly and did not want to apply it in life, it would be of no use to me. You have to be convinced of the truth in a practical way.

How should we relate to this? We have to be thorough and look at the bottom of things. If we know the reason and the cause of the bad things in the world, it is depressing at first. Then I have to say to myself: I have prepared my destiny, my character myself. But on the other hand, consciousness also has an uplifting effect. We are the masters of the future. What I do now forms the basis for the future. If I work on improving my character today, I know that this work is not in vain. This gives a blessed consolation to those who are inwardly convinced of the matter. The deepest peace of mind sprouts from this teaching. Life becomes different, also in relation to our fellow human beings. We are only too easily inclined to judge when we see in others what we do not like. If we have gained an understanding of karma, how different it becomes. Then we say: 'You may be bad now, you may lie and cheat, but perhaps this is not the first time you have faced me, and who knows whether I am not perhaps to blame for the fact that you are so bad today.

If someone finds this ridiculous, it is a sign that they have not yet penetrated deeply into the law of karma. Once you have come to the realization of the higher self, you will no longer pass by your fellow human beings indifferently or criticize them; you will learn to understand the connection between person and person. He meets people on every street corner; he thinks, can I help you, maybe I can make you better if I did something wrong in a past life. This idea, which is possible today, applied to life, makes life clearer, more transparent. We learn to understand people better and to help them better.

It is nonsense to say: I should not help him, he has brought his evil karma upon himself. — The moment you are standing in front of him, his karma is that you help him. If you do not help him, he will be helped in some other way. But you have neglected your duty. If you help him, you can say to yourself: If I help him, his future life will be better. The doctrine of karma teaches us to help ourselves. Through my own practical life, the doctrine becomes ever clearer; those who live by it will find it to be true - and only in life. Through recurring experiences, it will be proven to you throughout your entire life.

Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, summarized this teaching in a confession. He spoke of the whole world as of the body of his Father, as every body of man is a dwelling place of the Father. Man is unconscious of the Father; he needs a guide to the Father. Only through the Son do we come to the Father; he wants to be our guide. After every life on earth, the soul returns to the Father's body. In every life on earth, the soul passes through a dwelling that is taken from the divine Father Body. Jesus Christ says: “In my Father's house are many mansions.”

Dear attendees,

As we look around at our fellow human beings and consider the spiritual striving with which they seek to satisfy their inner yearning for something higher, we find that a major change has taken place over the past century. For a long time, the prevailing tendency was to seek only in the material, the obvious, that which has value for them. For them, the spirit was the emanation of the material, just as the hand of the clock is the expression of what is happening inside the clock, namely the wheelwork. They sought to explain all forces in terms of the material. Anyone who still talked about the divine spirit, about the soul, was, in the opinion of those setting the tone, stuck in outdated views. All life should arise from the material.

In recent years, a major change has taken place in this respect. There is a deep yearning in the world for a spiritual deepening, for solving the mystery of what lives within form. Even today's natural scientists no longer shy away from speaking of soul and spirit.

From three sides, today's humanity is trying to penetrate into the depths of existence. The most comprehensive research is the theosophical worldview. It emerged thirty years ago as an association of philosophy, science, religion and morality. Theosophists are spiritual researchers who strive to explore the spiritual life with the highest powers of man. But Theosophical research is just as certain as science. It aims to recognize the truth and only accepts what has been found through the strictest research into the truth. This is a difficult path, and our aim is to make this path popular.

The second area in which man tries to approach the spiritual and soul is the area of hypnotism and suggestion. For some time now, abnormal phenomena have been observed that cannot be explained by the mechanism of the brain. However, it is becoming apparent that there are many things in the world that our conventional wisdom did not dream of until thirty years ago. Scholars have been forced to take note of some inexplicable phenomena.

When Wilhelm Preyer, who wrote The Life of Darwin, pointed out that there were phenomena that could not be explained by conventional theories, his colleagues shrugged off his claim. Yet the phenomena increased. The appearance of the Danish mesmerist Hansen caused a great sensation among laymen, as many will still remember. He sat a person on a chair and could then do whatever he wanted with him. He gave him a drink of vinegar-sour liquid, telling him it was delicious wine, whereupon the person drank with pleasure; and only when he awoke from the state into which Hansen had put him did he shake himself and spit out what he had drunk. Or he would give him a potato and tell him it was a beautiful pear, which he would then bite into with relish. Yes, he would make him crawl on all fours and bark like a dog.

Some naturalists shrugged their shoulders and smiled, saying that these were just abnormal phenomena; but they did not engage in any attempt at explanation. However, there were individual researchers who wanted to try to see if something could be explored in this way about the hidden aspects of a person's mental life.

The third field in which his followers are so keen is spiritualism. Those who are not spiritualists or spiritualists cannot understand how otherwise reasonable people can come to believe that they can summon any deceased person to learn all kinds of secrets about the afterlife. The fact that some people make an effort to gain knowledge in other ways does not impress the spiritualists at all. What such a person says is considered fantastic by them. They think that to get to the source, you just have to die. They often turn to those who had no special higher wisdom in them while they were alive, and believe that now that they are dead, they can explain the most difficult areas of existence.

These are the three areas in which people seek enlightenment about the supernatural life.

The first, the theosophical area, is nothing more than the popular proclamation of a mystery wisdom that has always existed. The mysteries always showed the development of man, including that of the spiritual world.

There stands before me the perfect animal; was it really made out of a clod of earth? No! It has developed from imperfection to perfection. Honest theorists have also recognized this and traced this development from undeveloped sea animals to apes. The same development that the physical form has undergone has also been experienced by the soul. The human soul has also developed upwards. We become aware of this when we compare a “savage” who blindly follows his instincts and desires and devours his fellow human beings, with a European man of culture who submits to the commandment when it says: “You must not do that.” The latter has gradually learned to let duties take the place of desires. From an average person, we look up to Schiller. How much higher he stands above the average person! He has already cast off his desires. From there we come to the higher human being who has raised himself through piety, like Francis of Assisi; from there we look up to the initiates like Plato and Pythagoras. Between these and the ordinary person, the difference is just as great as between a cartilaginous fish and a lion.

The theosophically minded person says to himself that this soul of Schiller — or even the soul of Buddha — may well have developed itself to this height, that it has gone through the same primitive foundation from ancient times as today's savage. Thus, he sees ever higher stages of development before him. He sees the possibility for every soul to swing itself up to ever higher knowledge, to an eternal goal in life. What has lived in the soul before birth and what will live on after death also lives in us today. Why can't we see this soul? Because we lack the organs to perceive it. Living and perceiving are two different things; there is a great difference between them. The blind person also lives, but he does not perceive. If a person does not perceive the soul within him and the souls around him, it is because he lacks the organs to perceive it. But in man these organs can be awakened. Just as the blind man sees when the cataract is removed, so can the higher organs of perception be awakened in man, and then he can perceive from his own vision, and then he can enter into the higher worlds.

At first, this happens during sleep, when the body is resting from the work done. Gradually, the brain then transmits to the mind what the spirit has perceived during sleep, and the mind also learns to find its way in the higher worlds. The world of the senses envelops us in darkness. No man can say, if he is reasonable, that the inner nature of man is dead; but he does not perceive it. But there is the possibility to make it perceptible. Just as a whole new world of light and colors opens up for the blind-born after the operation, so it is for the person to whom the spiritual eye and ear is opened through practice; the deep night that surrounds him gradually brightens and begins to perceive the spiritual things that surround him. When man's inner life is thus awakened, the whole of nature comes to life for him. He finds the soul of the forest, the soul of the plant, the whole world is ensouled for him.

Some will say: I know nothing of this. That may be so; but he is a poor critic who wants to judge something he knows nothing about. Only he who has seen for himself can judge it.

What world is this that man enters in this way? It is the same world that the ordinary person enters at death. The clairvoyant consciously enters the world that one otherwise only enters after death. For him, death is only a change in life. For those who cannot see, survival after death is a matter of faith; some deny the fact. For the one who can see, all doubt disappears; for him, death is only the laying aside of the physical garment; for the one who has the organ of perception, the soul is there just as before.

What is important, therefore, is that we create organs for ourselves and develop our own soul upwards to the spiritual world, to the disembodied souls. All will struggle through, all will become companions, citizens of the spiritual world; but it is a slow process. Therefore, the call goes out to everyone: Develop your soul! Today, admittedly, there are only a few who have grown beyond the average human being and who, from their own experience, bear witness to the higher worlds. But today, through the theosophical world view, this knowledge is to be brought to all people.

Listening to the stories of the soul's development is the first step towards developing one's own spiritual life. Becoming familiar with the theosophical teachings is quite different from scientific learning. There is a big difference between reading an ordinary book – once I have taken note of its content, it has given me what it is supposed to give – but when I read a theosophical book, it gives me spiritual nourishment in a special way; by awakening thought powers in me, it ignites a fire in my soul. And these powers of thought are life-giving, awakening the slumbering powers in the soul. And so reading a theosophical book or listening to a theosophical lecture is the first step towards one's own independent realization. And just as the first step on this first path to the realization of higher worlds takes place in full day-consciousness, so every step forward is taken in bright day-consciousness.

Even if a person initially has his experiences at night while sleeping, he still takes the perceptions into clear day-consciousness and is awake from morning till night. As he develops further into the higher worlds, he will also be able to see the spiritual light that always surrounds us during the day. In true, correct clairvoyance, the person must be firmly and securely conscious at the center. Only a very reasonable person can enter this path, because only such a person can rationally grasp and logically think through each step forward. This is the clairvoyance to which Theosophy wants to lead people.

You can also achieve a certain clairvoyance by tuning down your consciousness. Souls are constantly around us; for the clairvoyant in the above sense, the spiritual light is not extinguished by the lamplight or daylight. For a different degree of clairvoyance, it is necessary to dim the lamplight so that the weaker light can be recognized. Let us be clear about this. If we want to recognize a small light that is outshone by bright lamplight, we can achieve our purpose in two ways. Either we can dim the lamplight so that the weaker light can shine in the darkness, or we can fan the small light or fire so that it outshines the flame of the lamplight. The theosophically trained clairvoyant does the latter. In full day-consciousness, he can make the light shine, whether daylight or lamplight or darkness surrounds him. The situation is different with mediums, in whom clairvoyance of a different kind occurs, not in full day-consciousness, but in a trance. Thus in a state where day-consciousness is extinguished; there the soul is given the opportunity to see the intermediate light because the waking mind consciousness is immersed in darkness. With the clairvoyant, the world, which is otherwise darkness, becomes light. With the medium, this world begins to shine when the visible has become invisible to the medium. The other two areas do not deal with the waking consciousness; they appeal to the trance consciousness.

We now come to hypnosis. Through some influence or other, a person's consciousness is so subdued that he can no longer control his actions; to varying degrees, the bright consciousness of day is subdued. Suggestion has such an influence on people. The man to whom you say, “Here is a pear,” while a potato is put into his hand, has not lost the ability to see; he can hear and see, but he has lost the ability to control the perceptions through the ear and the eye. Consciousness is dulled to the extent that he is only receptive to what you tell him. As long as he is awake, he can say and do whatever he wants; then he can control his actions. Now that the waking daytime consciousness has faded away, the mental consciousness is still there. Through various means, one can put a person into such a state, for example, by looking at a shiny object. When consciousness is tuned down to a certain degree, the person is a suitable subject for suggestion. He then does things that he would not do if he were awake, for example, he will crawl on all fours like a dog and bark. He hears what is being said but cannot make sense of it. But suggestion can also be carried out without such means. This is called verbal suggestion or suggestive hypnosis, and many contemporary researchers believe that everything comes from such verbal suggestions. What seemed miraculous to us — the barking of the hypnotized person — no longer seems miraculous to us now that we have seen that when the physical-sensory consciousness is extinguished or dulled, the soul-spiritual rapport from soul to soul has been established.

If you go through life with an open mind, you can observe this soul-to-soul rapport in many aspects of daily life. Not only what we hear and see has an effect on us; souls have a direct effect on each other; this also explains the otherwise inexplicable sympathy and antipathy. However, much of it is based on suggestion. Anyone who observes the workings of the soul will also be able to explain the powerful influence that some speakers exert on the masses, even though they give no logical reasons for their convictions. These are subtle effects of suggestion. Interesting observations can be made in this area. The well-known theater director Laube had a subtle suggestive effect on the audience. He brought the great actor Sonnenthal and the actress Wolter to the top. At first the audience did not want to know anything about them; but Laube was sure of his cause. He said: “Not today, but they will eat them!” The Viennese laughed at first, then mocked, but finally they also recognized the greatness of the excellent actors. Through continued listening, the audience's opposition was lulled and they became receptive to the impression that the great actors made on them.

How does science view these phenomena of suggestion? Wilhelm Wundt, who is almost worshipped like a god by some scientists, could not deny the facts, but he did not seek or find a satisfactory explanation for them either. He realized that a part of the brain was switched off during hypnosis, but he could not give a scientific explanation for it and shrugged his shoulders because he did not believe in the existence of the soul. His students tried to track down the existence of the soul and its effects.

The ancients were well aware of the suggestive effects. [Kircher] proved them to his contemporaries as early as 1646 by means of a simple experiment. He took a chicken, put it on the table, hit it a few times on the head with his fist, then drew a straight chalk line on the table, and the chicken obediently walked along this line without thinking of flying away. — It is also known that farmers would draw a thick circle of chalk around geese that were not supposed to fly away; no goose dared to leave the circle.

The knowledge of suggestive effects was buried under the rubble for a long time until the half-quack Hansen uncovered it again. The scholars mostly behaved dismissively towards the phenomena that were new to them. However, there were also unprejudiced men, especially doctors, who took a closer look at the matter and soon realized that a whole new avenue was opening up for them in particular. While it was previously believed that the soul has nothing to do with the body, it was gradually realized that the errors of the soul can even have a harmful effect on the body. The sick bodies are built by errors of the soul, the healthy bodies are built by healthy souls.

All of you gathered here will not be able or willing to dispute spiritualism, the third area we want to turn to. So we don't need to dwell on the evidence for its real existence. If we look at the spiritists, we will notice something. Most of them are quite gullible when it comes to the spirits they want to see, and incredulous when it comes to the spirit that lives in man.

You spiritists want to see the spirit! Why not enrich yourselves by recognizing your own spirit! You really often do much wiser things in your ordinary life than sit down at the table to converse with departed spirits!

When nine people sit around a table, there are nine spirits present, and it seems to me much more useful for these nine spirits to converse with each other than to summon foreign spirits to converse with them. Because spiritualism is known, it is known that a lot of fraud is done in the process; but it is also known that many interesting phenomena occur.

For the theosophist, the question arises as to whether it is appropriate to approach the spiritual world in this way. For the clairvoyant, the disembodied souls are of course companions, and he advises people to develop their own soul so that they too can see. The spiritist says: Why should I become different from what I am? I can save myself that; I don't like developing my mind. – The spiritualist seeks to make the spirit manifest itself to him. The theosophist wants to develop himself up to the spirit, to experience the spirit through his own soul.

The spiritualists are materialists. They say: What do I care about the spiritual worlds? I want to see! - Spiritism originated as a reaction against materialism. People believed in the material, they longed for the spiritual. And so they also wanted to make the spirit materially visible. This did not prove useful for human culture. What was needed was this: to descend even deeper in order to learn to understand the world from within itself. By trying to draw the spirit down to themselves, spiritists lose all control over the spiritual world. One thing is clear: only those who retain their rational minds can judge correctly.

Spiritualist séances whet our curiosity, and curiosity is selfishness. It should not be ignored that many are driven by noble motives and that they mean well. But on the whole, the matter cannot have a moralizing effect, since it leads to the most blatant materialism, in that one even wants to materialize spirits. Fortunately, a large number of spiritualists have saved themselves by joining the theosophical movement.

In this science, every step forward is controlled by the logical mind. So what might happen in a seance? When a person dies, he discards his physical body; the corpse decays; the soul leaves him, and this dissolves soon after death. The human being then still has the astral body; much, much later he also discards this when he enters devachan. Then he leaves an astral corpse in Kamaloka. This has no intelligence, but it can still respond to questions in an automated way. It is these shadows that manifest themselves very often. It is nonsense to turn to the astral corpses. The phenomenon may be correct, but man is not able to judge it. In other cases, one is not dealing with human beings at all. Confusion also occurs frequently. It can be compared to using the telephone; you hear a voice but do not see the person speaking. Confusion of voices can also occur. You speak to a different person than you think. It is like that and much worse in the spiritual world. Everything is uncertain; nothing gives us sufficient guarantee. Everything is withdrawn from clear day-consciousness.

