The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we study the great historical individualities of the past, such as those who have already claimed our attention during these lectures, namely, Zarathustra, Hermes and Buddha, we are brought face to face with incidents and facts which are of interest to us as human beings, because we feel that our whole soul life plays a part in the collective evolution of humanity. It is only when we look back to those great spiritual characters of by-gone times, who have helped to bring about the conditions in which we now live, that we can truly comprehend our present circumstances.

With regard to Moses, however, whose personality we are about to consider, the matter presents a wholly different aspect; for here we have the feeling that there is no limit to that direct influence exerted by all those events connected with his name, which yet continue to affect the spiritual content of our souls. We still feel, in our very bones, as it were, the workings of those impulses which emanated from this great outstanding patriarch. It seems to us that Moses is even now a living force in our thoughts and feelings, and as if when we analyse our ideas and motives according to his doctrine and sentiments, that we are in truth arraigning and searching our very souls. It is for this reason that all that persistent tradition which is directly associated with Moses, seems to us more vivid, more actually present, than that which is connected with those other great personalities to whom I have referred. It is therefore in a certain sense, less difficult to deal with this outstanding individuality, for through the Bible we are all familiar with this mighty figure, whose influence has endured even to the present time.

Although the conscientious researches which have been conducted by science during the past ten years and more, have to a certain extent touched upon the surface and here and there thrown new light upon the history of Moses—in so far as it can be gleaned from the Bible—nevertheless, when we look more deeply into the matter, we must admit that very little indeed has been altered with regard to the general impression which we have received from our own personal study of the Scriptures.

Whenever we refer to any matter connected with Moses, or to the great patriarch himself, we speak as if we were mentioning some subject well known throughout the widest circles; this fact somewhat simplifies the contemplation of the historical features. But on the other hand there are certain difficulties which arise, because of the manner in which the Bible tradition concerning Moses is expressed. This we at once realize when we call to mind the vicissitudes which accompanied the Biblical researches of the nineteenth century.

There is scarcely a single branch of human knowledge, or sincere scientific endeavour, even when we include the natural sciences, which claims in so high a degree our deep admiration and reverence, as do these investigations; and I feel that this point should be repeatedly emphasized. The industry, the discrimination, the devoted and unselfish scientific application, expended upon separate sections of the Bible, in order to educe from their character and style a definite knowledge of their alleged origin, is considered by those who have followed these researches closely as a work which has had no parallel during the nineteenth century.

All this investigation of the past hundred years has, however, a tragic side, for the further the researches were carried, the more did they tend to place the Bible beyond the reach of the people. Anyone who will consult the current literature concerning the results of these exhaustive studies can convince himself of this fact. The difficulty arose because the Bible was dissected and split up, particularly in the case of the Old Testament, in an attempt to show, for instance, that a certain passage occurring in one part of the Bible owed its origin to a different current of tradition to that of a passage in another part. Also, that during the course of time the whole subject matter had gradually become welded together, in a form which made it necessary for it to be first separated out in this scholarly manner, in order that it might be understood. Hence, in a certain sense, the outcome of these investigations must be looked upon as tragic, since they were fundamentally wholly negative in character and contributed nothing toward the continuance of that vivifying influence which the Bible is capable of exerting, and which has lived in the hearts and souls of mankind for thousands of years.

That movement towards true spiritual development, which we have termed Spiritual Science, is chiefly concerned with constructive activities and is not interested in mere criticism, as is so often the case with other sciences. In our time its most important task is to bring about once again an accurate and proper understanding of the Bible, and in this relation it puts forward the following question:—‘Is it not essential that we should first penetrate into the very depths of the import and significance which underlies the whole character of the ancient Biblical traditions, and then, only after these are fully and clearly understood, inquire as to their origin?’ Such a procedure is however, not easy, especially with reference to the Old Testament, and is particularly difficult in regard to those sections which deal with the great outstanding figure and personality of Moses.

We would now ask:—‘What is it that Spiritual Science has to say regarding the peculiar nature of those ancient Biblical descriptions?’ It tells us that those external events which are associated with this or that personality or nation, have been chronicled in the order and manner in which they actually occurred, as viewed from the stand-point of external history. Following this method, the personality of Moses is so depicted that his experiences in the physical world are represented just as they took place in relation to space and time.

It is only when we have made a profound study of the Bible through the medium of Spiritual Science, that we realize that a Biblical description concerned with external happenings and experiences may become merged in one of quite another nature; and it is often with difficulty that we can distinguish this change in fundamental character. We are told, for instance, of journeys and other worldly events which we accept as such; then, all unnoticed, as the account continues, we find ourselves confronted with a graphic narrative of a wholly different order. It seems to us that a certain journey is represented as continuing from one definite place to another, and as if we were expected to look upon the account of events depicted in the latter part of the narrative in the same light as the external physical happenings described at the beginning. In reality, however, the latter part of such an account may be actually a figurative portrayal of the soul-life of the particular personality to whom the story has reference. It then has no connection whatever with external worldly events, but depicts the soul experiences, struggles and conquests, through which this especial being is raised to a higher degree of soul development, greater enlightenment, a more advanced stage of activity, or to a mission concerned with the world’s evolution. In such case, descriptions of outside events pass over without any noticeable change directly into pictorial representations, which although remaining similar in style and character, have absolutely no significance with regard to external physical happenings—but refer only to the inner experiences of the soul.