This is how Theosophy stands in relation to the other two fields. The first materialists claimed that no stone could fall from the sky. And now we find meteorites in every natural history museum.

When we look at hypnosis, we see that the scientific world was quite dismissive, even mocking and hostile towards it. But gradually the scientists have been tamed by hypnosis to register the phenomena, and hypnotism has gained respect.

The spiritualists, who long so much for certainty, often become fanatics; but a little bit of materialistic spiritualism has served to reveal the mystery of the invisible world.

Mysterious in broad daylight
Nature cannot be robbed of the veil,

says Goethe, and Goethe was a theosophist.

The scholars only engage in what they can register; only series of numbers and percentages count for them. They achieve a little, and many of the researchers deviate from it nevertheless. They examine the phenomena for their authenticity with the greatest accuracy. Whether they come across the spirit in this way: In the meantime, their scientific endeavors may be quite good until they learn to take the only right path to knowledge.

The theosophical worldview truly leads people to higher things. It wants to guide people with bright, clear clarity and bring them proof that all their yearning for clarity can be satisfied, as Goethe said from his own spiritual insight:

The spiritual world is not closed, your mind is closed; your heart is dead. Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted

The earthly breast at dawn!

To me it seems fitting today to speak of something that concerns us very closely; this our home for anthroposophical work in Stuttgart. Perhaps for all of you who have entered this room, and then with a kind of inner vision try to survey the feelings which come to you here, there is a word which may describe what we should like to indicate as the special characteristic of our experience today, namely, mood, feeling; we have doubtless a special feeling, an exalted frame of mind when we are gathered together in this hall. If one follows this feeling further occultly, one may from their standpoint look into the foundation of our life. The most noticeable thing is that we are surrounded by a certain shade of colour which has been used for this room a deep ultramarine. The fact that in many respects combinations of colour play a great part with us, you will also have seen from the way in which we have tried to present the Mystery Plays, and also from the colours of other rooms which we have been able to dedicate to anthroposophical work.

Now it is by no means a matter of indifference to a person in a certain frame of mind what kind of colour he is surrounded by. And further, it is not immaterial what principle shade of colour acts upon a person of this or that temperament, intellectual nature of character. It is also not immaterial for the whole human organisation whether a certain shade of colour acts upon him by being repeated again and again for a long time, or whether it acts only temporarily. You will remember that we covered the hall which served us for the 1907 Congress with a certain shade of red; but from this the conclusion must not be drawn that red is always the right colour for a lecture room. The room here we have covered with a different colour, and if one enquires the reason for these different procedures, the answer is that the hall at Munich was used for a few days for a particular festive occasion, and event which was over in a few days, and was intended to arouse the frame of mind appropriate to this occasion. But here we have a workroom in which our Stuttgart friends will do their anthroposophical work and carry on their classes again and again from week to week. Essentially we are dealing with a room which will be used for oft-recurring classes.

You will best realise the importance of colour if we describe how it affects occultists. For this it is necessary that a person should free himself completely from everything else and devote himself to the particular colour, immerse himself in it. If the person who devotes himself to the colour which covers these physically dense walls were one who had made curtain occult progress it would come about that after a period of this complete devotion the walls would disappear from his clairvoyant vision; the consciousness that the walls shut off the outer world would vanish. Now what which first appears is not merely that he sees the neighbouring houses outside, that the walls become like glass, but in the sphere that opens up there comes a world of purely spiritual phenomenon, spiritual facts and beings become visible. We need only reflect that behind everything around us physically there are spiritual beings and facts. That which lies at the foundation of the physical objects outside in a certain way become visible, what becomes visible is not the same if there are different surroundings. The worlds which surround us spiritually are of many kinds, many different kinds of elementary beings are around us, These elementary beings are not enclosed in boxes or in such a state that they live in various houses. The law of impenetrability only applies to the physical world; penetrability is the law for the higher worlds. But they cannot all be seen in the same way; according to the capacity of clairvoyant vision there may be visible and invisible beings in the same space. When spiritual beings become visible in any particular instance, depends upon the colour to which we devote ourselves. In a red room, other beings become visible than is a blue room, when one penetrates to them by means of colour. We may ask: what happens if one is not clairvoyant? That which the clairvoyant does consciously is done unconsciously by the etheric body of a person if it is not clairvoyantly trained; it enters into a certain relation with the same beings. The consequence of this is nothing less than that, according to our surroundings, we come in touch with one or another kind of spiritual beings. Now, further, it is a case of being able to establish a favourable or unfavourable connection with the beings that surround us. Let us suppose that we use a colour for the room which brings us into connection with beings who disturb us in what we do in this room, then the colour is unfavourable. Conversely, our etheric body may be assisted by spiritual beings though using the corresponding colour; this is then, of course, favourable. Now this room is devoted to repeated study through which we desire to progress in our knowledge. If we have to work in such a room as this, it is necessary that we should be able fully to devote ourselves with our entire human organisation to what is brought before us. We do not wish to be disturbed by anything, we wish to work under the best conditions so that we may take in these things as well as possible; naturally one person will take then in better, another not so well, but the best possible conditions are to be made, so that each one can devote himself—so far as it is possible in accordance with his inner organisation—to the studies which are here brought forward. The colour surrounding us here, brings us in touch with beings in our spiritual environment who come to help us in our etheric body in the spiritual truths within us. In such a building and such a room as this, we are least disturbed, our etheric body is not burdened with fighting against prejudicial influences of certain elementary beings, but the forces of our etheric body are able to work more easily.

Thus we see that for work which is continually repeated and for which there must be a certain calmness of soul as a foundation, exactly this surrounding must be chosen. Let us suppose that we have to deal with something particularly earnest, but which is temporary; in this case if we consider the occult law it is very advantageous—if we are to have not only a festive spirit but also inward strength—to surround ourselves with red. If we have to make a strong decision of the will, we must overcome the spiritual beings which penetrate in. That is to say, on festive occasions we must become strong, so that what we may become a permanent impulse; and unsympathetic weakness of disposition and does not allow earnest decisions of the will to be made, which although roused in a short time, are to remain permanently. The effects of colour are extremely important.

Now you know that under certain circumstances in the general state of our cosmic environment, we see a fundamental colour outspread above us; the blue sky. This blue of the sky is very important to the people of our age, for though the blue expanse of space working upon our souls they continually receive the call to come into touch with the beings in the great world, these beings act upon us through this colour and call upon our etheric body to think of the spiritual. With regard to the blue sky it was not always with man as it is now. The people of the present day think that men have always been as they are now, but the entire constitution of man has changed in the course of time. In those ancient days when man possessed an original clairvoyance there was no blue sky such as exists for present humanity, but at that time when he gazed out into the expanse of space, it was not limited by the blue sky, but he saw into the spiritual worlds which lie out there in space. When our ancient ancestors spoke of heaven beginning there above, that is to say, that the spiritual beings of the Hierarchies are to be found there, they expressed the literal truth.

With these colours which appear transparent (the coloured windows) it is again different from what it is in the case of a colour which is on a wall which we cannot see through. When we observe this shinning bright colour we have to say: Just as through the colour which is on the opaque walls we enter into relation with certain beings, so through the transparent shining colour, we enter into relation with other beings. While the beings with whom we come in touch through the opaque walls are primarily outspread in space, but really have nothing to do with the three kingdoms below us, the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, through shining colours we come in touch with the beings who are directly occupied with bringing the objects of the three kingdoms of nature into being. When we look particularly through shining red, we come in touch with quite a particular type of beings within the kingdom of nature. When shining red forms a kind of window through which to look clairvoyantly into the kingdom of nature, we meet with beings whose work forms the best forces for the future of our earth existence. They have to be there in the kingdoms of nature, so that inner forces may develop in man which make him more and more chaste in his blood, that is to say, in his passion life, and when we look into the kingdom of nature in this way, we are looking upon those beings which, although we may not be aware of it, incite us the most to rouse up and push forward in the purification of our passions.

Besides being surrounded here in this room by certain shades of colour, we see all kinds of tokens and symbolic figures. These are filled with meaning, although I do not mean the meaning which can be found by the intellect. Ingenious persons may discover in them all sorts of curious things, but to occultists explanations such as these mean nothing. The chief point is that these figures are actually here, and if we turn our physical eyes to any one of them, it is not merely the physical eye, but the whole organization, above all, it is the currents of the etheric body which come into motion in quite a special way, they are roused by the course of the lines and by the forms of these figures, so that the etheric body has different movements within it, according as one looks at one figure or another. This means that within the world of etheric substance, which surrounds us, with all the beings incarnated in it, the forms which we see here, are actually present, There are beings who really have these forms in the etheric world; and when we look at one of these figures our etheric body arranges itself in such a way that in its own movements it builds up forms according to these lines, that is, it produces a thought-form which then proceeds from it; and according to the thought-form, will our etheric body be able to make a real union with one or another kind of being. These figures are the means by which this may be accomplished, for when we look at them, we produce within ourselves the thought-forms, that is, the movement-forms in our etheric body. Now these figures are chosen in such a way that when looked at in a rhythmic consecutive order they yield something which is a whole, namely, something which corresponds to a certain stream of development in the outer etheric world, something which through a particular circumstance is favourable to our etheric body; our etheric body has within it the tendency to change, in a certain way it will be different when it is more perfect. The series of forms corresponding to the gradual perfecting of our etheric body will be developed in the consecutive order shown in these figures. When we display these symbolic figures, which are in accordance with certain occult facts, and can let our vision penetrate more deeply, this is a help towards what we are aiming at, and if we produce the corresponding thought-forms in the right consecutive order, we assist our inner being which is to open our understanding for the rhythm which exists when you are speaking of the seven principles of man. We have not placed these figures there merely for decoration, but because they are inwardly connected with what we wish to accomplish here.

We are placed in touch with the surrounding etheric world by means of the thought-forms which we ought to build up in the manner just described; by means of music we are placed in touch with the astral part of our surrounding world. Music acts directly upon our astral body, so that we are made receptive—because this works from within on the etheric body—to all that is incarnated in the astral word, not in the sense in which one speaks of the astral world as contained in kamaloka, but the universal astral world into which the devachanic world also streams down. The revelation through music is a more direct one than when the higher worlds clothe themselves in the forms around us in space; but that which is outspread in space, if it is in accordance with occult results, leaves us independent, whereas music constrains us.

We now come to a kind of action on human beings which affects the etheric body by first stimulating the astral body, also by means of the element of space, and we may also study an example of this in this room. Up above you see two pictures which were contributed to this special occasion by our friend, Stockmeier. These two pictures will later be painted differently, and they will then produce the full effect intended. The effect of these two pictures together, not of each one singly, is somewhat as follows; when first one picture works and then the other afterwards, under all circumstances, whether it is wished or not, the one picture and afterwards the other will together rouse up thought-forms particular formations in the astral body. This remains in the sub-consciousness, and because it is contained in the intention of the pictures—it is only reproduced in an abstract way by means of ideas. Our feeling may perhaps render somewhat more perceptible the thought-forms which our actual body will produce perfectly under all circumstances from these pictures, if Mr. Stockmeier, succeeds in painting them in the right way. The picture on the right; a certain astral form, an kind of dragon is vanquished by a great being who belongs to the higher Hierarchies (Raphael) merely by his magnetic gaze; and when through the development of his will man comes to receive the power of this being into his own will we shall have the powers of which the Greeks thought in connection with the divine powers of Aesclepius with which he healed. All that is contained in the spiritually magnetic gaze, which can have curative effects when it is suitable trained, may be called forth in thought if immediately afterwards we pass over to what belongs to this feeling in the other picture. The optical effects must be conveyed to the phantom, so that with the help of the phantom-forces of the physical body, the effect is strengthened which proceeds from the dragon which is then overcome by the power of Michael. When we acquire the power to feel this thought out of the forces of the universe and think how through the physical body it may receive a vehicle through the will-forces being strengthened, so that a person need no longer say in regard to such forces that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, when we have these consecutive feelings and formations of the astral body, we have something which subconsciously can strengthen the moral nature very much. Thus we can draw moral power directly from the consecutive consideration of the two pictures, and still more from three. But it must be expressly pointed out that this applies only to the united notion of such themes, not to one single theme. If it were to depend upon one picture it would have to be differently formed, the two motives would have to act together, as for example, in the Sistine Madonna; in that instance there is a crossing of two motives which can strengthen the moral nature to the highest degree. Up above the clouds out of which the angels heads are formed, and when we look at the child Jesus in the arms of the mother we perceive that it has originated through the consolidation of the same forces which bring the angels only to a cloud existence. That is one motive, in which we perceive the origin of the pure light-being of man out of the cloud-light of the universe, as it were. This motive meets that which in expressed in the mother; she is full of innocence and love, and from that which appears to us as the body, the face, the lines of the mother, we see coming forth, as it were the warmest love. Light from above, condensing into the pure light-body of the child Jesus, and warming love from below, meeting and touching in the position of the arm—the two motives blending together—this gives subconsciously to our astral body, whether it wishes it or not, if a person only has the patience to devote himself to it, the feeling: It is thy duty to bring thy love towards that which can reveal itself to thee from divine heights, so that thou takest it into thine own arms and realisest it in the world, that thou bringest impulses in life from the spiritual world. The Sistine Madonna is an alter picture in which this thought-form works together with a congregation. We have here to do with two motives which are to rouse in us the frame of mind in which we may become capable of holding fast in thought the laws and the principles of action of the spiritual world. That is the essential point in our anthroposophical work. Spiritual things are always in motion and to the untrained seer they are like dreams. It is difficult to hold fast in thought these moving, fleeting peculiarities of being, and, conversely, it is also difficult in thought to give thought itself such an inner consistency that ont receives the feeling: Thou art thinking a reality of the true spiritual world. We can receive this feeling if we allow these pictures to act upon us in the manner described, not be apathetic towards these things, but look at them repeatedly. Then the forces of the astral body are obliged to experience the effect which may be described by saying, that we come more and more to perceive the true content of anthroposophical thought. We are not coerced unawares, but this recognition is quite free; the co-operation of two motives is something which liberates the free powers of man.

Thus you see that in what surrounds us here all the laws are fulfilled which so-called white magic uses, not to work by means of any overruling force upon modern humanity, but to consider that which is to be worked upon in another human being as a sacred thing which must not be touched, which is to allow the forces of the spiritual world to come forth out of itself. If you bear in mind what has been said in this lecture you will realise how important it is to anthroposophical work that it should have its own home, for you will have received the feeling that such a home must be built and arranged within according to the laws of occultism itself, and indeed, according to laws of occultism which at first are somewhat remote. You will also understand what it means on the whole when we possess no such home and are obliged to give our lectures on Anthroposophy and carry on our studies in the ordinary rooms usually at our disposal. Our age has, indeed, very little talent in the domain which has been touched upon today, and the greatest sins are committed in the realms of form and colour. For instance, the way people dress and the colours they use are outrageous, and when one goes through the streets of a large town and looks at the shop-windows with a vision sharpened by occultism, he will be obliged to decide for himself the question whether what he sees comes from sound reason or from something else. And if the judgment as regards colour is bad, it is still worse with form. But this limited talent also exists in regard to the decoration of rooms, and when it takes place in full consciousness it is frightful to be obliged to hold our anthroposophical lectures in conventional rooms. When this fact is considered and then compared with our present surroundings, with all this which has proceeded from our intentions, which surrounds us not in any way from caprice, but as we must be surrounded, if we wish to work under favourable conditions, then we shall be able to realise the importance of what has been done here; and the words that I have said to you today are intended to help us to realise it.

If we would penetrate into the mysteries of human life we must fix our attention on a great law of existence, I mean what is called the cyclic law. As a rule it is better to explain and describe than to define. In this case also I prefer to explain by definite concepts what is meant by the cyclic course of life, for alongside the actual reality a definition must always appear scanty and lacking in substance. A philosophic school in Greece, wishing to gain insight into the nature of definitions, once set out to give a definition of man. As you know, definitions are intended to provide concepts corresponding to the phenomena of experience, but those having logical insight cannot help feeling the poverty and unfruitfulness of this process. The members of the Greek school eventually agreed to define man as a featherless biped. While this particular definition sounds rather like a silly epigram it does represent the nature of man in certain respects. The next day one of the members of this school brought in a plucked hen and said to the company, “According to your definition this is a man.” A silly way to show the unreality of attempts to define things. Being concerned with realities we will proceed then to describe things in their essential characteristics.

To begin, we will consider a cycle familiar in everyday life, that of our waking and sleeping. What does it really signify? We can only understand the nature of sleep if we realize that in the present epoch the soul activity of man's waking life brings about a continual destruction of delicate structures in the nervous system. With our every thought and with every impulse of will that arises in us under the stimulus of the outside world, we are destroying delicate forms in our brain. In the near future it will more and more be realized how sleep has to supplement our waking day life. We are approaching the point where natural science will join with spiritual science in these matters. Natural science has already produced more than one theory to the effect that our waking life brings a kind of destructive process to nerves and brain. Owing to this fact we have to allow the corresponding reverse process, the compensation, to take place during sleep.

While we are asleep forces are at work in us that do not otherwise manifest themselves, of which we remain unconscious. They are busy reconstructing the finer nerve structures of our brain. Now it is this very destruction that enables us to have processes of thought, and to acquire knowledge. Ordinary knowledge would not be possible if processes of disintegration did not take place in us during our waking hours. Thus, two opposite processes are at work in our nervous system—while we are awake a process of destruction, during sleep a repairing process. Since it is to the destructive process that we owe our consciousness, it is that process we perceive. Our waking life consists in perceiving disintegrating processes. During sleep we are not conscious because no destructive process is at work in us. The force, which at other times creates our consciousness, is in sleep used up in constructive work. There you have a cycle.

Let us now consider what happens during sleep. Because of this alternating cycle of build-up and break-down processes we see why it is so dangerous to health to go without proper sleep. Certainly man's life is so arranged that the danger is not immediately apparent, because what is present in him at any one time has been built up in him for a considerable time before. Thus, the abnormal processes cannot affect his nature as deeply as we might imagine. We could expect people who suffer from sleeplessness to go to pieces quickly, but they do not collapse nearly so quickly. The reason for this is the same as that which holds for people both blind and deaf, like the famous Helen Keller, whose intellect can nevertheless be developed. In the present age this should theoretically be impossible, for what constitutes the greater part of our intelligence enters the brain through eyes and ears. The reason for Miss Keller's intellectual development is that, though the portals of her senses are closed, she has inherited a brain that has the potentiality for development. If man were not an hereditary being such a case as hers would not be possible. Which is to say, if man did not have a much healthier brain through heredity than we generally give him credit for, sleeplessness would in a very short time completely undermine his health. But people mostly have so much inherited strength that insomnia can persist for a long time without seriously injuring them. It remains true, however, that the cycle of construction with its resulting unconsciousness in sleep, and destruction with its consciousness in waking life, fundamentally takes place.

In the totality of human life we perceive not only these smaller cycles but larger ones as well. Here I will call your attention to a cycle I have often mentioned before. Anyone who follows the course of life in the Western world will observe a quite definite configuration of the spiritual life of mankind in the period from the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the last third of the nineteenth. In ordinary life these developments are observed much too vaguely and inaccurately, but if we look into them deeply enough we shall see how, in all directions since the last third of the nineteenth century, there have been signs of an altogether different form of Western spiritual life. Of course, we are at the beginning of this new trend so people do not notice it in its full significance. Just imagine someone trying to speak before such an audience as this, say for instance in the 40's or 50's of the nineteenth century, about the same things I am putting before you here. It is quite unthinkable. It would be absurd. It would have been out of the question to speak of these things as we do now, at any time from the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the last third of the nineteenth. This was the period when the natural scientific mode of thought, the way of thinking that produced the great materialistic achievements, reached its height. The stragglers of scientific intellectualism will go on adhering to it for some time to come, but the actual epoch of materialism is past.

Just as the era of scientific thought began about the fifteenth century, so the era of spiritual thought is now beginning. These two sharply differentiated epochs meet in the very time in which we are living. It will more and more become evident how the new mode of thought has to come in touch with the reality of things. Thought will become very different from the thought of the last four centuries, though the latter had to be so in its time. During this period man's gaze had to be directed outward into the far spaces of the universe. I have often spoken of the great significance for Western spiritual evolution of that moment when Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Giordano Bruno together burst open the blue vault of heaven. Until their time it was believed that the blue cup of the heavens was suspended over our earth. These great thinkers declared that this hollow cup did not really exist. They taught mankind to look out into the infinite distances of cosmic space.

Now what was it that was so significant about Bruno's deed in explaining to men how the blue sphere they had set as the boundary of their power of sight was not really there; when he said, “You have only to realize that it is you yourselves who project it out into space?” The important point was that it marked the beginning of an epoch, which came to an end with the discovery that by means of the spectroscope one could investigate the material composition of the farthest heavenly bodies. A marvelous epoch, this epoch of materialism! Now we are at the starting point of another epoch, one that has its origin in the same laws of growth as the preceding one but that nevertheless is to be the epoch of spirituality. Just as the epoch of natural science was prepared by Bruno's work in breaking through the limits of space, so will the firmament of time be broken through in the age now beginning. Mankind, imagining life to be enclosed between birth and death, or conception and death, will learn that these are only boundaries set by the human soul itself. Just as in earlier times men had themselves set as the boundary of their senses a blue sphere above them, and then of a sudden their vision expanded into the infinite spheres of space, so will the boundaries of time be broken through, those of birth and death. Set free of these there will lie before man's gaze in the infinite sea of time all the changes in the kernel of man's being as he follows it through its repeated incarnations. Thus a new age is beginning, the age of spiritual thought.

Now if we can recognize the occult basis of these transitions from one age to another, where shall we see the cause of this change in human thought? It is not anything that philosophy or external physiology or anatomy can find of their own accord. Yet it is true that forces that have entered the active souls of men and are being used today to gather spiritual knowledge—these same forces, during the last four centuries, have been working at man's organism as constructive forces. Throughout the period from Copernicus to the last third of the nineteenth century mysterious forces were at work in man's bodily organism just as constructive forces work in his nervous system during sleep. These forces were building up a definite structure in certain parts of the brain. The brains of Western people are different from what they were five centuries ago. What is under man's skull today does not have the same appearance as it had then, for a delicate organ has been formed which was not there before. Even though this cannot be proved externally, it is true. Under the human forehead a delicate organ has developed, and the forces building it have now fulfilled their task. In the coming cycle of history we are now approaching it will become evident in more and more people. Now that it is there, the forces that built it are liberated. With these very forces Western humanity will be gaining spiritual knowledge. Here we have the occult physiological foundation of the matter. Already we are beginning to work with these forces that men could not use during the last four hundred years because they were spent in building up the organ needed to allow spiritual knowledge to take its place in the world.

Let us imagine a man of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. As he stands there before us we know that certain occult forces are at work behind his forehead, transforming his brain. These forces were perpetually at work in all the people of the West. Now let us assume that this man had managed to suspend these forces for a moment, made them cease their work. The same thing would have happened to him—and it did happen in certain cases—as takes place when in the middle of his sleep a man suspends the forces that ordinarily work at building up the nerve structures of the brain; he lets them run loose. It is possible to experience moments when we seem to waken in sleep, and yet do not waken, for we remain motionless, we cannot move our limbs, we have no external perception. But we are awake. In the moments of free play of those regenerating forces we can use them for clairvoyant vision; we can see into the spiritual worlds. A similar thing happened if a man two hundred years ago suspended the constructive activity on his brain. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century he saw what was working into his brain from the spiritual worlds, so that from the twentieth century onward men might raise themselves to spiritual vision.

There were always isolated persons who had such experiences; experiences of truly catastrophic force, indescribably impressive. There were always people who for moments lived in what was working in from the super-sensible to bring forth in the sense world what did not exist in former cycles of evolution, the finer organ in the frontal cavity. Such men saw the Gods; spiritual beings at work in the building process of the human organism. In this we see clairvoyance described from a fresh aspect. We can bring about such moments during sleep by practicing the exercises I have given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and thereby gain glimpses of spiritual life such as are described in my book, A Road to Self-Knowledge. Thus it is possible during a given cycle of evolution for the forces at work preparing the future to become free for a moment and become clairvoyantly visible.

We may give a name to these forces—for what are names? We can call them the forces of Gabriel. But the point is to gain a moment's insight into the super-sensible where we perceive a spiritual Being working from those worlds into the human organism. A sum of forces, in fact, directed by a Being, Gabriel, of the hierarchy of the Archangels. From the fifteenth to the last third of the nineteenth century the Gabriel force was at work on man's organism, and because of this the power to understand the spiritual slept for awhile. It was this sleep of spiritual understanding that brought forth the great triumphs of natural science. Now this force is awakened. The spiritual has done its work; the Gabriel forces have been liberated. We can now use them, for they have become forces of the soul. Here we have a cycle of somewhat greater significance than that of waking and sleeping.

There are, however, even mightier cycles in human evolution. We may note how self-consciousness, the pride of mankind in this era of our post-Atlantean age, was not always there but had to be developed gradually. Today the word evolution is often heard, but people seldom take it in real earnest. We can sometimes have strange experiences of people's naïveté in regard to what surrounds them, so simply do they allow many things to play up from their subconsciousness into their conscious life and do not easily reach the point of attributing a super-sensible origin to what enters their known world from the unknown. In the last few days I have again come across a curious instance of the logic that stops halfway. We can well understand why the anthroposophical outlook meets with so much resistance when we bear in mind that a certain special habit of thought is needed to understand anthroposophy. I mean the habit of never stopping halfway along any line of thinking. I have here a Freethinker's Calendar, published in Germany. The first edition came out last year. In it a perfectly sincere person attacks the custom of teaching children religious ideas. He points out that this is contrary to the child's nature, since he himself has observed that when children are allowed to grow up on their own they develop no religious ideas. Therefore it is unnatural to inculcate these ideas into children. Now we can be certain that this Calendar will reach hundreds of people who will imagine that they understand how senseless it is to teach children religion. There are many such arguments today, and people never notice their complete lack of logic. In reply we need only ask, “If children for some reason have lived all their lives on an island alone and have not learned to speak, ought we therefore to refrain from teaching them to speak?” That would be the same kind of logic. Of course, people will not admit it is the same since they found it so profound in the first instance. It is curious to observe things like this on the broad horizon of external life today; things that represent some after-play from the materialist age that is passing.

I have here another example, some remarkable essays recently published by Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America. There is one on the laws of human progress. He points out how men are influenced by the dominant thought of their age; how in Newton's time, when everything was permeated with the idea of gravity, the effects of Newton's theories could be felt in social concepts, even in political terminology, though actually these theories are only applicable to the heavenly bodies. The idea of gravity was especially extended in its influence. All this is true. We need only read the literature of Newton's time to find everywhere words like “attraction” and “repulsion.” Wilson develops this point very ingeniously. He says how unsatisfactory it is to apply purely mechanical concepts, as of celestial mechanism, to human life and conditions. He shows how human life at that time was completely imbedded in these ideas and how widely they influenced political and social affairs, and he rightly denounces this application of purely mechanical laws in an age when Newtonism drew all thought under its yoke. “We must think along different lines,” says Wilson, and then proceeds to construct his own concept of the state. Now he does it in such a way that, after all he has said about Newtonism, he himself allows Darwinism to speak through every page of his writing. In fact, he is naive enough to admit it. He says the Newtonian concepts were not sufficient, we must apply the Darwinian laws of the organism. Here we have a living instance of the way people march through the world today with half thought-out logic because in reality the laws derived purely from the living organism are also insufficient. We need laws of the soul and spirit. Thus we understand how objections are piled up against anthroposophical thought, for this requires an all-pervading thinking, a logic that penetrates to the core and does not stop halfway. This is just the virtue of the anthroposophical outlook. It forces its devotees to think in an orderly manner.

So we must think of evolution in the spiritual sense, not in Wilson's Darwinistic sense. We must realize that the self-consciousness that today is the essential characteristic of mankind, this firm rooting in the ego, has only gradually developed. This too had to be prepared, just as our spiritual thinking was being prepared in the last four centuries. Spiritual forces had to work down from the super-sensible worlds in order to develop what afterward found expression in the self-conscious life of men. In this connection we can speak of a break in evolution, with a preceding and a succeeding epoch. We will call the latter the age of self-consciousness.

This period is preceded in the cyclic interchange by one in which the organ of self-consciousness was being built into man from the super-sensible worlds. What now works as a soul force in self-consciousness was then working unrecognizably in the depths of human nature. The junction of these two great epochs is an important point in evolution. Before this time most people had no self-consciousness at all. Even in the most advanced it was comparatively weak. People then did not think as they do today, with the awareness, “I am thinking this thought.” Their thoughts rose up like living dreams. Nor did their impulses of will and feeling enter their consciousness as they do today. They lived more of an instinctive life in their souls. From the spiritual worlds, however, beings were working into man's organism, preparing it for a later time when it would be capable of self-consciousness. Meanwhile people had to live quite differently then, even as external experience is quite different between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries A.D. from what it will become later on. So we must say that until the period when self-consciousness entered the human soul everything that could prepare the way for it had been flowing into the life of man.

Thus, for example, in the region where self-consciousness was first to make its appearance, men were strictly divided into castes. They respected this division. A man born in a lower caste felt it as his highest endeavor so to order his life within that caste that he might raise himself in later incarnations into higher ones. It was a mighty driving force in the evolution of the human soul. Men knew that by developing their soul forces they were making themselves fit to rise into a higher caste in their next life. So too they looked up to their ancestors and saw in them what is not bound to the physical body. They revered their ancestors, feeling that although they had died their spiritual part remained, working on spiritually after death. This ancestor worship was a good preparation for the mighty goal of human nature because in it they could see what is now living already in us—the self-conscious soul, which is not bound to the physical body and passes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds.

Just as during four centuries the kind of education that forced men to think out natural science was the best education toward spirituality, so in that ancient time mankind was best educated by the inspiration of great reverence for their castes and their ancestors. Men developed a strong liking for the system of castes. In that pious reverence they had something that worked into their lives with great power and deeply affected them. Spiritual beings were working into it, preparing for the future possibility for a man to say with every thought, “I think,” with every feeling, “I feel,” with every impulse of will, “I will.”

Now let us imagine that toward the end of that ancient epoch some mighty shock or upheaval in a man's life caused all the forces active then to suddenly cease binding him, suspending their action for a moment. Then he would experience what we can experience in sleep when for a moment we withdraw the constructive forces and become clairvoyant. Or what men of the eighteenth century could experience by suspending the forces then at work on their brain structure. If in that ancient time a man withdrew his understanding and feeling for the fires of sacrifice and reverence for his ancestors, if he experienced such a shock, he could for a moment use those forces to gaze into the super-sensible worlds. He could then see how the self-consciousness of man was being prepared from the spiritual world. This is what Arjuna did when at the moment of battle he experienced such a shock. The usually constructive forces stood still in him, and he could look upward to the divine being who was preparing the way for self-consciousness. This divinity was Krishna.

Krishna then is that being who has worked through centuries and centuries on the human organism, to make man capable—from the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. onward—of entering gradually the epoch of self-consciousness. What kind of impression does he make, this master-builder of the human ego-nature? He has to speak to Arjuna in words saturated through and through with self-consciousness.

Thus from another side we understand Krishna as the divine architect of what prepared and brought about self-consciousness in man. The Bhagavad Gita tells us how under special circumstances a man could come into the presence of this divine builder of his nature. There we have one aspect of Krishna's nature. In the succeeding lectures we shall learn to know yet another aspect.

Notes from the lecture

The last two lectures introduced us to the nature of the individual human being. Today we will gain a small insight into certain developmental epochs of humanity as a whole and their spiritual life. Looking back from the standpoint of our present evolutionary epoch, we can see into the distant past and draw conclusions about the future. If we use our clairvoyant eye to help us, our examination will be even easier and our prophetic view of the coming times even more certain.

Human abilities have changed throughout the millennia, and the ancient generations were gifted quite differently than ours. What used to be clairvoyant consciousness is not what can be attained today through Rosicrucian training. It was a duller, yet clairvoyant consciousness that was inherent in all people. We ourselves, who are gathered here, were embodied in those people, but our abilities were different and will continue to change in future incarnations. In our epoch, those abilities should be developed that enable the exact observation of the physical world, such as the outer mind, which makes use of the brain and the physical sense organs. In the past, the soul was not limited to the latter as it is today; it had clairvoyant organs that have gradually become dulled. The soul's ability to perceive has been completely transferred from the inner world to the outer world, but in the future it will be changed and elevated again. Sensory-physical vision will be supplemented by spiritual clairvoyance, which will become the normal gift of all people. We have descended into matter and our vision has become obscured; but the time is near when it will become light around us again and we will look up through matter to the spirit. For this it was necessary that ever new influences should come from the spiritual worlds. Man received gift upon gift, in order to develop his nature in all directions and to become mature, in order to receive the highest of these from Christ when He descended to earth and incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth.