The above assertion will always remain ‘a mere assertion’ to those who are unable to utilize the methods of Spiritual Science and thus enter gradually and understandingly into the strange and unusual features associated with many of the graphic narratives found in the Bible; more particularly will this be the case with regard to those sections which deal with the patriarch Moses. When, however, we study this strange method of representation deeply, we notice that when at some certain point in a story the description of external physical events changes into one of soul-experiences, the whole style and fundamental character of the account alters, while a new element suddenly makes its appearance. If we ask ourselves:—‘How does it come about that we are able to perceive this change?’ we can only answer that we realize it because of a conviction that comes to us from the soul. This curious descriptive method, which we have just characterized, lies at the base of ancient religious historical narratives, more especially when they are concerned with personalities who have reached a high standard of discernment and understanding of the soul’s action and inner workings.

The further we advance, and the more deeply we become immersed in the study of Spiritual Science, the greater is our faith in this singular style of representation; but just because of the strangeness of this method it is, in some ways, far from easy to gain a clear comprehension of the true meaning of certain passages which occur in the graphic delineation of Moses. On the one hand, we have the Bible with its apparently straightforward narrative, but on the other, there are difficulties due to the curious way in which the account is presented, when the subject matter is of an especially profound character. This fact has resulted in the customary interpretations being much too liberal in many cases.

When, for instance, we consider the conception of ancient Hebrew history, as advanced by the philosopher Philo, who lived at the time of the founding of Christianity, we realize at once that he endeavoured to portray the whole record of the old Jewish nation as if it were an allegory. Philo aimed at a figurative representation in which the entire history of this ancient race becomes a sort of symbolical account of the soul-experiences of a people. In so doing, Philo went too far, and for this reason: he did not possess that judgment and insight, born of Spiritual Science, which would have enabled him to discern and to know when the descriptions concerning external events glided into portrayals relative to soul-life.

As we proceed it will be realized that in Moses we have a personality who influenced directly the active course of human evolution, and whose mission it was to enlighten mankind concerning matters of the utmost import and significance. When we experience that deep sense, so pregnant with meaning, through which we become aware that his deeds even yet touch a chord within our souls, then do we feel that a full and clear comprehension of the Moses-Impulse is to us a necessity. We will, therefore, without further preamble, enter at once upon the question of his great Mission. The true object of his life’s work cannot, however, be fully understood unless we presuppose that the Bible narrative was based upon actual and specific knowledge of a certain fundamental change in man’s psychic condition, to which we have already referred when considering the individualities of Zarathustra, Hermes and Buddha. We then drew attention to the fact that during the course of evolution the soul-life of man has gradually undergone a definite modification, from a divine primordial clairvoyant state to that of our present-day intellectual consciousness.

I must once again bring back to your minds a statement made in previous lectures, namely, that in primeval times the soul of man was so constituted that during certain intermediary conditions between that of sleeping and being awake, he could gaze upon the Spirit-World, and that things thus observed, and which were truly of the spiritual realms, manifested as pictures or visions; and it is these visions that in many cases have been perpetuated in the form of mythological legends of by-gone times.

In reply to the question:—‘How can the reality of this ancient clairvoyant consciousness be proved externally, and without the aid of Spiritual Science?’ we would say that the answer is to be found in the results of certain precise and painstaking investigations which have been carried on even in our time, but which have not as yet received general recognition. We would point out that comparatively recently some of our mythologists during their researches into the origin of ancient mythical visions, legends, etc., which have arisen among certain separate and distinctive peoples, have been forced to assume the existence of an altogether different conscious state in order to account for these ancient myths and concepts.

I have often referred to an interesting book, entitled The Riddle of the Sphinx, by Ludwig Laistner, a mythologist who must be ranked as the most prominent among the modern investigators in this field of research. The Riddle of the Sphinx is regarded as one of the most important works of its kind. Laistner draws attention to the fact that certain myths appear to form a sequel to events typical of experiences in a dream world. He did not advance so far as the study of Spiritual Science, and he was quite unaware that he had in reality laid the foundation stone of a true knowledge and understanding of the Ancient Mythologies. We ( annot, however, regard Myths and Legends merely in the light of transfigured typical dreams, as Laistner has done, but we must recognize in them the products of a by-gone condition of human consciousness in which man could apprehend the Spirit-World in pictorial visions, that later found expression in mythical imagery.

It is impossible to comprehend the old fables and legends, unless we start with the hypothesis that they were evolved from a different form of conscious state; and it is just because this basic assumption has been lacking that they are so little understood. This prehistoric soul-state has now given way to our present intellectual consciousness, which latter may be briefly characterized as follows:—We alternate between a condition of sleeping and of being awake. In our wakeful state we seize upon those impressions which come to us from the external world, through the medium of our senses; these ideas we group together, combining them by means of our intellect. This material form of intellectual consciousness, which acts through our power of understanding and intelligence, has now superseded the ancient clairvoyant soul-state. We have thus characterized a particular episode of history, and presented it in the aspect which it assumes when we make a profound study of the evolution of mankind.

There is yet another factor which underlies the manner in which Bible narratives are expressed. It appears that a special mission was assigned to each nation, race and tribe in connection with the evolution and development of man; and that the ancient clairvoyant forms of consciousness manifested in different ways according to the capacity and temperament of the various peoples. It is for this reason that we find fundamentally among the mythologies and pagan religions of divers nations such uniformity of tradition concerning this old clairvoyant state.