Christ is such a mighty Entity that He remains incomprehensible even to the highest clairvoyant consciousness. However high the initiate may rise, he comprehends only a small part of Him. We, who live 2000 years after Him, are only at the beginning of comprehending Christ. A higher realization of its nature is reserved for the humanity of the future, when more intimate impulses of will will have been awakened in it. Our entire preceding evolution was only a preparation for the reception of the Christ principle, and less exalted forerunners had the task of guiding this maturing of the human souls. Likewise, successors will imprint ever higher ideas and feelings on the human souls, making them ever more suitable for the divine power to rule within them. Those high guides and teachers who sacrifice their spiritual power in the service of humanity and open up our souls are called Bodhisattvas in the Orient. They are beings filled with wisdom, and their mission is to radiate wisdom. Among them, the one who lived 500 to 600 years before Jesus should be emphasized: Gautama Buddha, the great Buddha.

To get a true picture of him, we must think of his previous incarnations, in which he was active on earth as a bodhisattva, just as many others have intervened in the life of humanity over the millennia, forming something of a choir, each member with a specific mission, depending on the state of maturity of humanity.

It was only during his incarnation as Siddhartha, an Indian prince, that he rose to the level of a Buddha. His mission was to prepare the teaching of compassion and love. One might object that Christ did this – but no. Christ not only taught it; he instilled love and compassion into the hearts of humanity.

There is a difference between Buddha's teaching and Christ's power, just as there is between an art connoisseur in front of a painting by Raphael and Raphael himself. This is precisely where many people make the great mistake of seeing in Buddha the highest of all spirits in human form. They do not know that the one who incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth 600 years after him was the incarnation of the Logos Himself. Buddha had to prepare the impulse of compassion and love. He prepared the souls for what Christ was to bring. In the grand scheme of things, his preparatory work is the most significant that has ever been done. To understand his personality better, we need to understand the difference between a Bodhisattva and a Buddha. If we use our clairvoyant eye, we see that a Bodhisattva is a human being who is constantly connected to the spiritual world and does not live entirely in the physical world. His being is, as it were, too great to find room in a human body; only a part of it extends down into the earthly shell, while the greater part remains in the higher worlds. Consequently, the Bodhisattva is always in a state of inspiration.

Gautama Buddha was born as one of these beings. Only in his twenty-ninth year did his personality become strong enough to receive the higher part within himself. According to legend, he settled under a fig tree during his wanderings and received the enlightenment that made him a Buddha. He rose to a higher dignity, according to the hierarchy that prevails in the spiritual world. Another one advanced at the same time and took the place he had left. His successor in the office of Bodhisattva is now carrying out his duties until he himself has attained the Buddha maturity. Another 3,000 years will pass, and then he will incarnate as Maitreya Buddha among people. His task will be discussed later.

What does it mean for humanity that the Bodhisattva has become a Buddha? It has made it possible for them to acquire new abilities. There is a widespread belief that these abilities have always existed to a greater or lesser extent. However, that is not the case at all. In the course of evolution, new abilities have been added, and every time humanity matured to be endowed with a new gift, the new ability had to be incarnated first in a great man. In him it manifested itself first, and he then laid the seeds in the souls that were ready for it. Therefore all feeling and thinking was different before the appearance of Gautama Buddha. Even the reception of the teachings was different from what it was for later people. Half unconsciously, like a suggestion, they received what the Bodhisattvas received as inspiration and allowed to flow over into their disciples as strength. It was only through Gautama Buddha that human beings received the impulse of compassion and love for their fellow beings, and were thus prepared to receive the Christ Impulse. It is not enough, however, to feel this ability; it must become the guiding force in life and be lived accordingly.

But whence do all these Bodhisattvas receive their strength and their teaching? High up in the spiritual worlds, in the midst of their lofty choir, there dwells the teacher of all and at the same time the inexhaustible source of all light and strength and wisdom, which flows over to them: Christ. From Him they drew and descended among men as His forerunners. Then he himself came down to earth and embodied himself in Jesus of Nazareth. And after him they will come again to fulfill his plan.

At the end of his high career, a bodhisattva becomes a Buddha and no longer needs to take on a physical body. The Buddha stage concludes the cycle of his incarnations, and he enters into a new, higher evolution. His lowest vehicle is then no longer a physical body, but an etheric body, and henceforth he is perceptible only to the clairvoyant eye. The seer alone can follow how Gautama Buddha continued to work for the good of humanity after his death and helped develop all the forces on earth so that the Christ Himself could embody Himself in the flesh, in an earthly tool that became His personality: in Jesus of Nazareth. Much had to happen for this to happen, and a series of great events were connected with it, as we can see from the Gospel of Luke. It says that the shepherds in the field were granted the grace of seeing what otherwise no earthly eye could see. They became clairvoyant and saw angels floating above the place where the child Jesus was born. What were these heavenly spirits? It was the gift that Buddha gave by sacrificing himself. They saw him, in his powers, interwoven in the aura that surrounded the place. But it was not only he who had to contribute to this greatest of events; each of the previous Bodhisattvas had his part to give. Buddha's part, the greatest, was visible as an angelic aura.

This interpretation may seem to many to be at variance with what they know of Buddha and Buddhism. They forget that their knowledge comes from ancient scriptures and that Buddha has not remained what he was at his death. They forget that he too has progressed in evolution. The Buddha of that time prepared the way for Christianity; the present Buddha is within Christianity.

If we now look back to his predecessors, we see from their teachings that man has been aware of the Christ-being even in the most distant past. The great leaders of all nations and all times have spoken of him. Thus, for example, we find in ancient India in the Vedas, even if only a small part of the mighty teachings of the holy Rishis. They called the incomprehensible being, which they sensed beyond their sphere, Vishva-Karman. Later, in ancient Persia, Zarathustra proclaimed what his spiritual eye beheld. It was, as discussed in the first lecture, that which one attained through initiation: the seeing of the sun at midnight. Looking through physical matter, he saw the spirit of the sun.

Let us recall, for a better understanding, that the physical body of a celestial body, like that of a human being, is only part of the entire being in question, and that both have more subtle principles, which are visible to the clairvoyant as an aura. Just as the human being has the aura, formed by the astral and etheric bodies, the small aura, so in the macrocosm we distinguish the great aura, “Ahura Mazdao”, as Zarathustra called it. This name was later changed to Ormuzd, which means the Spirit of Light. At that time, Christ was still far from us, so Zarathustra said to his disciples: “As long as your gaze is fixed on earth, you will not see Him. But when you rise with clairvoyant power into the high heavens towards the sun, you will find the great solar spirit.

Likewise, the ancient Hebrew secret doctrine speaks of the great spirit that floats through space and that the seer in the high spheres has to seek. However, the prophecy follows that he will descend and unite with the earth aura. One of those who perceived him in our earthly sphere was Paul. As Saul, he knew that the Messiah would come and that the Earth would be united with the spirit of the Sun, but he believed that this was still far in the future. On the road to Damascus, he suddenly gained clairvoyance and realized that the great event had already taken place and that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited one. This experience converted him to Paul, and henceforth he proclaimed the event as an enthusiastic apostle.

The Christ Impulse is not to be understood as the illumination of only a few individuals. The seer may say that through him the whole earth has become something new. When the blood of Christ flowed at Golgotha, there occurred an intimate union of our earth with the highest Being, Who descended from inaccessible regions of heaven for the salvation of mankind. He has already been recognized by many as the one for whose coming the Bodhisattvas have been preparing down here for thousands of years, but there are few in whom Christianity has come to true life. The Christ impulse is still in its infancy, and humanity will need a long time and the help of many leaders before it comes into its own in all expressions of social life.

However, we can see a tremendous advance in the outlook on life in the short span of time that separates Buddha from Christ. One fact shows it as vividly as possible. When the young king's son Siddhartha, the future Buddha, once stepped out of his palace, where he had never seen anything but lust and splendor, youth and beauty, he saw a cripple whose sight horrified him and he said to himself: Life brings illness, and illness is suffering. Another time, he encountered an old man, and sadly concluded: Life brings old age, and old age is suffering. Soon after, he saw the most horrifying thing, a decomposing corpse, and in horror he repeated: “Life brings death, and death is suffering.” Wherever he looked, he found physical ailments and mental anguish and separation from all that is dear and precious in life. All life is suffering,” he said to himself, and based on this principle, he built the doctrine of renouncing life. Man, he taught, should, in order to escape suffering, strive to rise as quickly as possible out of the cycle of incarnations, to withdraw forever from the painful alternation of life and death.

If we now advance a few centuries, we see countless people who were not Buddhas, but simple souls, who nevertheless sensed the power of the Christ within themselves, looking at a corpse, but not with horror. They are not filled with the sole thought: death is suffering - because in the death of Christ they experienced the exemplary death that means: death is victory of the spirit over everything physical. Death is the victory of the eternal over the temporal.

Never before has there been such an impulse as this one that came from the mystery of Golgotha, and never again will a greater one be bestowed on man on earth. That is what those naive souls felt when they looked up at the cross, the most powerful of symbols. There they felt that there is something higher and stronger than the decaying body, which is subject to disease, old age and death.

Let us now consider the other tenets of the Buddha's teaching with our Christian spiritual perspective: disease and old age cannot discourage us and drive us to flee because we have recognized their cause. Yesterday we saw how the newly acquired abilities of our astral body make the inflexible physical body increasingly uncomfortable and how the growing disharmony between soul and body gradually destroys the latter and it is finally discarded. We are not afraid of old age, because we know that when life here reaches its peak and the body begins to wither, within it the newfound strength contracts into a young germ that will one day flourish into a richer life on earth. This development of the spirit, as taught by Christianity, contains infinite comfort and makes the separation from those we love less painful, for we know that the separation is only due to physical barriers and that we can find our way to our loved ones in spirit.

If we think and feel this way, then our whole life down here takes on a new, spiritualized aspect and becomes more and more valuable to us. Our spiritual eye sees through physical ailments and helps us to bear them with equanimity. We know that our field of work is down here and that the seed for new life must be sown here. What we can recognize today from spiritual teaching will become a certainty for us in the future stages of development. The Christ-power, which is only just beginning to emerge, will soon bring about an increase in our perception. We are at the end of the transitional epoch, which means the lowest point of submergence and spiritual blindness in matter, and in the not too distant future, physical sensory perception will be joined by the beginning of clairvoyance. This ascent will be recognizable by two phenomena. In individual people - and their number will constantly grow - the ability will awaken to see the ethereal forms that surround the physical. They will see the fine covering of the life body shimmering around the human body.

In addition to this enrichment of vision, some people will see something like a dream image when committing an act. At first, these images will hardly be noticed and, above all, not understood. At first they will be shadowy and will only gradually become clearer, especially in those who are materialistic. For the more powerfully materialism holds a person in its thrall, the more difficult it will be for him to become aware of the spiritual and to perceive the superphysical. Naturally, the future clairvoyants will be ridiculed as fools and perhaps locked up as insane. But that will not be able to prevent what is to be. Supernatural vision will become clearer and more frequent, and people will understand what is revealed to their sight. The ethereal forms will teach them that there is life everywhere, and they will soon recognize karmic images of compensation in the emerging visions. They will give what they have created through an act and understand how they will have to compensate for it if it was evil.

But still other abilities will be linked to the ones just mentioned: a smaller number of people will relive through their own experience what transformed Saul of Tarsus into Paul. Just as he did, they will suddenly see that Christ united with the earth through his crucifixion at Golgotha. This powerful inner experience, which some will have in the not too distant future, is what has been promised as the “reappearance of the Christ”. For only once did Christ appear in the flesh and could be seen with physical senses, when humanity was not clairvoyant. But he remained with people, as he himself promised: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Christ did not remain in a fleshly shell and will not reappear in the flesh either. Those who believe in the enhancement of human abilities will understand this.

Through the power of Christ, people shall ascend again, beyond the barriers of the physical world, and their perception shall not remain bound only to the beings embodied in matter. The spiritual kingdom with its essence shall be opened up to them again, and they shall behold Him who redeemed them from darkness and sin.

This will be repeated to people over and over again. Many will accept it in the form in which today's spiritual science presents it. Others, however, will hold on to the erroneous opinion that Christ will come again in the flesh, and will allow themselves to be deceived by false messiahs and go astray. Those who do not want the spiritual, who do not want to see it, will seek it here in matter among men, and hostile powers will send out their representatives and use the stubbornness and blindness for their purposes. In the course of the centuries there has often been talk of such Messiahs, and external history shows many of them in the flesh. It is they who will be the test for those who call themselves theosophists. For many speak as Theosophists and readily profess themselves as such, yet they carry Theosophy on their tongues and not in their hearts. He, however, who will trust his physical eye no more than the unfolding spiritual eye, he will experience the event of Damascus.

At first there will be few and then more and more, and with the number of those who see it, their influence on all mankind will grow and change it. In the course of the next two millennia, new moral abilities will also be added to spiritual perception. For what man creates now, he needs intellectual ability and intelligence, and the morality of the inventor does not matter. This will be different later. At present, for example, the work of the chemist is limited to the composition of substances. However, a time will come when he will be able to infuse life into the structures he puts together. But to get that far, man must first have developed the very finest and noblest impulses within himself, and only then will he be able to let the power contained in them flow into his work. Today man is still too undeveloped and immoral, and he would cause the greatest havoc if such powers were at his disposal. Therefore he will not succeed until he is able to pour not only intellect but also morality, feeling and love into everything he does. The irreverent experimentation with selfishness must have become impossible, love must be the mainspring of all creation and the laboratory table must become an altar.

A new era is dawning with the appearance of the power of Christ, and John the Baptist points this out in the words: “Change your soul's disposition, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” He had seen the descent of the Sun-God, Ahura Mazdao, and recognized in Jesus of Nazareth his representative. We must prepare ourselves for this new era and rise above materialism. We must realize that our horizon will widen and that new organs will be added to the present physical ones for a more perfect perception. Let us not doubt this truth and let us not consider it a fantasy and a dangerous teaching that can harm the Christ impulse. The understanding and the feeling for it will become ever clearer and deeper and the number of those in whom the Christ germ will begin to grow will become ever greater. However, in order for it to come to full development in all of humanity, a great individuality must still embody itself among us.

The Bodhisattva who took Gautama's place when he became Buddha will descend in the form of Maitreya Buddha to bring people to the full recognition of the Christ. He will be the greatest of the proclaimers of the Christ impulse and make possible for many the experience of Damascus. A long time will pass and spiritual science will make the Christ Being understandable to people from ever higher points of view, until the last of the Bodhisattvas will have completed his mission on earth and humanity will have grasped the Christ in all its meaning and their entire life will have been absorbed without reservation in His impulse.

Such a mighty perspective shows us how man must look up to supersensible history in order to understand the meaning of earthly history. Everything leads up to making man understand what the fulfillment of the words is: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age!”

THE process that I have described to you as the division of the sexes was of such a nature that the two sexes are to be thought of as still united in that animal-man of the Moon and also in his descendants in the Moon recapitulation of the Earth. Then there really took place a kind of cleavage of the human body. This cleavage came about through densification; not until a mineral kingdom had been separated out as it is today could the present human body arise, representing a single sex. The Earth and the human body had first to be solidified to the mineral nature as we know it. In the soft human bodies of the Moon and of the earlier periods of the Earth human beings were of dual-sex, male-female.

Now we must remind ourselves of the fact that Man in a certain respect has preserved a residue of the ancient dual sex inasmuch as in the present man the physical body is masculine, the etheric body feminine, and in the woman it is reversed; for the physical feminine body has a masculine etheric body. These facts open up an interesting insight into the soul life of the sexes; the capacity for sacrifice in the service of love displayed by the woman is connected with the masculinity of the etheric body, whereas the ambition of the man is explained when we realise the feminine nature of his etheric body. I have already said that separation into the human sexes has arisen from the intermingling of the forces sent to us from the sun and the moon. Now you must be clear that in the man the stronger influence on the etheric body emanates from the moon and the stronger influence on the physical body from the sun. In the woman the opposite is the case, the physical body is influenced by the forces of the moon and the etheric body by those of the sun.

The continual change of mineral substances in man's present body could not take place until the mineral realm had taken shape; before this there was quite a different form of nourishment. During the Sun-period of the Earth all plants were permeated by milky juices. Man's nourishment was then actually effected by his imbibing the milk-juices from the plants as today the child draws its nourishment from the mother. The plants which still contain milky juices are the last stragglers from that time when all the plants supplied these juices in abundance. It was not till a later time that nourishment took on its present form.