We thus realize that we are not dealing with just one abstract idea, or unit, in this ancient conception of the world; for the most varied missions were assigned to Nations and to Peoples who differed very greatly from one another; and thus it came about that the universal consciousness found expression in many and varying forms. If we would indeed understand all that the evolution of mankind implies, then we must take into consideration the fact that it does not merely consist of a meaningless succession of civilizations, but that throughout the whole course of man’s progress and development there is found interwoven both significance and purport. Hence we find that a certain order of conscious-state may reappear and be found active in some later civilization because, like a fresh page, or a new-born flower, it has something to add to that which has gone before; for the whole meaning and purpose of human evolution implies ever recurrent and successive forms of manifestation.

We can best understand the people of a nation from the stand-point of Spiritual Science when we realize that all races, be they Ancient Indians, Persians, Babylonians, Greeks, or Romans, had a definite mission to fulfil, and that each nation gave expression in some special and distinctive manner to that which was active and could live in man’s consciousness. We cannot rightly comprehend these different peoples unless we are in a position to apprehend and to realize the nature of their mission from their individual characteristics. The whole evolution of mankind proceeds in such manner that to each nation a certain time is apportioned and when this period draws to a close, the nation’s work is done. It is as if the hour had struck, the seeds had brought forth their fruit, and the task was ended. It may, however, happen that with this or that race certain peculiarities of temperament, or natural disposition, corresponding to a former period may persist. In such a case this particular nation has, as it were, overpassed the appointed time when a new mission should be entered upon, and take the place of that which was before. Thus it is that certain singular and distinctive national traits may endure and become active at a later period, the while the objective course of human evolution substitutes some fresh purpose for that which was previously determined.

A course of events of this nature is especially noticeable with the Egyptians, and we have already become acquainted with their peculiar characteristics during the lecture devoted to Hermes. The Egyptians had been assigned a lofty mission in connection with the collective progress and development of humanity; and all that was embodied therein was perfected and fulfilled, while the seeds of that which was to follow had been laid in the Egyptian civilization. The people of this great nation, however, retained their original temperament and singular characteristics and were therefore not of themselves capable of formulating and undertaking a new mission. Hence it came about that the control and government of the succeeding community passed into other hands. The source out of which the fresh movement evolved was fundamentally Egyptian, but the mission itself was destined to assume a different character.

Here we note something akin to a change of tendency in the whole purport of man’s evolution, and in order that we may understand the circumstances, it is necessary that we immerse ourselves deeply in the study of all that pertained to the growth and development of the Egyptian mission. When Moses had acquired all the knowledge and information possible concerning this matter, he pondered deeply and the souls of his people were stirred. It was, however, not his task to carry on the ancient Egyptian mission; he must evolve therefrom some entirely new plan which he might instil into the course of human evolution. It is because his concept was so mighty, so comprehensive and so penetrating in its nature, that the personality of Moses exerted so powerful an Influence upon the whole history of mankind. The way in which the Moses Mission was evolved out of the past evolution of the Egyptian people is even in our day of the greatest interest, while its example and study yet bear abundant fruit. That knowledge and understanding which came to Moses from the Egyptians, and which was enhanced through his contact with the lofty and eternal course of spiritual development has ever reached outward, until it has now become active in our soul-life.

Hence, the impression we have gained of Moses is that of a personality not directly dependent upon any particular period, or upon any special mission, for that wisdom which was his to impart to humanity. We regard him as one whose soul must have been stirred by those eternally surging waves of Divine influence, that ever find new channels through which to reach deep down into the evolution of mankind, so that man may be productive and bring forth goodly fruits. It is as if the ever-lasting germ of wisdom implanted in the soul of Moses, found its fitting soil, and ripened, in the light of that knowledge which came to him from the Egyptian civilization.

The Bible account of the finding of Moses enclosed in an Ark, shortly after his birth (Ex. ii. 5), is a symbolical description according to the ancient mode, from which we are to understand that in Moses we are concerned with a soul that drew upon eternal sources for the most lofty of those concepts which it proffered to humanity. Anyone who understands the singular form in which such religious narratives are developed, knows that this particular style is always indicative of some matter of deep significance. During former lectures of this series, we have learnt that when man desires to raise his capacity of apprehension to the higher level of the spiritual spheres he must pass through certain stages of soul development, during which he completely shuts himself off from the external world, and also from that ever wakeful call emanating from the lowest forces of the soul.

Let us suppose that we wished to express figuratively, that at birth some personality entering upon earth life came upon the world endowed with certain Divine gifts which would later raise him to great heights in his relation to mankind. We might well indicate this concept by developing a narrative telling us that it was essential that this being should, shortly after birth, pass through some material experience of such nature as to cause all his sense perceptions and powers of external apprehension to be for a time entirely shut off from the physical world.¹ Viewed in this light the Bible story concerning the discovery of Moses becomes quite intelligible.

We read that the daughter of the Egyptian King Pharaoh [sent her maid to the river to fetch the Ark, in which was the child] and that she herself named him Moses—‘Because,’ she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’ (Ex. ii, 10.) Those who are aware of the true meaning of the name ‘Moses’, know that it signifies this act, as is indicated in the Bible. From this graphic narrative we are to understand that the daughter of Pharaoh, who is here symbolical of Egyptian culture, guided the influx of external life into a soul touched with the attributes of eternity. At the same time we find intimated in a wonderful manner that the imperishable message which Moses was destined to bring to humanity was as one might say, enfolded and lay within an outer shell encompassed and enveloped by the old Egyptian culture and mission.

Next follow descriptions of external events which occurred during the life-development of Moses; and we realize once again from the form in which they are presented, that they have reference to actual outer happenings. All that we read concerning the vicissitudes of Moses, especially where mention is made of his grief and distress over the bondage of his people in Egypt, may be regarded as an actual account of mundane events. As the story continues, it merges almost imperceptibly into a graphic portrayal of his inner soul-life and soul-experiences. This occurs at that place where it is stated that he fled away and was finally guided to a priest of Midian whose name was Jethro or Ruel. (Ex. ii, 15 to 20.)

Anyone having the knowledge and discernment necessary in order to discover the existence of a story of this nature underlying what, at first sight, would appear to be an ordinary spiritual narrative, would at once realize from the very names alone that the account changes its whole character at this point and passes over to a description of soul-events. We do not mean to suggest that Moses did not actually set out upon a journey to some temple sanctuary or abode of priestly learning; but rather that the whole narrative has been most ingeniously developed and told in such manner that external happenings are deliberately intermingled with the soul-experiences of the great patriarch. Thus do we find that all outer life-experiences mentioned at this point are suggestive of the trials and tribulations against which Moses struggled in order to attain to a more exalted soul-state.

What, then, is the actual significance of Jethro? From the Bible we learn that he was one of those mysterious individualities whom we meet again and again when we study the evolution and development of the human race. Beings who stand supreme in having won their way through toil and effort to that lofty standard of knowledge and discernment which can only be acquired, slowly and gradually, through veritable experience of the soul’s inner conflicts. It is in this wise alone that man may gain true understanding of those grand spiritual heights where lie the paths ever traversed by such exalted ones. Moses became, to a certain extent, a disciple of Jethro, and through this association his mission was destined to receive a direct impulse. Now, Jethro was one of those incomprehensible beings who withhold their innermost nature from the apprehension of mankind, though acting on occasion as teachers and leaders of men. In these days there is much doubt and incredulity regarding the reality of such mystic personalities, but that they have indeed existed becomes evident to every earnest student of the historical development of humanity.

The account of the experiences of Moses while a disciple of this great wise priest, opens with a description of his meeting with Jethro’s seven daughters [in the land of Midian. Ex. ii, 15, 16] near-by to a well (a symbol betokening:—source of wisdom). Anyone who would comprehend the deeper significance underlying a graphic narrative of this nature must above all remember that mystical descriptions of every period have symbolically portrayed all such knowledge and power as the soul itself may display in the form of female figures—even down to Goethe, who in the closing words of Faust, alludes to the ‘eternal feminine’. Thus in the seven daughters of Jethro, we recognize the seven human soul-forces, over which that priestly character ever exercised control.²

We must bear in mind that in those ancient times when man’s consciousness was still quickened by the old clairvoyance, other views prevailed regarding the nature of the human soul and its various powers. The only way in which we can form any conception of this primordial consciousness is by starting with our current ideas as a basis. We speak in these days of man’s soul and its powers of thinking, feeling and willing, as if these forces were within us, contained, as one might say, in the very soul itself; and this concept is essentially correct, as viewed from the stand-point of intellectual consciousness. Primeval man, however, under the influence of his gift for clairvoyant vision, regarded the soul and its workings from a different aspect. He was not aware of any centralized system in this connection and did not look upon his powers of thought, feeling and will, as forces whose mid-point of activity is situated in the Ego and which determine the oneness and individuality of the soul, but regarded himself as wholly subservient to the Macrocosm and its several forces; while each separate source of energy within his soul seemed linked with specific and divine spiritual beings. This concept may be compared to one in which we might conceive our thought activities as prompted and maintained by some spiritual soul-power other than that which stimulates and influences the faculties of feeling and will. We would thus picture separate currents of spiritual energy as flowing inward from the Macrocosm, and activating our powers of thought, feeling and willing. Although in these days we form no such conception, it was thus that primeval man regarded his soul, not as a centralized unit in itself, but rather as a theatre in which the divine spiritual powers of the cosmos might unceasingly play their several parts. In connection with Moses, reference is made to seven such forces, which are conceived as ever active upon the stage of soul-life.

We have only to turn to Plato in order to realize that man's outlook upon the evolution of human consciousness changed and became in general ever more and more abstract and intellectual. Plato conceived ‘Ideas’ to be living entities, leading an existence such as in our time could only be thought of in connection with matter; while each separate soul-force is pictured as possessing an attribute which plays its part in the theatre of the soul’s totality. Gradually the conceptions formed regarding the capacity of the soul became increasingly abstract while the Unity of the Ego assumed more and more its rightful place in man’s concepts.

Strange as it may appear, in the medieval conception of the seven liberal arts,³ we can still recognize in abstract form characteristics typical of the symbolic representation of the seven active spiritual forces of soul-life in the seven daughters of the Midianite priest, Jethro. The manner in which the seven liberal arts were evolved and brought to light was as a last dim echo (touched with a modern trend of thought) of that consciousness which recognized that seven distinct faculties persist, and are ever active in the scenes staged in the theatre of man’s soul.