To understand the significance of the separation of the sexes we must be clear that upon the Moon and during its recapitulation on the Earth all the beings looked very much alike. Just as the cow has the same appearance as her “daughters,” as all other cows, since the Group-soul lies behind, so could men scarcely be distinguished from their forefathers, and this continued till long into the Atlantean Age. Whence arises the fact that human beings no longer resemble each other?

It comes from the rise of the two sexes. From the original dual sex-nature the tendency had continued in the female being to produce similarity in the descendants; in the male the influence worked differently, it tended to call forth variety, individualisation, and with the flowing of the male force into the female, dissimilarity was increasingly created. Thus it was through the male influence that the power of developing individuality came about.

The ancient dual sex had yet another peculiarity. If you had asked one of the old dwellers on the Moon about his experiences, he would have described them as identical with those of his earliest ancestors; everything lived on through the generations. The gradual rise of a consciousness that only extends from birth to death came about by the individualising of the human race, and at the same time arose the possibility of birth and death, as we know them today. For those ancient Moon beings with their floating, swimming motion, were suspended from the environment with which they were united by the “strings” conducting the blood. Thus if a being died it was not a death of the soul, it was only a dying off of a sort of limb, while the consciousness remained above. It was as if your hand, for instance, should wither on your body and a new hand grow in its place. So these human beings with their dim consciousness only experienced dying as a gradual withering of their bodies. These bodies dried up and new ones continually sprang forth; consciousness, however, was preserved through the consciousness of the group-soul, so that really a kind of immortality existed.

Then arose the present blood, which was created in the human body itself, and this went hand in hand with the rise of the two sexes. And with it the necessity of a remarkable process came about. The blood creates a continuous conflict between life and death, and a being who forms red blood within himself becomes the scene of a perpetual struggle, for red blood is continually consumed and changed into blue blood, into a substance of death. Together with man's individual transformation of the blood arose that darkening of the consciousness beyond birth and death. Now, for the first time, with the lighting up of the present consciousness, man lost the ancient dimly sensed immortality, so that the impossibility of looking beyond birth and death is intimately connected with the division of the sexes. And something else too is connected with this.

When man still possessed the Group-soul, existence went on from generation to generation, no interruption was caused through birth and death. Then this interruption appeared and with it the possibility of reincarnation. Earlier, the son was but a direct continuation of the father, the father of the grandfather, consciousness did not break off. Now there came a time when there was darkness beyond birth and death, and a sojourn in Kamaloca and Devachan first became possible. This interchange, this sojourn in higher worlds, could only come about at all after individualisation, after the expulsion of Sun and Moon. Only then appeared what today we call incarnation, and at the same time this intermediate state, which again will one day also come to an end.

Thus we have reached the period in which we have seen the earlier dual-sexed organism, representing a kind of group-soul, divide into a male and a female, so that the similar is reproduced through the female, what is varied and dissimilar through the male. We see in our humanity the feminine to be the principle which still preserves the old conditions of folk and race, and the masculine that which continually breaks through these conditions, splits them up and so individualises mankind. There is actually active in the human being an ancient feminine principle as group-soul and a new masculine principle as individualising element. It will come about that all connections of race and family stock will cease to exist, men will become more and more different from one another, interconnection will no longer depend on the common blood, but on what binds soul to soul. That is the course of human evolution.

In the first Atlantean races there still existed a strong bond of union and the first sub-races grouped themselves according to their colouring. This group-soul element we have still in the races of different colour. These differences will increasingly disappear as the individualising element gains the upper hand. A time will come when there will no longer be races of different colour; the difference between the races will have disappeared, but on the other hand there will be the greatest differences between individuals. The further we go back into ancient times the more we meet with the encroachment of the racial element; the true individualising principle begins as a whole only in later Atlantean times. Among the earlier Atlanteans members of one race actually experienced a deep antipathy for members of another race; the common blood caused the feeling of connection, of love; it was considered against morality to marry a member of another stock.

If, as seer, you wished to examine the connection between the etheric body and the physical body in the old Atlanteans you would make a remarkable discovery. Whereas in the man of today the etheric head is practically covered by the physical part of the head and only protrudes slightly beyond it, in the old Atlantean the etheric head projected far out beyond the physical head; in particular it projected powerfully in the region of the forehead. Now we must think of a point in the physical brain in the place between the eyebrows, only about a centimetre lower, and a second point in the etheric head which would correspond to this. In the Atlantean these two points were still far apart and evolution consisted precisely in the fact that they continually approached each other. In the fifth Atlantean period the point of the etheric head drew in to the physical brain and by reason of these two points coming together there developed what we possess to-day: calculation, counting, the capacity of judging, the power of forming ideas in general, intelligence. Formerly the Atlanteans had only an immensely developed memory, but as yet no logical intellect. Here we have the starting point for the consciousness of the “ego.” A self-reliant independence did not exist in the Atlantean before these two points coincided, on the other hand he could live in much more intimate contact with nature. His dwellings were put together by what was given by nature; he moulded the stones and bound them together with the growing trees. His dwellings were formed out of living nature, were really transformed natural objects. He lived in the little tribes that were still preserved through blood relationship, whilst a powerful authority was exercised by the strongest, who was the chieftain. Everything depended on authority, which however was exercised in a way peculiar to those times.

When man entered on the Atlantean Age, he could as yet utter no articulate speech; this was only developed during that period. A chieftain could not have given commands in speech, but on the other hand these men had the faculty of understanding the language of nature. Present day man has no idea of this, he must learn it again. Picture, for instance, a spring of water which reflects your image to you. As occultist a peculiar feeling emerges in your soul. You say—My image presses towards me out of this spring, to me this is a last token of how on old Saturn everything was reflected out into space. The memory of Saturn arises in the occultist when he beholds his reflection in the spring. And in the echo which the spoken sound gives back arises the recollection of how on Saturn all that resounded into cosmic space, came back as echo. Or you see a Fata Morgana a mirage in the air, in which the air seems to have taken up whatever pictures are imprinted in it and then reflects them again. As occultist you see here a memory of the Sun-period, when the gaseous Sun took in all that came to it from cosmic space, worked it over, and then let it stream back, giving it its own sun-nature at the same time. On the Sun planet you would have seen how things were prepared as Fata Morgana, as a kind of mirage within the gases of the Sun condition. Thus without being a magician one learns to grasp the world from many aspects and that is an important means towards developing into higher worlds. In ancient times man understood nature to a high degree.

There is a great difference between living in an atmosphere like the present and such as it was in Atlantis. The air was then saturated by immense vapour masses; sun and moon were surrounded by a gigantic rainbow halo. There was a time when the mist-masses were so dense that no eye could have seen the stars, when sun and moon were stiff darkened. Only gradually they became visible to man. This coming into sight of sun, moon and stars is magnificently described in records of the Creation. What is described there has really taken place, and much more besides.

The understanding of surrounding nature was still very vividly present in the Atlantean. All that sounds in the rippling of the spring, in the storm of winds, and is an inarticulate sound to you today, was heard by the Atlantean as a speech he understood. There were at that time no commandments, but the Spirit pierced through the vapour-drenched air and spoke to man. The Bible expresses this in the words “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The human being heard the Spirit from surrounding objects; from sun, moon and stars the Spirit spoke to him and you find in those words—in the Bible a plain expression for what took place in man's environment.

Then came the time in which an especially advanced portion of the human race, who lived in a region which today is on the bed of the ocean in the neighbourhood of present Ireland, first experienced that definite union with the etheric body and thus an increase of the intelligence. This portion of humanity began to journey eastwards under the guidance of the most advanced leader while gradually immense volumes of water submerged the continent of Atlantis. The advanced portion of these peoples journeyed right into Asia, and there founded the centre of the civilisation that we call the Post-Atlantean Culture. From this centre civilisation radiated out; it proceeded from the groups of people who later moved farther to the east. There in Central Asia they founded in India the first civilisation, which still had an echo of the culture attained in Atlantis. The ancient Indian had not yet such a consciousness as we have today, but the capacity for it arose when these two points of the brain of which I have spoken coincided. Before this union there still lived a picture-consciousness in the Atlantean, through which he saw Spiritual beings. In the murmuring of the fountain he not only heard a clear language, but the Undine, who has her embodiment in the water, rose for him out of the spring: in the currents of air he saw Sylphs; in the flickering fire he saw the Salamanders. All this he saw and from it have arisen the myths and legends which have been preserved with most purity in the parts of Europe where there remained remnants of those Atlanteans who did not reach India. The Germanic Sagas and Myths are the relics of what was still seen by the old Atlanteans within the vapoury masses. The rivers, the Rhine, for instance, lived in the consciousness of these old Atlanteans as if the wisdom, which was in the mists of ancient Nivelheim had been cast down into their waters. This wisdom seemed to them to be in the rivers, it lived within them as the Rhine Nixies or similar beings.

So here in these regions of Europe lived echoes of the Atlantean culture, but over in India another arose, that still showed remembrances of that picture world. That world itself had sunk from sight, but the longing for what was revealed in it lived on in the Indian. If the Atlantean had heard the voice of Nature's wisdom, to the Indian there remained the longing for the oneness with Nature, and thus the character of this old Indian culture is shown in the desire to fall back into that time where all this was man's natural possession. The ancient Indian was a dreamer. To be sure, what we call reality lay spread all around him, but the world of the senses was “Maya” in his eyes. What the old Atlantean still saw as hovering spirits was what the Indian sought in his longing for the spiritual content of the world, for Brahma. And this kind of going back towards the old dream-like consciousness of the Atlantean has been preserved in the Oriental training to bring back this early consciousness.

Farther to the north we have the Medes and Persians, the original Persian civilisation. Whereas the Indian culture turns sharply away from reality, the Persian is aware that he must reckon with it. For the first time man appears as a worker, who knows that he is not merely to strive for knowledge with his spiritual forces, but that he is to use them for shaping the earth. At first the earth met him as a sort of hostile element which he must overcome, and this opposition was expressed in Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the bad divinity, and the conflict between them. Men wished more and more to let the spiritual world flow into the terrestrial world, but as yet they could recognise no law, no laws of nature within the outer world. The old Indian culture had in truth a knowledge of higher worlds, but not on the grounds of a natural science, since everything on the Earth was accounted Maya; the Persian learnt to know nature purely as a field of labour.

We then come to the Chaldean, the Babylonian and the Egyptian peoples. Here man learnt to recognise a law in nature itself. When he looked up to the stars he sought behind them not the gods alone, but he examined the laws of the stars and hence arose that wonderful science which we find among the Chaldeans. The Egyptian priest did not look on the physical as an opposing force, but he incorporated the spiritual which he found in geometry into his soil, his land; outer nature was recognised as conforming to law. The external star-knowledge was inwardly united in Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian wisdom with the knowledge of the gods who ensoul the stars. That was the third stage of cultural evolution.

It is only in the fourth stage of post-Atlantean evolution that man advances to the point of incorporating in civilisation that which he himself experiences as spiritual. This is the case in the Greco-Latin time. Here in the work of art, in moulded matter man imprints his own spirit into substance, whether in sculpture or in the drama. Here too we find the first beginnings of human city planning. These cities differed from those of Egypt in the pre-Grecian age. There in Egypt the priests looked up to the stars and sought their laws, and what took place in the heavens they reproduced in what they built. Thus their towers show the seven-story development which man first discovered in the heavenly bodies; so too do the Pyramids show definite cosmic proportions. We find the transition from priest-wisdom to the real human wisdom wonderfully expressed in early Roman history by the seven Kings of Rome. What are these seven kings?

We remember that the original history of Rome leads back to ancient Troy. Troy represents a last result of the ancient priestly communities who organised states by the laws of the stars. Now comes the transition to the fourth stage of culture. The ancient priest-wisdom is superseded by human cleverness, represented by the crafty Odysseus. Still more plainly is this shown in a picture which can only be rightly understood in this way and which represents how the priest-wisdom has to give way before the human power of judgment. The serpent can always be taken as symbol of human wisdom, and the Laocoon group depicts the overthrow of the priestly wisdom of ancient Troy through human cunning and human wisdom symbolised in the serpents.

Then by the directing authorities who work through millennia the events were outlined that had to happen and in accordance with which history must take its course. Those who stood at the foundation of Rome had already foreordained the sevenfold Roman culture as it stands written in the Sibylline Books. Think it out: you find in the names of the seven Roman kings reminiscences of the seven principles. That goes so far in fact that the fifth Roman king, the Etruscan, comes from without; he represents the principle of Manas, Spirit-Self, which binds the three lower with the three higher. The seven Roman kings represent the seven principles of human nature, spiritual connections are inscribed in them. Republican Rome is none other than the human wisdom, which replaced the ancient priestly wisdom. Thus did the fourth epoch grow within the third. Man sent forth what he had in his soul into the great works of art, into drama and jurisprudence. Formerly all justice was derived from the stars. The Romans became a nation of law-givers because there men created justice, “jus,” according to their own requirements.

We live ourselves in the fifth period. How does the meaning of the totality of evolution come to expression in it? The old authority has vanished, man becomes more and more dependent on his own inner nature, his external acts bear increasingly the stamp of his character. Racial ties lose their hold, man becomes more and more individualised. This is the kernel of the religion which says “He who doth not leave father and mother, brother and sister cannot be my disciple.” This means that all love which is founded on natural ties alone is to come to an end, human beings must stand before one another, and soul find soul.

We have the task of drawing down still further on to the physical plane that which flowed from the soul in Greco-Latin times. Man becomes in this way, a being who sinks deeper and deeper into materiality. If the Greek in his works of art has created an idealised image of his soul-life and poured it into the human form, if the Roman in his jurisprudence has created something that still further signifies personal requirements, then our age culminates in machines, which are solely a materialistic expression of mere personal human needs. Mankind sinks lower and lower from heaven, and this fifth period has descended deepest, is the most involved in matter. If the Greek in his creations has lifted man above man in his images (for Zeus represents man raised above himself), if you find still left in Roman jurisprudence something of man that goes out beyond himself (for the Roman placed more value on being a Roman citizen than on being a person and an individual) then in our period you find people who utilise spirit for the satisfying of their material needs. For what purpose is served by all machines, steamships, railways, all complicated inventions? The ancient Chaldean was accustomed to satisfy his need of food in the simplest way; today an immensity of wisdom, crystalised human wisdom, is expended on the stilling of hunger and thirst. We must not deceive ourselves about this. The wisdom that is so employed has descended below itself right into matter.

All that man had earlier drawn down from the spiritual realms had to descend below itself in order to be able to mount upwards again—and with this our age has received its mission. If in man of an earlier time there flowed blood which bound him with his tribe, today the love which still flowed in the earlier blood shows greater and greater cleavage; a love of a spiritual kind must take its place and then we can ascend again to spiritual realms. There is good reason for us to have come down from spiritual heights, for man must go through this descent in order to find the way up to spirituality out of his own strength. The mission of Spiritual Science is to show mankind this upward path.

We have followed the course of mankind as far as the time in which we ourselves stand; we must now show how it will evolve further, and how one who passes through an initiation can even today forestall a certain stage of humanity on his path of knowledge and wisdom.

In philosophical circles one often hears complaints about the decline in interest in philosophy among the educated of the present day. However, the opinion expressed in this complaint cannot be upheld in general. A number of phenomena speak against it. Just think of the influence that Eduard von Hartmann, currently Germany's greatest thinker, has exerted on our contemporaries. His "Philosophy of the Unconscious", first published in 1868, has gone through ten editions to date. And the literature dealing with this philosopher's world view has grown immeasurably. Furthermore, what an impact Richard Wagner's aesthetic treatises have had on the contemporary view of art! The teachings presented here were enthusiastically received, especially by the younger generation. The eagerness with which Friedrich Albert Lange's "History of Materialism" was read for a time must also be mentioned here. No less important is the way in which very shallow writings, which nonetheless dealt with basic philosophical problems, such as Ludwig Büchner's "Kraft und Stoff" ("Force and Substance") and Carl Vogt's "Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft" ("Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft"), were devoured. Darwin's and Haeckel's writings on the history of development found a large audience. Finally, Friedrich Nietzsche, this tragic hero of thought, who approaches the highest problems of the human spirit, but without a logical conscience, without discipline of thought, merely rummages in the realm of ideas, as it were, is causing a tremendous stir in our time. On the one hand, he has aroused enthusiasm, which is, of course, as unclear as possible about its actual content, and on the other, he has annoyed, outraged and challenged to the sharpest contradiction. However, he has probably left few of the large number of people who have engaged with his bold thoughts cold; a clear indication that philosophical interest in our time is nevertheless conducive to stimulation on a large scale.

In one broad area, however, philosophy seems to have lost its power and influence. This is that of the individual sciences: cultural and, in particular, literary history, history and the natural sciences. This is most noticeable in the history of literature and the natural sciences. The way in which the creations of our classical poets are treated in literary-historical monographs, especially those of the Scherer school, is truly deplorable. They often lack the slightest knowledge of philosophical concepts and views. And how erroneous is the belief that the latter can be dispensed with when judging the artistic achievements of our classical period! Above all other things, it is necessary to have a complete command of the circle of views and ideas of the person whose artistic creations one wishes to appreciate. The works of our classics, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul, Schlegel and others, reflect the philosophical content of the great age in which they lived. And anyone who has no understanding of this element of content in their works is also unsuited to an aesthetic appreciation of their form. But even when dealing with other epochs of our literature, we can observe that scholars are truly horrified by philosophical treatment.

The situation is almost worse in the natural sciences. Here we find an accumulation of infinite details that are almost nowhere accompanied by guiding points of view or broad perspectives. Anyone who wants to exploit a characteristic individual experience in order to penetrate deeper into the context of natural things is immediately regarded as an enthusiast. The most thoughtless registration work is prevalent here. And when Richard Falckenberg says in his witty inaugural address "On the Present State of German Philosophy" (Leipzig 1890,.6) that "the time has yet to come when the character of an unphilosophical mind will be counted among the titles of honor", we would like to claim that in some scientific circles, this time has already come.

The above-mentioned phenomena show that the accusation of a lack of interest in the philosophical approach can be made against the representatives of the individual disciplines, but not against the educated reading public in general.

In view of these phenomena, the question is probably justified: what are the reasons for this emancipation of the individual sciences from philosophy?

Not in the slightest part do they lie in the historical development of philosophy in Germany. There is no doubt that the great philosophers of our people: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, for all their genius and the truly admirable tendency towards greatness that was characteristic of all of them, lacked one thing: the gift of making themselves easily understandable. It requires either an unusual dexterity in the execution of thought operations, so that thinking happens with the ease of playing, or else a great self-conquest in order to rise to the spheres into which those philosophers lead us. For those who are not capable of the one and do not have enough good will for the other, penetration into the teachings of our actual philosophical age is an impossibility. In this we must also seek the cause of the misunderstanding of Hegel. This philosopher who was hostile to metaphysics, who strove with an insatiable thirst for knowledge of the real, this most resolute of all representatives of positivism and empiricism, is strangely enough usually portrayed as a thinker of empty conceptual schemes who, denying all empirical knowledge, lose themselves in an insubstantial philosophical cloud-cuckoo land. One does not realize that Hegel's aim is to take everything that is to be used to explain a phenomenon completely from reality. Nowhere does he want to call upon elements to help him explain our world. Everything that constitutes it must lie within it. Thus his view is a strict objectivism. The mind should not draw anything from itself in order to graft it onto phenomena for the purpose of deciphering them. Hegel would vigorously reject scientific tendencies such as modern aromatism, which presupposes a whole world behind our world of appearances.

What lies objectively in the world process should, according to Hegel, become the content of philosophy, nothing above it. And because he could not merely recognize something material as the objective content of the world, but rather counted the laws of existence and events, which are also truly present in reality, as part of the content of the world, his teaching is idealism. What distinguishes Hegel from the modern positivists is not the type of research, not the belief that only the real can be the object of science. In this he is in complete agreement with them. He differs from them, however, in the view that for him the idea is also real, or conversely, that the real is real and ideal at the same time. This character of Hegel's philosophy was first understood again by Eduard von Hartmann, and he carried out the treatment corresponding to it in his exemplary historical works: "Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness" and "The Religious Consciousness of Mankind in the Stages of its Development". However, Hartmann has also understood how to avoid the difficulties of understanding Hegel in wider circles, which we mentioned above, and how to unite Hegelian sentiment with a comprehensible style of presentation that is also accessible to the less philosophically trained. In his historical works, Hartmann seeks the real with the same rigor as his contemporaries who call themselves historians, but unlike them he does not only find the bare facts, but also the ideal context of historical phenomena. And it is very regrettable that he did not gain a similarly authoritative influence on literary historians and historians from this side as he did on educated laymen through his "Philosophy of the Unconscious". Hartmann is to be regarded as the real continuator of that philosophy of great style which, through Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, has powerfully gripped the whole nation.

But why was he also able to have so little influence on the actual discipline? In our opinion, this question can be answered quite simply. The reason lies in the mistrust and lack of understanding that was shown to him by the officially appointed representatives of his science and which has only recently and only very slowly given way to better relations.

This lamentable relationship between the official philosophy on the one hand and Hartmann on the other has a deeper reason. As soon as Hartmann embarked on his philosophical studies, he tackled the central problem: how does consciousness relate to the unconscious in the world, and what role does the unconscious play in nature and the mind? From there, his thinking extends to all the more important questions of philosophy, so that he appears before the public with a self-contained circle of views from his very first appearance. School philosophy, however, does not like this - with some notable exceptions. It only likes to deal with individual problems and even prefers that timid skepticism which behaves as cautiously as possible towards the great questions naturally posed by every human being. For the most part it is rather contrived and self-made problems to which professional science adheres, while in contrast to what everyone wants to know, it regards only the expression of the doubter as that due to the true researcher and immediately has the accusation of dilettantism at hand when it sees a bold approach to such things, Thus school philosophy has gradually isolated itself completely from the other scientific enterprise, its results are no longer important and interesting enough to gain power over the individual sciences. While it would be right for the philosopher to characterize the general points of view, the leading ideas for the individual sciences and to take up the results of the latter in order to use them further in the sense of an overall view of things, the present philosophical specialist sees himself as an individual researcher alongside others. He walks alongside the specialists instead of engaging in lively interaction with them. Only Hartmann understood his profession as a philosopher in the ideal sense described above. He was not taken seriously for this for a long time and is still not taken seriously by many school philosophers today.

As we can see, the position that philosophy occupies in contemporary life and culture is by no means the one we would wish for. It is therefore with great pleasure that we welcome a book that has just been published and which seems destined to spread clarity about the tasks and goals of philosophy. We are referring to Johannes Volkelt's "Lectures as an Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy". Held in Frankfurt a.M. in February and March 1891, the book is suitable for reaching the widest circle of readers and showing what philosophy actually wants and is capable of achieving for life and culture. Volkelt, although a scientific philosopher in the best sense of the word - he and Johannes Rehmke have written the best books on epistemology. He and Johannes Rehmke wrote the best books on epistemology - has always had a free, open eye both for the far-reaching tasks of human life and for its most intimate phenomena. The former is demonstrated by his speech in Vienna: "Kant's Categorical Imperative and the Present" and his inaugural speech in Basel: "On the Possibility of Metaphysics", the latter by his book on "The Dream Fantasy" and his presentation: "Franz Grillparzer as a Poet of the Tragic". In these lectures Volkelt first presents the contrast between the philosophy of the present and that of the beginning of the century. He shows how everything intuitive, personal and bold has disappeared from this science and has given way to an intellectual, impersonal, skeptical approach. Whereas in the past people fearlessly inquired into the causes of phenomena, they are now anxious to first test our cognitive faculty to see to what extent it is capable of penetrating the secrets of the world. Philosophy has taken on a predominantly epistemological character. It has become hostile to all metaphysical activity. The author, however, emphasizes both the necessity and the possibility of metaphysics. He only thinks that it will not be able to go for its goal with the boldness and certainty that was previously believed. He is of the opinion that, instead of showing off with real solutions, it will often have to be content with indicating the direction in which certain problems are to be pursued, formulating the questions precisely, bringing forth the material that can lead to the results, indeed in some cases it will be able to do nothing more than indicate the various possible solutions. Volkelt also proves the necessity of those branches of philosophy that are usually referred to as natural philosophy and philosophy of mind, and to which he includes psychology, ethics, aesthetics and philosophy of religion. In all individual sciences, one ultimately arrives at the highest principles, ultimate results, which cannot be pursued further within the science in which they are obtained. They form the content of these particular philosophical sciences, from which they are combined to form a whole world view. Furthermore, Volkelt shows in the most beautiful way how, even if not scientific philosophy, at least the attitude that springs from a philosophical mental disposition permeates the entire human personality and becomes the ethical, religious basis of life, especially for those people for whom the positive religions have lost their compelling power of faith. Finally, in Volkelt's view, philosophy will be the power which, by transforming revealed religion into a religion of reason, will bring about a development of Christianity which will enable it to become a truly culturally friendly element in the life of modern peoples. Finally, the author devotes his consideration to the influence that philosophy will have on the modern progress of our culture. It must play an important role in the present and the future, if only because we have passed the stage where all culture springs only from a quasi unconscious working of temperament and feeling. We are consciously striving towards our cultural goals out of rational deliberation. Philosophy is particularly well-suited to serve this purpose.

The author of these lines does not agree with Volkelt on everything. In particular, he takes a different position on epistemology. He may perhaps refer to his own writing on epistemology. Nevertheless, he would like to recommend Volkelt's book to the attention of all circles.

We are undoubtedly facing some upheavals in the way we think about and value human actions. Philosophy will have a strong say in the reorganization of the situation. Writings such as Volkelt's are particularly suitable as preparation. I will deal with the second part of my topic in a future article.

A turn for the better will only occur in philosophical life when the urge to test the power of thought on the central problems of existence awakens again. This drive is currently paralyzed. We suffer from cowardice of thought. We cannot believe that our ability to think is sufficient to answer the deepest questions of life. I have often heard it said that our task at present is to collect building block after building block. The time is over when we proudly and arrogantly put together philosophical doctrines without having the materials at hand. Once we have collected enough of this material, the right genius will emerge and carry out the construction. Now is not the time to build systems. This view arises from a regrettable lack of clarity about the nature of science. If the latter had the task of collecting the facts of the world, registering them and organizing them systematically and expediently according to certain points of view, then one could speak like this. But then we would have to renounce all knowledge altogether; for we would probably only finish collecting the facts at the end of days, and then we would lack the necessary time to carry out the required scholarly registration work.

If you only once realize what you actually want to achieve through science, you will soon see the fallacy of this demand, which requires an infinite amount of work. When we confront nature, it initially stands before us like a profound mystery, it stretches out before our senses like an enigma. A mute being looks out at us. How can we bring light into the mystical darkness? How can we solve the riddle?

The blind man who enters a room can only feel darkness in it. No matter how long he wanders around and touches all the objects: Brightness will never fill the room for him. Just as this blind man faces the furnishings of the room, so in a higher sense man faces nature, who expects the solution to the riddle from the contemplation of an infinite number of facts. There is something in nature which a thousand facts do not reveal to us if we lack the power of sight to see it, and which one single fact reveals to us if we possess this faculty. Every thing has two sides. One is the outside. We perceive it with our senses. But then there is also an inner side, which presents itself to the spirit when it knows how to look. No one will believe in his own inability in any matter. Whoever lacks the ability to perceive this inner side would prefer to deny it to man altogether, or to disparage as fantasists those who pretend to possess it. Nothing can be done about an absolute inability, and one could only pity those who, because of it, can never gain insight into the depths of the world. The psychologist, however, does not believe in this inability. Every person with normal spiritual development has the ability to descend to those depths up to a certain point. But the convenience of thinking prevents many from doing so. Their spiritual weapons are not blunt, but the bearers are too lazy to wield them. It is infinitely more convenient to pile fact upon fact than to seek out the reasons for them by thinking. Above all, such an accumulation of facts rules out the possibility of someone else coming along and overturning what we have advocated. In this way we never find ourselves in the position of having to defend our intellectual positions; we need not be upset that tomorrow someone will advocate the opposite of our current positions. If you only deal with actual truth, you can lull yourself into the belief that no one can dispute this truth, that we are creating for eternity. Yes, we also create for eternity, but we only create zeros. We lack the courage of thought to give these zeros a value by placing a meaningful number in front of them in the form of an idea.

Few people today have any idea that something can be true, even if the opposite can be asserted with no less right. There are no unconditional truths. We drill deep into a thing of nature, we bring up the most mysterious wisdom from the most hidden shafts, we turn around, drill in a second place: and the opposite shows itself to be just as justified. That every truth is only valid in its place, that it is only true as long as it is asserted under the conditions under which it was originally fathomed, that is what Hegel's genius taught the world. Little has been understood.

Who today does not cringe respectfully when the name Friedr. Theod. Vischer is mentioned. But not many people know that this man considered it the greatest achievement of his life to have learned from Hegel the above-mentioned conviction about the nature of truth. If they knew, then a completely different air would flow towards them from Vischer's magnificent works, and one would encounter less ceremonial praise, but more unconstrained understanding of this writer.

Where are the days when Schiller found deep understanding when he praised the philosophical mind over the bread scholar! The one who digs unreservedly for the treasures of truth, even if he is exposed to the danger that a second treasure digger will immediately devalue everything for him with a new find, compared to the one who only ever repeats the banal, but absolutely "true": "Two times two is four".

We must have the courage to boldly enter the realm of ideas, even at the risk of error. Those who are too cowardly to err cannot be fighters for the truth. An error that springs from the mind is worth more than a truth that comes from platitude. He who has never asserted anything that is in a sense untrue is not fit to be a scientific thinker.

For cowardly fear of error, our science has fallen victim to bareness.

It is almost hair-raising which character traits are extolled today as virtues of the scientific researcher. If you were to translate them into the area of practical living, the result would be the opposite of a firm, decisive, energetic character.

A recent book has attempted to expose these shortcomings in our intellectual life: "Rembrandt als Erzieher. From a German." It is bad enough that this book has been so widely read. It is not difficult to see shortcomings and attack them, but it is difficult to find their origin. Go to an inn every evening for two weeks, where educated German beer-philistines are sitting, sit aside and listen to their critical remarks. Then you go home, carefully note down what you have heard and add a quotation from a well-known writer to each sentence. After a fortnight, send this "collective work" to the printers and a second book will grace the German book market, which will be in no way inferior in value to "Rembrandt as Educator".

The author of this book fights specialism in science. This is his fundamental error. The mistake is not that researchers devote themselves to special tasks, but that they cannot work the universal spirit into the world of details. It would be a bad thing if we were to replace the study of individual entities with the spinning out of abstract generalities and gray theories. Study the grain of sand, but find out to what extent it is part of the spirit.

It is not mysticism that we want to advocate here. Anyone who seeks the spirit of the things of this world in clear, transparent ideas is by no means a mystic. There is nothing that excludes mystical chiaroscuro more than the crystal-clear world of ideas, with its sharp contours down to the last ramifications. He who enters into this world with human acuity, with strict logic, will have nothing in common with the mystic, who sees nothing, but only suspects, who does not think out the world of reasons, but only conjures it up, in the awareness that he sees through his spiritual realm in all directions. The mathematician is the model for the mystic-free thinker.

So our task is not to endlessly collect individual facts, but to sharpen our mental faculties for seeing the depths of nature.

Our reason must once again become aware of its absoluteness; and an end must be put to its cowardly, slavish subordination to the oppressive power of facts. It is unworthy that a higher being, which reason is after all, should yield itself to a mere collector of things of lower value. If the world consisted only of sensually perceptible things, then reason would have to abdicate. It only has a task if there is something in the world that it is able to grasp. And that is the spirit.

To deny it is to retire reason.

Is there now any prospect that this legitimate ruler on the throne in the realm of science will soon be restored to his innate rights? The answer to this question will be the subject of the next installment of this article.

Report by Rudolf Steiner, “Lucifer-Gnosis”, no. 13/1904

From June 19 to 21, the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society held its congress in Amsterdam [...]. The members of the Dutch section had the task of taking on all the work to be done at the venue. And they took on this truly difficult task in a way that must ensure them the full recognition and warmest thanks of the European sections, which were their guests this time. They knew how to organize the three-day proceedings in the most dignified and substantive way, interspersing the actual Theosophical meetings with artistic performances that included musical and declamatory performances. These performances were not organized with outside artists, but by the members of the Dutch section themselves. It is only with heartfelt satisfaction that one can look back on what was offered there. It has testified to the tireless work and successful propaganda of the great spiritual movement in Holland. It already has almost 800 members there.