When we consider the above concepts, we begin to realize that while, from the spiritual standpoint, Moses was confronted with the collective aspect of these seven human soul-forces, nevertheless, his chief mission was to implant one particular soul-influence in the form of an impulse deeply and fully in the course of human evolution. This it was possible for him to do, because it lay in the blood and in the temperament of his people to manifest an especial interest in that outstanding soul-power, the activities of which have been felt right on down to our own time, and which it was his task to instil. We refer to that dominant soul-energy which unites all those forces, previously regarded as separate and detached, in one centralized and homogeneous bond of inner soul-life—the life of the true self—the Ego. We are next told that one of the daughters of Jethro married Moses; this means that within his soul one of these forces became especially active, so much so indeed, that owing to its influence it became for a long period a dominating power in human evolution, reducing all other soul-forces to a unified Soul-Ego.

Statements such as the above must be made with the greatest reserve, for in our present age mankind has no adequate faculty, or organ, wherewith he may realize that many Biblical descriptions which apparently represent external happenings are presented solely for the purpose of drawing attention to the fact that at the time at which the events portrayed took place, a particular soul was undergoing some experience of inner development; in other words, was especially concerned with, and attracted to, its individual mission. It is also apparent that one special attribute which the old Egyptians did not possess, namely, that inspiration which Moses drew from the human Ego-force at the mid-point of man’s soul-powers was for him the criterion [to which he referred his judgment].

We can therefore with reason assert that the true mission of the ancient Egyptian nation was to found a culture based upon the practise and methods of primeval clairvoyance. All that is best of those things which have been handed down to us from the Egyptian civilization, has sprung from the singular nature of those peculiar psychic powers, once possessed by the Egyptian priests and the leaders of the people. But the time came when with regard to the old Egyptian mission, one might say, that the cosmic clock had run down, and the call must go forth to mankind to unfold and develop those soul-forces which it was ordained should, for a long period, supersede that ancient passive clairvoyant condition in the future evolution of humanity.

Ego-consciousness, intellectuality, rationalism, reason and understanding, with their spheres of action in the external perceptual world were destined to replace the old clairvoyant consciousness in the human race yet to come. I have already stated how, in the future of mankind, the clairvoyant power, and the intellectual consciousness, will be found united. Even now, humanity is advancing toward a time when these two conscious states will be universally interwoven and co-active throughout the human race.

The most important element in human culture, regarded from our modern stand-point, received its first impulse through Moses; hence, that sense of persistency in connection with the Moses-impulse which still exists in our soul-life and power. To Moses was granted a certain capacity for intellectual thought and action, controlled by reason and understanding; and this ability [and his wisdom] were instilled into him in a singular and unusual manner; because all those concepts and ideas which came to him and were destined to manifest and bear fruit in some particular way at a later period, must first be implanted in a fashion conforming with the peculiar methods in vogue in those ancient times. Here we come upon a remarkable fact, namely, that later generations of mankind were directly indebted to Moses for their power of expanding and developing their understanding and intellect through the medium of their Ego-consciousness; so that they might reason and ponder upon the world, and gain enlightenment through inner intellectual contemplation while yet fully awake.

The manner in which a consciousness of intellectuality came to Moses must have been through flashes of intellectual awareness, similar in nature to the old clairvoyant manifestations. He was indeed the recipient of that first initial impulse toward the new order of reasoned judgment and understanding, while at the same time he possessed the old clairvoyant power, being in fact, under the influence of the last of its promptings. All that knowledge and enlightenment which was acquired by later generations independently of clairvoyance was accessible to Moses through its aid. His understanding, his discernment and intuition in the sphere of pure reason came to him when his soul passed into that same clairvoyant condition which he had experienced when under the influence of the old Midianite priest. We have the incident of the burning bush, which glowed with fire of such nature that it was not consumed. In this case, the spirit of the cosmos manifested before Moses in an entirely new manner, which was beyond the clairvoyant knowledge of the Egyptians to explain.

Everyone who is acquainted with the essential facts knows that, during the course of development, man’s soul reaches a point when the aspect of external objects gradually undergoes a change, so that they appear interwoven with that mysterious background of archetypes from which they emanate. The spectacle of the ‘burning bush’, so magnificently portrayed in the Bible, is recognized by all who are advanced in spiritual discernment as an instance of man’s apprehension of the Spirit-World.

We now realize that the enlightenment which Moses received in clairvoyant form must have been of the nature of a new consciousness proceeding from the great spirit of the cosmos, that spirit which is ever active and weaves throughout the whole material world. Ancient peoples believed in a plurality of cosmic forces, these they conceived as operating in man’s soul in such manner that the soul’s power did not represent a unit, for the forces were manifold in nature, while the soul was regarded merely as the scene of their active expression. It was for Moses to recognize a cosmic spirit of a very different order—one that did not manifest as a soul-power owing its origin to divers spirit influences which, although exhibiting a certain similitude, find ultimate expression in varied form. That spirit of the cosmos, which it was ordained that Moses should apprehend, was of wholly other character, for its revelation can alone take place in the innermost and holiest mid-point of soul-life, the Ego. There works the spirit of the universe—in the place where man’s soul is conscious of its very centre.

When the human soul feels that the Ego is linked with the weaving and the life of the spirit, in the same way as the people of old realized that their being was truly related to the cosmic forces, then can it apprehend those things which were first revealed to Moses through his clairvoyant powers. And these revelations must be regarded as forming the cosmic basis from which came the great impulse he gave to mankind. That primal impulse enabling humanity through its reasoning faculties and understanding alone [unaided by the old clairvoyance], to associate and compare physical phenomena, and to recognize in them factors underlying all continuity in the material world.