The proceedings of the congress will now be outlined in a few strokes. - Annie Besant chaired the meeting. She returned to Europe a few weeks ago from an eighteen-month stay in India. It was good that she was able to lead the work of the assembly. Everyone who understands the true meaning of the important spiritual movement embodied in the Theosophical Society knows this. After the death of H. P. Blavatsky, the spiritual leadership of the Society passed to Annie Besant. This must be counted as a good karma for the Society. In everything that comes from this woman lives the power by which the Society must be guided if it is to fulfill its mission. This mission consists in elevating the present civilization to a spiritual life. This civilization has achieved unspeakable things in intellectual and material cultural work. It has enormously expanded the horizons and outer work of humanity and will continue to expand them. But spiritual deepening was bound to suffer. The nineteenth century lacked spiritual direction, it lacked the spiritual life that gave impulses to earlier great epochs of human development. That was the necessary fate of cultural development. For when man's strength is particularly expressed in one direction, it must withdraw from its activity in the other. At present, however, we have again reached the point where spiritual life must be brought into our culture if it is not to become completely externalized, and if humanity is not to lose touch with spiritual experiences. This mission of the Theosophical Society is now fully expressed in everything Annie Besant does and says. The highest task of our time is the innermost impulse of her own soul. Knowledge and will, insight and ideal of our time are united in Annie Besant, to be fertilized by her own highly developed spiritual life as a force emanating from her and to communicate as such to her fellow human beings. Wherever she speaks, the spirit of the audience is raised to the heights of divine knowledge and their hearts are filled with enthusiasm for the spiritual currents of humanity. And so it was when she gave her magnificent opening address at the Amsterdam Congress. She set out the conditions under which the work of the Society must be carried out. The question of the “why” and “wherefore” of the assembly was answered by her in broad strokes. She described the theosophical movement as part of the great spiritual movement that is taking hold of the whole world today. The spiritualization of the whole civilization must be achieved. A glance at this civilization teaches this. In the material, this civilization lives itself out. In a science that seeks to understand the material, in an industry and technology that serves the outer life, in a traffic that makes the material interests of the whole earth more and more common. But all this lacks the spiritual. Our knowledge is a mind knowledge, our commercial prosperity promotes external well-being. But this science on the one hand and material prosperity on the other are only an external form of culture, not its inner life. To everything we have conquered, we must add heart and soul. We must again incorporate the divine ideal into our will; then all externals will no longer be an end in themselves, but only the outer garment, only the form of civilization. The spirit must fill the body of our culture if it is to endure. And to fill this body with the spirit, the theosophical movement has been brought into being. It starts from the oldest thoughts of mankind, from that wisdom which in primeval times raised our race to its present level of consciousness, and which was always effective in all great progress. These thoughts, this wisdom are as old as humanity itself. Only their forms must change according to the different needs of different times. Theosophy does not ascribe the origin of wisdom to an external, accidental development. Rather, it derives it from the brotherhood of the great leaders of humanity. These are the beings who have already in the past reached the high degree of perfection towards which the average human being in the future is striving. Such advanced brothers of the human race use their degree of perfection to help the rest of humanity to progress. Their work is done in secret. It must be done in secret because it is too high to be understood by the masses. They are the guides of divine ideals. From time to time they send their messengers into the world to give it great cultural impulses. The great world religions owe their origin to such impulses; all cultural achievements owe their foundations to them. One such impulse has been sent into the world in recent times, leading to the founding of the Theosophical Society by H. P. Blavatsky and H. S. Olcott. It aims to bring humanity back to the realization that thought is greater than expression, spirit greater than outer form. It seeks to show that science must regain knowledge not only of the sensual but also of the supersensible worlds, that the heart should not cling only to material goods but should open itself to the divine ideal. Above and beyond all the benefits that the individual can derive from our present means of culture stands the general spiritual upliftment of all mankind. All the prosperity for which humanity strives should be sought only to build a dwelling for the spirit on this earth. And this dwelling is only worthy if it is suffused with beauty. But beauty is only possible if it emanates from the spirit. Our material civilization cannot have true art unless it conquers true faith. From the art of the Middle Ages, the faith of medieval humanity shines out to us. Its painters allowed themselves to be inspired by the religious feeling that lived in their hearts. The content of faith gave meaning and significance to the lines and colors of the artists. Theosophy wants to bring to bear a new body of thought, appropriate to the imagination of contemporary humanity. And the new body of thought will be the creator of a new art. That is the task of our time. All nobler spirits feel this. The striving towards it is noticeable everywhere. The Theosophical Society wants to be the leader, the vanguard of this movement. It wants to inspire individual men and women for this goal, which is currently felt so clearly. And with that, it unites the striving for tolerance, for universal love of humanity. These have always been the forces from which the great advances of humanity have emerged. What individual cultural movements strive for, the theosophical current seeks to form into a great unity. It seeks to overcome narrow-mindedness and intolerance. For only in united striving can humanity today achieve its goal. The Theosophical Society does not exist for the selfish pursuit of its members. It is a mistake to join it for the purpose of furthering one's own development. It wants to be there for humanity, it wants to work in its service. One should become a member of the Society only to be a channel through which flows knowledge that promotes human progress. The Society does not grow when its membership increases daily, but when these members grow in confidence and insight into their lofty task with each passing day. The justification of the [Theosophical] Society lies in the change that has taken place in the way people think over the last thirty years. Today, people no longer look down on those who no longer focus solely on the material side of culture. The heart begins to expand, and people have an interest again in those who aspire to the spirit. Our materialism became so powerful because our devotion had become so weak. But the person who is unable to look up to the spiritual heights in adoration closes himself off. Devotion, however, opens the heart and mind. We rise to that which we behold in devotional love and high esteem. The call for such deepening has gone out to those who have united in the Theosophical Society; they are to be good helmsmen for the path that is mapped out for present civilization.

The individual sections were represented by their general secretaries: the English section by Bertram Keightley, the Dutch section by W. B. Fricke, the French section by Dr. Th. Pascal, the German section by Dr. Rud. Steiner. Unfortunately, the general secretary of the Italian section, Decio Calvari, could not be present. Johan van Manen conducted the business of the congress and also gave his report at the meeting on the morning of June 19. His work deserves special mention. He had an enormous workload during the preparations for the meeting and during the meeting itself. One could only admire the willingness to make sacrifices, the prudence and the energy of this member of the Theosophical Society.

On the evening of the 19th, a public lecture was held. Annie Besant spoke about “New Psychology”. She outlined the change that has taken place in the last forty years in the prevailing views on the nature of the mind.

Forty years ago, materialism in men like Büchner and Vogt could claim that the brain secretes thoughts like the liver secretes bile. Since then, people have abandoned the belief that the nature of the mind can be known by studying the workings of the brain. Today we know that such a process would be the same as trying to penetrate the secrets of a Mozart or Beethoven creation by studying the hammers and keys of a piano. The phenomena of dream life have been studied, and those phenomena of consciousness that occur in abnormal states of the physical body have been studied in depth. This has led to the conviction that the spiritual is an independent entity in man, and that the way in which it manifests itself in the ordinary state is only one of its forms. Only this form, this mode of expression, is conditioned by the physical structure of the human senses and the human brain. It must be the nature of the spirit to manifest itself through other instruments in a different way. In this way, experimental science has confirmed the fundamental truth of all deeper religious worldviews, that the spirit in human day-consciousness has only one of its revelations. It has shown that through certain processes (in trance and so on) forms of consciousness arise in man in which he is quite different from his so-called normal consciousness. This also justifies the scientific approach of not seeking the truth only through the form of consciousness that we experience in everyday life, but also by elevating ourselves to higher forms of consciousness in order to get to know the higher worlds.

The other works of the congress were dealt with by forming departments according to the subject matter of the lectures presented. It became clear how Theosophy has already extended its work to all branches of modern spiritual life and also to social ideals. The Theosophists seek to bring the suitability of their goals to bear in all branches of culture, and they also seek the sources everywhere in order to integrate their thoughts and ideals into the aspirations of the present. The individual departments were as follows: 1. Science; 2. Comparative Religion; 3. Philology; 4. Human Brotherhood; 5. Occultism; 6. Philosophy; 7. Theosophical Method of Work; 8. Art.

In the scientific section, a paper by Dr. Pascal on the “Nature of Consciousness” was read first. The author had subtly succeeded in combining the basic theosophical ideas with modern concepts. Ludwig Deihard (Munich) followed with a suggestion. He pointed to the various states of consciousness that have been established experimentally (multiplex personality), explained them lucidly and called on those who had developed higher states of consciousness within themselves to also put their experiences at the service of the basic theosophical concepts (reincarnation and karma). This was followed by a stimulating discussion of the “Development of a Second Personality” by Alfred R. Orage (Leeds). The two presentations followed on nicely from what Annie Besant had presented in her lecture on “the new psychology”. From the proceedings of this section, it can only be stated that Emilio Scalfaro (Bologna), Arturio Reghini (Italy) and Mrs. Sarah Corbett (Manchester) delivered papers on important questions of space, matter and other topics. The abundance of what was presented can hardly be covered in a short summary, especially since lectures were held simultaneously in different rooms and it was only possible for individuals to attend a part of them. The works will also be published in a detailed congress report (yearbook of the congress) and will thus be accessible to everyone. Therefore, only a few of them will be reported on here. In the section on comparative religion, the following was presented: “The Religion of the Future - a View of Vaishnavism” by Purnendu Narayana Sinha (India).

In the section on “human brotherhood”, there was a treatise on the communal life among so-called primitive peoples by Mme Emma Weise (Paris). Works of this kind are important for the theosophist because they point to a time when the principle of brotherhood was a natural law of the soul in human tribes. Progress has necessarily led to separation and to selfishness. But this is only a transitional epoch. Seclusion must give way to selfless devotion, to ethical brotherhood, again, at a higher level, to what was once innate in man at a lower level. The social coexistence of people was the subject of the lectures by D. A. Courmes (Paris) and $. Edgar Aldermann (Sacramento, Cal.).

In the “Occultism” section, Annie Besant spoke about the “Essence of Occultism”. She pointed out H. P. Blavatsky's saying that occultism is the study of the universal world spirit in all of nature. The occultist recognizes that everything that can be perceived in the world is based on a universal spirit; and that the world of appearances only gives the forms, the expressions of this hidden (occult) world spirit. We find this conviction expressed in all major world religions, and occultists find the real foundations of religions confirmed by their own experience. The intellectual science can only recognize the outside of the world. It speaks of forces and laws. The occultist sees behind these forces and laws. And he then perceives that these are only the outer shell for living entities, just as the human body is the shell for the soul and spirit. From the lower forms that lie behind the forces of nature, to the exalted world spirits, which he addresses as logoi, the occultist pursues the spiritual realm according to his ability. But in order to recognize this world as a reality, he must go through a careful training. He must achieve two things. First, he must expand his consciousness so that it can encompass higher worlds, just as the ordinary conscious mind dominates the physical world. Second, he must develop higher senses that can perceive in these worlds, just as eyes and ears perceive in the physical world. The first goal, the expansion of consciousness, depends on man learning to control his thoughts. In ordinary life, man is controlled by his thoughts. They come and go, dragging the consciousness hither and thither. The occultist must be master of the course of his thoughts. He regulates their course. It is in his power to decide which thoughts to admit and which to reject. This goal can only be achieved through the most diligent self-education. Once you have prepared yourself in this way, you can begin to develop the higher senses. As long as a person is still under the influence of his passions, desires and instincts, the possession of higher senses can only be harmful to him. A pure, selfless life is a matter of course for the occultist. The personal desires he cherishes of his own accord take shape in the higher worlds. Man himself is the author of these forms. If he begins to see these forms, he is exposed to the danger of mistaking his own personal creations of desire and longing for objective realities. These products of his body of desire and longing are hidden from the average person. If they are not to become the source of serious errors and illusions for the developed higher senses, they must fade from view. The occultist must personally be without desire. There is a further danger that man may mistake the fragments of higher worlds that present themselves to his open eyes for exhaustive realities. The occultist must learn to recognize all this. What particularly hinders the development of occult abilities is the haste and rush with which some disciples want to advance. These stem from personal impatience and restlessness. But the occultist must develop complete inner calmness and patience. He must be able to wait until the right moment of inspiration has come. He must wait patiently until he is given what he should not take in greed. He must do everything to enable the voices from the spiritual world to speak to him at the right moment; but he must not have the slightest belief that he can force these voices. He who is lifted up in pride because he believes he knows more than others cannot become an occultist. This is why occultists speak of the heresy of separatism. If a person wants something for himself, if he does not want to possess everything in community, then he is immature for occultism. Every separation, every striving for personal self-interest, even if it is of the highest spiritual nature, kills the occult senses. The dangers of the occult path are great. Only patience and selflessness, willingness to make sacrifices and true love can make the occultist.

A letter from Leadbeater, which was intended for this section, included, among other things, interesting explanations about the astral forms that are evoked by musical works of art. One can characterize a sonata by Beethoven or a piano piece by Mozart by the architecture that the clairvoyant can perceive in the astral space.

In the “Philosophy” section, Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture on “Mathematics and Occultism”. He assumed that Plato demanded a mathematical education from his students, that the Gnostics referred to their higher wisdom as mathesis and that the Pythagoreans saw the basis of all being in number and form. He explained that they all did not have abstract mathematics in mind, but that they meant the intuitive insight of the occultist, who perceives the laws in the higher worlds with the help of a spiritual sensation that presents in the spiritual what music is for our ordinary sensual world. Just as air, through vibrations that can be expressed in numbers, arouses musical sensations, so the occultist, if he prepares himself by knowing the secrets of numbers, can perceive spiritual music in the higher worlds, which, when a person is particularly highly developed, intensifies to the sensation of the music of the spheres. This music of the spheres is not a figment of the imagination; it is a real experience for the occultist. By incorporating the arithmetics into his own being, by permeating his astral and mental body with the intimate sense that is expressed in the numerical relationships, man prepares himself to let hidden world phenomena have an effect on him. In modern times, the occult sense has withdrawn from the sciences. Since Copernicus and Galileo, science has been concerned with conquering the physical world. But it is in the eternal plan of human development that physical science should also be able to find access to the spiritual world. In the age of physical research, mathematics has been enriched by Newton and Leibniz's analysis of the infinite, by differential and integral calculus. Those who seek not only to understand in the abstract, but to experience inwardly what a differential really represents, will gain a view that is free of sensuality. For in the differential, the sensual view of space itself is overcome in the symbol; for moments, human cognition can become purely mental. To the clairvoyant, this is revealed by the fact that the thought form of the differential is open to the outside, in contrast to the thought forms that a person receives through sensory observation. These are closed to the outside. Thus, through the analysis of the infinite, one of the paths is opened by which the higher senses of the human being open to the outside. The occultist knows what happens to the chakra between the eyebrows when he develops the spirit of the differential within himself. If the mathematician is a selfless person, he can lay down what he has achieved in this way on the general altar of human brotherhood. And the seemingly driest science can become an important source for occultism.

In the same section, Gaston Polak (Brussels) spoke about symmetry and rhythm in man. It was interesting to hear these discussions about the way in which the human being can fit into the general great laws of the world. A paper by Bhagavän Däs (Benares) on the “Relationship between Self and Not-Self” was read. Since this paper will soon be available in book form, a summary can be dispensed with here, which would also be rather difficult due to the subtle form of the thought processes.

In the section on the “method of theosophical work”, the remarks of Mrs. Ivy Hooper (London) were of great importance. She emphasized that the essential thing for the theosophist is not the dogmatic forms in which the spirit, the spiritual life is expressed, but this spirit, this life itself. It is commendable that this has been stated with such clarity. We can express the spirit with both Christian and Oriental symbols if we only preserve this spirit. Where Christian symbolism is better understood, the Theosophist may make use of it. For one can be a good Theosophist without knowing anything of the dogmas in which spiritual wisdom was necessarily taught in the beginning. The Theosophical Society is meant to be the bearer of this wisdom, but it should change the forms according to necessity. Buddhist formulas and oriental dogmas must not be confused with the theosophical spirit. Theosophy has no dogmatics. It only wants to be spiritual life.

A section on “Art” showed how the Theosophical worldview can also bring light to this area. Jean Delville (Brussels), for example, developed something spiritual in his lecture on the “Mission of Art”. Ludwig Deinhard (Munich) took this opportunity to present a treatise by the German painter Fidus, in which the latter expresses his Theosophical view of the secrets of art.

On Tuesday afternoon, with a brief address by Annie Besant and expressions of thanks to our Dutch Theosophists from the attending General Secretaries, the congress concluded. That evening, Dr. Hallo gave a public lecture on the human aura, illustrated with slides.

An exhibition of works of art of particular interest to Theosophists had been organized and could be viewed during the entire duration of the congress.

London was chosen as the venue for next year's congress.

[ 1 ] I would also like now to sketch out what I have discovered about the relations of the soul element to the physical-bodily element. I can indeed state that I am describing here the results of a thirty-year-long spiritual-scientific investigation. Only in recent years has it become possible for me to grasp the pertinent elements in thoughts expressible in words in such a way that I could bring what I was striving for to a provisional conclusion. I would also like to allow myself to present the results of my investigation in the form of indications only. It is fully possible to substantiate these results with the scientific means available today. This would be the subject of a lengthy book, which circumstances do not allow me to write at this time.

[ 2 ] If one is seeking the relation of the soul element to the bodily element, one cannot base oneself upon Brentano's division of our soul experiences—described on page 69ff. of this book—into mental picturing, judging, and the phenomena of loving and hating. In the search for the pertinent relations, this division leads to such a skewing of the relevant circumstances that one cannot obtain results that accord with the facts. In an investigation like ours, one must take one's start from the division rejected by Brentano: into mental picturing,¹ feeling, and willing. If one now draws together all of the soul element that is experienced as mental picturing, and seeks the bodily processes with which this soul element is related, one finds the appropriate connection by being able to link up, to a considerable extent, with the results of today's physiological psychology. The bodily counterparts of the soul element of mental picturing are to be found in the processes of the nervous system, with its extensions into the sense organs on the one hand and into the internal organization of the body on the other. No matter how much, from the anthroposophical viewpoint, one will have to think many things differently than modern science does, this science does provide an excellent foundation.

This is not the case when one wishes to determine the bodily counterparts of feeling and willing. With respect to them one must first pave the right path within the realm of the findings of today's physiology. If one has achieved the right path, one finds that just as one must relate mental picturing to nerve activity, so one must also relate feeling to that life rhythm which is centered in the breathing activity and is connected with it. In doing so one must bear in mind that, for our purposes, one must follow the breathing rhythm, with all that is connected with it, right into the most peripheral parts of our organization. In order to achieve concrete results in this region, the results of physiological research must be pursued in a direction that is still quite unusual today. Only when one accomplishes this will all those contradictions disappear which result at first when feeling and the breathing rhythm are brought together. What at first inspires contradiction turns out, upon deeper study, to be a proof of this relation.

Let us just take one example from the extensive region that must be explored here. The experience of music is based on feeling. The content of musical configurations, however, lives in our mental picturing,² which is transmitted through the perceptions of hearing. Through what does the musical feeling experience arise? The mental picture of the tone configuration, which is based on the organ of hearing and on a nerve process, is not yet this musical experience. This latter arises through the fact that in the brain the breathing rhythm—in its extension up into this organ—encounters what is accomplished by the ear and nervous system. And the soul lives then not merely in what is heard and pictured; it lives in the breathing rhythm; it experiences what is released in the breathing rhythm through the fact that what is occurring in the nervous system strikes upon this rhythmical life, so to speak. One need only see the physiology of the breathing rhythm in the right light and one will arrive at a comprehensive recognition of the statement: The soul has feeling experiences by basing itself upon the breathing rhythm in the same way it bases itself, in mental picturing, upon nerve processes.

And relative to willing one finds that it is based, in a similar way, upon metabolic processes. Here again, one must include in one's study all the pertinent ramifications and extensions of the metabolic processes within the entire organism. Just as, when something is mentally pictured, a nerve process occurs upon which the soul becomes conscious of its mental picturing, and just as, when something is felt, a modification of the breathing rhythm takes place through which a feeling arises in the soul: so, when something is willed, a metabolic process happens, which is the bodily foundation for what is experienced in the soul as willing.

Now, in the soul a fully conscious, wakeful experience is present only with respect to the mental picturing mediated by our nervous system. What is mediated by the breathing rhythm lives in ordinary consciousness with about the same intensity as dream pictures. To this belongs everything of a feeling nature: all emotions, passions, and so on. Our willing, which is based on metabolic processes, is experienced in a degree of consciousness no higher than that present in the completely dim consciousness of our sleeping state. A more detailed study of the pertinent facts will show that we experience our willing in a completely different way than our mental picturing. We experience the latter the way one sees a colored surface, as it were; we experience willing as a kind of black area upon a colored field. We see something within the area where no color is, in fact, because, in contrast with its surroundings from which color impressions go forth, no such impressions come to meet us: We can picture willing mentally because, within the soul's experiences of mental pictures, at certain places, a non-picturing inserts itself that places itself into our fully conscious experience the same way, in sleep, interruptions of consciousness place themselves into the conscious course of life. The manifoldness in our soul experience—in mental picturing, feeling, and willing—results from these different kinds of conscious experience.

In his book Guidelines of Physiological Psychology, Theodor Ziehen is led to significant characterizations of feeling and willing. In many ways, this book is a prime example of today's natural-scientific way of regarding the connection between the physical and the psychic elements in man. Mental picturing, in all its different forms, is brought into the same connection with the nervous system that the anthroposophical viewpoint also must recognize. About feeling, however, Ziehen says:

Almost without exception, earlier psychology regarded the emotions as the manifestations of a particular independent soul capacity. Kant placed the feeling of pleasure and pain, as a particular soul faculty, between the capacity for knowledge and the capacity for desire, and emphasized explicitly that any further tracing of these three soul capacities back to a common ground was not possible. In contrast to this view, our previous discussions have already shown that feelings of pleasure and pain do not exist at all in this kind of independence, but rather arise only as characteristics or traits—as the so-called nuances of feeling—of sensations and mental pictures.

So this way of thinking ascribes to feeling no independence in our soul life; it sees in feeling only a trait of mental picturing. The result is that it regards not only our life in mental picturing but also our feeling life as being founded upon nerve processes. For it, the nervous system is that part of the body to which the whole soul element is assigned. But this way of thinking, after all, is based on the fact that unconsciously it has already thought up in advance what it wants its findings to be. It grants the status of "soul element" only to what is related to nerve processes, and therefore must regard what cannot be assigned to the nervous system—feeling—as having no independent existence, as being a mere attribute of mental picturing. Anyone who does not set off in the wrong direction with his concepts in this manner and is unbiased in his soul observations will recognize the independence of our feeling life in the most definite way; and secondly, the unbiased evaluation of physiological knowledge will give the insight that feeling must be assigned to the breathing rhythm in the way described above.

The natural-scientific way of thinking denies to will any independent being within our soul life. Will does not even have the status—as feeling does—of being an attribute of mental picturing. But this denial is also based only on the fact that one wants to assign everything of a real soul nature to nerve processes. Now one cannot, however, relate willing in its own particular nature to actual nerve processes. Precisely when one works this through with exemplary clarity as Theodore Ziehen does, can one be impelled to the view that the analysis of soul processes in their relation to the life of the body “offers no cause to assume any separate will capacity.” And yet: unbiased observation of the soul compels one to recognize an independent life of will; and a realistic insight into physiological findings shows that willing as such must not be brought into relation to nerve processes but rather to metabolic processes.

If one wishes to create clear concepts in this realm, one must view physiological and psychological findings in the light demanded by reality; but not in the way this occurs in today's physiology and psychology, where light is shed from preconceptions, definitions, and even in fact from theoretical sympathies and antipathies. Above all, we must take a hard look at the interrelations of nerve activity, breathing rhythm, and metabolic activity. For, these forms of activity do not lie side by side; they lie in one another; they interpenetrate; they go over into each other. MetaboUc activity is present in the entire organism; it permeates the organs of rhythm and of nerve activity. But it is not the bodily foundation of feeling in rhythm; in nerve activity, it is not the basis of mental picturing; rather in both of them, the working will that permeates rhythm and nerves is to be assigned to the metabolic activity. Only a materialistic bias can make a connection between what exists in the nerve as metabolic activity and mental picturing. A study rooted in reality says something completely different. It must recognize that metabolism is present in the nerve insofar as will permeates it. Likewise, metabolism is present in the bodily apparatus of rhythm. The metabolic activity in this apparatus has to do with the will present in this organ. One must connect willing with metabolic activity and feeling with rhythmical occurrences, no matter which organ it is in which metabolism or rhythm appears. In the nerves, however, something completely different from metabolism and rhythm is occurring. The bodily processes in the nervous system that provide the basis of mental picturing are difficult to grasp physiologically. For, where nerve activity occurs, there the mental picturing of ordinary consciousness is present. The reverse is also true, however: where mental picturing is not being done, there no nerve activity is ever to be found, but only metabolic activity in the nerve and a nuance of rhythmical function. Physiology will never arrive at concepts that are in accordance with reality in the study of the nerves as long as it does not understand that true nerve activity absolutely cannot be an object of physiological sense observation. Anatomy and physiology must arrive at the knowledge that they can discover nerve activity only through a method of exclusion. What is not sense-perceptible in the life of the nerve, but whose presence—and even its characteristic way of working—-is proved necessary by what is sense-perceptible: that is nerve activity. One arrives at a positive picture of nerve activity if one looks into that material happening by which the purely soul-spiritual being of a living content of our mental picturing—as described in the first essay of this book—is lamed down into the lifeless mental picturing of ordinary consciousness. Without this concept, which one must introduce into physiology, there is no possibility in that science of stating what nerve activity is. Physiology has developed methods for itself that at present conceal rather than reveal this concept. And even psychology has blocked its own path in this region. Just look, for example, at how Herbartian psychology has worked in this direction. It has turned its gaze only upon the life of our mental picturing, and sees in feeling and willing only effects of our life in mental picturing. But these effects melt away before the approach of knowledge, if at the same time one does not direct one's gaze in an unbiased way upon the reality of feeling and willing. Through such melting away one cannot arrive at any realistic coordinating of feeling and willing with bodily processes.

The body as a whole, not merely the nerve activity included in it, is the physical basis of our soul life. And just as for ordinary consciousness our soul life can be transcribed as mental picturing, feeling, and willing, so can our bodily life as nerve activity, rhythmical function, and metabolic processes.

Immediately the question arises: How does our actual sense perception—which is only an extension of nerve activity— integrate itself into the organism, on the one hand; and on the other hand, how does our ability to move—to which willing leads—integrate itself? Unbiased observation shows that neither belong to the organism in the same sense as nerve activity, rhythmical function, and metabolic processes. What occurs in a sense organ is something that does not belong directly to the organism at all. With our senses we have the outer world stretching like gulfs into the being of the organism. While the soul is encompassing in a sense organ an outer happening, the soul is not taking part in an inner organic happening, but rather in the continuation of the outer happening into the organism. (I mentioned these inner connections epistemologically in a lecture to the Bologna Philosophy Conference in 1911.) ³

In a process of movement we also do not have to do physically with something whose essential being lies inside the organism, but rather with a working of the organism in relationships of balance and forces in which the organism is placed with respect to the outer world. Within the organism, the will is only assigned the role of a metabolic process; but the happening caused by this process is at the same time an actuality within the outer world's interrelation of balance and forces; and by being active in willing, the soul transcends the realm of the organism and participates with its deeds in the happenings of the outer world.

The division of nerves into sensory and motor nerves has created terrible confusion in the study of all these things. No matter how deeply rooted this division may seem to be in today's physiological picture of things, it is not based on unbiased observation. What physiology presents on the basis of nerve severance or of pathological elimination of certain nerves does not prove what appears upon the foundation of experiment or outer experience; it proves something completely different. It proves that the difference is not there at all which one assumes to exist between sensory and motor nerves. On the contrary, both kinds of nerves are of the same nature. The so-called motor nerve does not serve movement in the sense assumed in the teachings of the division theory; rather, as the bearer of nerve activity it serves the inner perception of that metabolic process that underlies our willing, in just the same way as the sensory nerve serves the perception of what takes place in the sense organ. Until the study of the nerves works with clear concepts in this regard, a correct relation of our soul life to the life of the body will not come about.

[ 3 ] In the same way that psycho-physiologically one can seek the relation to the body's life of the soul life that runs its course in mental picturing, feeling, and willing, so one can also strive anthroposophically for knowledge of the relation which the soul element of ordinary consciousness has to spiritual life. And there one discovers through the anthroposophical methods described in this and in my other books, that just as our mental picturing finds a bodily foundation in our nerve activity, so it also finds a basis in the spiritual realm. In the other direction—on the side turned away from the body—the soul stands in a relation to a spiritually real element that is the foundation for the mental picturing of ordinary consciousness. This spiritual element, however, can only be experienced by a seeing cognition. And it is experienced through its content being presented to seeing consciousness as differentiated Imaginations. Just as, toward the body, our mental picturing is based on nerve activity, so from the other side, it streams toward us out of a spiritually real element, revealing itself in Imaginations. This spiritually real element is what is called in my books the etheric or life body. (In speaking about the etheric body I always emphasize expressly that one should take exception neither to the word “body” nor to the word “etheric”; for, what I present shows clearly that one should not interpret the matter in a materialistic sense.) And this life body (in the fourth volume of the first year of the periodical, “Das Reich,” I also used the expression "body of formative forces") is the spiritual element from which our ordinary consciousness' life of mental picturing flows from birth (or conception, as it were) until death.

The feeling in our ordinary consciousness is based, on the bodily side, upon the rhythmical function. From the spiritual side it flows from a spiritually real element that is discovered in anthroposophical research by methods that I call "Inspiration" in my writings. (Again, it should be noted that by this concept I mean only what I have paraphrased in my work; so one should not confuse this term with what lay people understand by this word.) To the seeing consciousness the spiritually real being underlying the soul and attainable to Inspiration is his own spiritual being, transcending birth and death. This is the region where anthroposophy undertakes its spiritual-scientific investigations into the question of human immortality. Just as in the body, through the rhythmic function, the mortal part of man's feeling nature manifests itself, so, in the content of Inspiration of seeing consciousness, does the immortal spiritual core of our soul being manifest.

For seeing consciousness, our willing, which toward the body is based on metabolic processes, streams from the spirit through what in my writings I call “Intuition.” What manifests in the body through the—in a certain way—lowest activity of the metabolism corresponds in the spirit to the highest: what expresses itself through Intuitions. Therefore, mental picturing, which is based on nerve activity, comes almost to full expression in the body; willing shows only a weak reflection in the metabolic processes oriented toward it in the body. Our real mental picturing is the living one; the mental picturing determined by the body is the lamed one. The content is the same. Real willing, even that which realizes itself in the physical world, runs its course in regions accessible only to Intuitive vision; its bodily counterpart has almost nothing to do with this content. Within that spiritually real being that manifests itself to Intuition is contained what extends over from previous earth lives into the following ones. And it is in the realm that comes into consideration here that anthroposophy approaches the questions of repeated earth lives and of destiny.

As the body lives itself out in nerve activity, rhythmical function, and metabolic processes, so the spirit of man lives in what manifests itself in Imaginations, Inspirations, and Intuitions. And as in its realm the body allows for an experience of the nature of its outer world in two directions—in sensory processes, namely, and in processes of movement— so the spirit also: in one direction through the fact that it experiences Imaginatively our mentally picturing soul life, even in ordinary consciousness, and in the other direction through the fact that in willing it unfolds Intuitive impulses that realize themselves in metabolic processes. If one looks toward the body, one finds the nerve activity that lives as the element of mental picturing; if one looks toward the spirit, one becomes aware of the spirit content of Imaginations that flows into this very element of mental picturing. Brentano feels at first the spiritual side of the mental picturing life of the soul; he therefore characterizes this life as a picture life (an imaginative happening). When not merely one's own inner soul life is experienced, however, but also—through judgment—an element of acceptance or rejection, then there is added to our mental picturing a soul experience, flowing from the spirit, whose content remains unconscious as long as we are dealing only with ordinary consciousness, because this content consists of Imaginations of a spiritually real element that underlies the physical object and that only adds to the mental picture the fact that its content exists.

It is for this reason that in his classification Brentano splits our life of mental pictures into mere mental picturing, which only experiences imaginatively an inwardly existing element, and into judging, which experiences imaginatively something given from without, but which brings the experience to consciousness only as an acceptance or rejection. With respect to feeling, Brentano does not look at all at its bodily foundation, the rhythmical function; he only brings into the realm of his attention what arises from Inspirations (that remain unconscious) as loving and hating within the region of ordinary consciousness. Willing escapes his attention completely, however, because his attention wishes to direct itself only upon phenomena in the soul, whereas in willing there lies something that is not enclosed within the soul, something through which the soul experiences also an outer world. Brentano's classification of soul phenomena, therefore, is based on the fact that he divides them according to viewpoints that can be seen in their true light only when one turns one's gaze upon the spiritual core of the soul, and on the fact that he wants to apply his classification only to the phenomena of ordinary consciousness. With what is said here about Brentano I only wished to supplement what was said on this subject on page 74ff.

• 1. Vorstellen here is virtually synonymous with “thinking.” Ed.
• 2. In German, Vorstellen. Please recall that this means “a placing before oneself inwardly,” not necessarily as a visual image. Ed.
• 3. Published as Seeing with the Soul, Mercury Press, 1996.