In these days, if we consider the centre of our soul-life, it appears to be of extremely poor content, in spite of the fact that this content represents our most intense life experiences. Certain people, especially those of a highly gifted and talented character, as for instance, Jean Paul, have felt, sometime during the course of earthly existence, that they were actually confronted with their true centre of being. Jean Paul, in his autobiography, tells this story:—‘Never shall I forget an inner vision which I once experienced and which I have not as yet described to anyone. In this vision I was present at the birth of my true conscious self, and I clearly recollect both the time and the place of this occurrence. It was one morning when I was a very young child; I was standing in the doorway of our house, and as I looked toward the left, in the direction of the wood-shed, there suddenly came to me an inner vision flashed down as lightning from Heaven, of the words:—“I AM AN I” (Ich bin ein Ich)—and these words remained for a space shining brightly. In that moment, and in that place, my Ego had looked upon itself for the first time, and the gaze would endure forever. Illusion due to defect of memory is hardly conceivable in this case, since no outside incidents on topics could mingle extraneous matter with an event which could only take place in the secret and most holy seclusion of man’s innermost being, and the very novelty of which caused minor details to be deeply impressed upon my memory.’

This ‘secret and most holy seclusion’ appears to be the most intense and powerful condition of our soul-life, but mankind cannot be so aware of this particular soul-state as of many another, for it is lacking in [conscious] plentitude. When man withdraws himself to this central point, then does he indeed realize that through those wondrous words—‘I AM’—so earnest and so forceful, but withal so meagre in actual word content, there ever resounds the dominant tone of his innermost soul-being.

That spirit from the cosmos, which Moses clearly apprehended as an homogeneous unity, is unceasingly active in that abode of ‘secret and most holy seclusion’. No wonder, when this cosmic essence was first revealed to Moses that he cried out:—‘If I am appointed to the task of standing before the people in order to inaugurate a new civilization based upon the consciousness of self—who will believe me?—In whose name shall I proclaim my mission?’ And the answer came:—‘Thou shalt say “I AM THAT I AM.”’ This profound asseveration signifies that the name of the Divinity Who reveals Himself in the ‘secret and most holy seclusion’ of man’s nature, cannot be otherwise proclaimed than with words which designate the consciousness of self-being. In the phenomenon of the burning bush, Moses discerned the Jahveh, or Jehovah-nature, and we can well understand that from the moment when the name—Jahveh—broke in upon his consciousness as ‘I AM’, there came a new current, a new element into the course of human evolution, and which was destined from that time on to supplant the old Egyptian civilization. The ancient culture had merely served to develop the soul of Moses, in order that he might be in a position to truly appreciate and to cope with those most exalted personalities and difficult situations which it would be his lot to encounter during the course of his life experiences.

We next come to the conference between Moses and Pharaoh. It is easy to see that when these two came together, they could not understand one another. The account is intended to convey the idea that all those things regarding which Moses spoke proceeded from an entirely changed order of human consciousness, and must, therefore, have been quite unintelligible to Pharaoh, in whom the old clairvoyant Egyptian culture alone continued active. That such was the case, is evident from the way in which the records are expressed—for Moses spoke a new language. He clothed his speech in words which emanated from the Ego-consciousness of the human soul, and were, therefore, incomprehensible to Pharaoh, who could only follow the old train of thought.

Up to that cosmic hour, the Egyptians had had a mission to fulfil, based upon the powers of a by-gone clairvoyant conscious state—but the time allotted to that mission had passed. Henceforth, the race, if it should continue to live on, would still remain endowed with the same temperament and national characteristics which it had heretofore possessed. It had found no means whereby it might raise itself and cross the sheer boundary which separated the old epoch from the new. But at this very time it was ordained that the Hebrew people would arise, and that Moses should point out a way. In remembrance of the events connected with the ‘passing over’ by Moses and his people from that period which was ended to that which was to come, there has ever since been celebrated The Feast of the Passover, and this festival should constantly remind us that it was Moses who was blessed with the understanding and the wisdom that made possible the transition from the old order of consciousness to the new. The Egyptians could not span this gulf, and while as the nation tarried, the waves of time swept onward. It is in the manner outlined above, that we must regard the relation of Moses to the Egyptians, and to his people.

The Hebrew race was by nature thoroughly adapted to receive that great enlightenment which it was the Mission of Moses to impart. What was its actual character? It was ordained that the old clairvoyant state should give place to an intellectual reasoning consciousness. It has been pointed out in previous lectures that clairvoyant consciousness is in no way connected with our external corporeal nature, and that it unfolds freely just at those times when man, through his soul training, has released himself from his external bodily instrument in order that he may be active and untrammelled in his soul-life. The intellectual consciousness is associated with the brain and the blood, and its means of expression lies in the human organism.

The continued spiritual development of that conscious state which had previously hovered, as it were, over the physical structure had, up to the time of Moses, been brought about solely through the relation existing between master and pupil; but it must now accommodate itself to a new condition in which it would be directly connected with, and confined to, the physical organism, and to the blood which would flow in the veins of the people from generation to generation. It was for this reason that the enlightenment which Moses was destined to give to humanity, so as to bring about an impulse toward an intellectual culture, could only be instilled into a nation in which the blood of the race would continue to flow vigorously throughout future generations, and therefore of such nature was the instrument chosen to receive the basal principles of the new cognitive faculty.

The new reasoning consciousness, the seeds of which were implanted by Moses, was not destined to live on merely in the spirit, for it had been ordained that the people thus chosen should be taken away from the Egyptian nation, in the midst of which they had been made ready, and that henceforth isolated and as a separate race they must develop through centuries to come those external methods and means which would in future form the basis of an intellectual culture, that should continue on throughout all coming ages.

We thus realize that the world’s history is full of significance and purport, and that the spiritual element is closely related to all external physical agents. It is clear that the author of the Bible narrative is at great pains to present the account of the transition of the ancient Egyptian culture to that of Moses in its true light and meaning as an episode in the history of the world. We have, for instance, the story of the passing of the Children of Israel through the Red Sea. Concealed beneath this narrative lies a wonderful truth relative to the evolution of mankind, but which is only to be understood by those who clearly comprehend the whole nature of this incident.

In connection with the Egyptians, we find proof of that link which necessarily exists between the soul-powers and that which is termed the clairvoyant faculty. We obtain the clearest insight into this matter when we take the animal organism as our starting-point, but I am sure you will not assume that by so doing, I would suggest that man’s nature resembles that of the animal kingdom. We must first imagine that the whole outlook and soul-life of the brute creation is dreamy and torpid, compared with the intellectual soul-state of man. Now, although primeval human clairvoyance most certainly cannot be directly compared with the soul-life of animals, from which it differs radically, nevertheless, we can clearly trace a definite relation between the instinctive existence and soul-life of the brute creation and that of the ancient soul-life of man. Although often exaggerated, there is a certain amount of truth underlying those stories which tell of animals leaving districts subject to earthquakes and volcanic disturbances, days before an eruption takes place. It has certainly happened, in some cases, that while human beings who regard and apprehend all things through the medium of their intellect have remained unmoved, the animals in the neighbourhood have been aroused. Anyone who has a knowledge of Spiritual Science knows that brute nature is so closely interwoven with all life in its immediate environment, that we can, in a sense, assert that animals possess a measure of instinctive understanding, which through its rudimentary powers controls and regulates their existence. This faculty is no longer found in man, because he has developed a higher intellectual quality, through which he is able to form reasoned concepts and ideas concerning all things which come within his cognizance; but this very logical capacity has, in effect, torn asunder that close tie with Nature herself, which he once enjoyed.

We must picture that in primeval times man was the possessor of a similar instinctive cognition to that above mentioned, in connection with the old clairvoyant state and also in conjunction with his relation to the external phenomena of Nature—a kind of intuition—whereby the ancients were enabled to say:—‘Such and such events are about to occur, hence we must take certain steps to prepare ourselves in advance.’ Just in the same way as some people, who are suitably constituted, raise themselves through striving of soul to a higher power of discernment and attain to an order of apprehension concerning matters connected with Nature for which no cause or reason can be assigned.

He who uses the forces of his soul and through its attributes and its virtues wins power to utter statements which are beyond the scope of his intellectual consciousness, feels uncomfortable when people come to him and say:—‘Why is that so? Give us proof of your assertions.’ Such persons never realize that knowledge of this nature comes by quite a different path from that which is born of logical reasoning. It is a striking and pertinent fact that Goethe, when he looked out of a window could often predict, hours in advance, what kind of weather was in store. If we conceive faculties of this nature as existing among the ancients and manifesting in such a way that through direct contact with the Spirit-World, the people of old were enabled to be closely associated with creation and the Phenomena of Nature (but in a manner entirely different from that which is the case to-day), then, we can realize and picture at least one fundamental feature of the old clairvoyance relative to the practical conduct of life. In olden times mankind did not possess meteorological observatories, there were no weather-forecasts published in newspapers or in other ways, as there are to-day; but the ancients were endowed with a sense of perception which clearly foretold what would occur, and they governed their actions in accordance with the impressions received.

This was especially the case with the old Egyptians, among whom the faculty of sense-perception was developed to a very high degree. They had no knowledge of our modern science or of our analytical methods, but nevertheless they knew how to comport themselves so as to be in living harmony with the whole surrounding world. But because the cosmic hour had struck for the Egyptian culture, this faculty, once so prominent, fell into decadence, and the Egyptian people became ever less and less capable of understanding and dealing with the facts and realities of Nature, and could no longer foretell from the grouping and interaction of external elements and factors, what should be their attitude and mode of conduct. But humanity was now destined to learn how to investigate and to study the arrangement and interrelations of these external elements, and it was Moses who would impart the impulse, but the impulse that he gave came even then from his old clairvoyant consciousness.

While Moses and his people stood upon the shore of the Red Sea, he realized, through an understanding somewhat similar to our own, but which still unfolded clairvoyantly, that exceptional natural circumstances, namely, an unusual combination of an East Wind and ebbtide together with a channel-like passage, made it possible at the right moment, for him to lead the Israelites across shallow waters. This historical fact has been graphically portrayed in order that we may realize that Moses was indeed the founder of a new and universal mode of intellectual apprehension that is still active in our day, and through which mankind will once more learn to bring the practical affairs of life into harmony with the existing order of Nature, even as was done by that great patriarch.

The Egyptians were a nation whose hour was spent; they could no longer foretell what would come to pass. The power of the old instinctive faculties which were theirs in by-gone times had waned, and they found themselves once more in a position as in the past when a decision must be made. In by-gone times they would have cried out:—‘It is too late! We cannot now make the passage.’ But that innate gift of discernment which they had so long enjoyed had all but vanished, and they knew not how to live in the new intellectual conscious state. Therefore they stood before the Red Sea helpless and bewildered, the old clairvoyant consciousness could no longer be their guide [they followed] and disaster overtook them. Here we find the new Moses-element in direct contrast with the old, and we see that the ancient clairvoyant faculty had so far declined that it could no longer be relied upon; and because it was unsuited to the new age it was the forerunner of calamity.

When we look beneath the surface of such apparently external graphic narratives as the above, and come upon the matter which the narrator really has in mind, we find that the stories oft-times characterize great turning-points in the evolution of mankind; and we realize that it is no light task to deduce from the peculiar descriptions found in the ancient writings, the true significance of the various personalities mentioned, such for instance, as Moses in the circumstances we have just quoted.

It is clear from what follows later in the account that at that time when it had to be decided whether Moses should, or should not, lead his people to Palestine, he still relied entirely upon the old clairvoyance, and that in his case, his intellectual enlightenment was fundamentally dependent upon this faculty. It was because the blood that flowed in the veins of the Jewish people made them by nature especially suitable to the task of laying the foundation of the impending movement toward intellectuality, that it was ordained that they should be led forth and guided to the Promised Land. The knowledge and wisdom which Moses acquired through his clairvoyant powers sufficed to impart the necessary impulse—but could not be of itself of the new culture; for this new cultural faculty was destined to manifest in ways which would be the antithesis of the old order of clairvoyant consciousness.

From the Bible account it is evident that Moses felt that his call was merely to lead his people to a certain place; he was not to take them into the Promised Land; the last stage of the journey must be left to those who were destined to embrace the new order of intellectual development.

Although Moses was the prophet of the Lord, who manifests in our very Ego-being, we are nevertheless given to understand that it was only in virtue of his clairvoyant faculty that he could become conscious of the Mighty Word of the Great Spirit of the cosmos. When at last he was left to himself with the task of succouring his people, he fled to his tent in order that through his clairvoyant powers he might once more be in the actual presence of his God. Then it was that a Voice said:—‘Because thou canst not carry out all that is betokened by those thoughts which come to thee with visions, henceforth must another be the leader of thy people.’ The words of this decree shed a radiance around the great patriarch, for they implied that Moses with his clairvoyant faculty, was a prophet the like of whom would no more be seen in Israel. We are to understand that Moses was the last among the ancients to be endowed with the old order of psychic discernment. Henceforth would a form of intellection wholly independent of this gift spread its influence among all fitting peoples, and man’s actions and cognition be based on power to reason and tradition alone. Thus might the Ego, the verity of which had already become recognized by those who had understanding of the fundamental factors of the new culture, be made ready that it might absorb a new principle.

It was through the Mission of Moses that mankind was first led to realize that the most positive feeling which man can experience of the absolute reality of the all-pervading cosmic Spirit, that Divine Principle which is ever active and interwoven throughout the whole earth, is centred in the ‘I AM’—the very mid-point of the human soul. But in order that these two simple words may be fraught with the uttermost import, the ‘I AM’ must first store within itself full measure of a content that shall once again embrace the world. To compass this end necessitated yet another mission, which mission is expressed in those deeply significant words of St. Paul:—‘Yet not I, but Christ liveth in Me’ (Gal. ii, 20). Now, Moses had brought humanity up to the point of establishing a true culture of man’s Ego. This new-born intellection was destined to live on throughout the ages yet to be, a gift from above, a form of civilization, a ‘receptacle’, so to speak, for the coming content. It was essential that the centre of our being should first unfold in the bosoms of the ancient Hebrew people. Henceforth, would this divine ‘receptacle’ be filled with all that springs from a true understanding of The Mystery of Golgotha, and the events which took place in Palestine. Thus would the Ego receive its new content, which itself would be a creation of the Spirit-World. We can most easily recognize all that came of that fresh in-pouring, and that owed its origin to the preparation and development of the Hebrew people, when we refer to the book of Job. We cannot, however, rightly understand the wonderful tragedy therein portrayed, unless we take into account the peculiar characteristics of the Jewish race.

We are told that Job, albeit he was a righteous man who believed in his God was, nevertheless, convinced that the Almighty was actually the true source of all his afflictions. He experienced disaster after disaster to his property, his family, and his own person. So that the Lord appeared to manifest in such a manner that Job might well have doubted whether indeed the Great Spirit of the cosmos was really active in man’s Ego. Matters went to such a length that Job’s wife could not understand why her husband, in spite of all that had befallen him, should continue to trust in the Almighty. She therefore spoke to him in words of paramount import, thus:—‘[Dost thou still retain thine integrity?) curse God, and die.’ (Job ii, 9.) What is the underlying meaning of this significant allegorical tragedy, and of the words:—‘Curse God, and die’? It is here implied that,—If the God Whom you regard as being the very source of your existence visits you with sorrow and adversity, you may turn from Him; but of a verity death will be the lot of the one who would do this thing, for he who turns away from his God, places himself without the pale of the living course of evolution. The friends of Job could not believe that he had committed no transgression, for surely in the case of a righteous person should equity prevail. Even the narrator himself cannot make clear to us the justness of the circumstances, for he can only say that Job, who was thus stricken with misery and distress, nevertheless received compensation in the physical world for all that he had lost and suffered.

Throughout this deeply significant allegory as depicted in the book of Job there is, as it were, an echo of the Moses-consciousness; and in the story it is made clear that the Spirit brings to us enlightenment and ever manifests in man’s innermost being. But during the course of earthly existence, the Ego must live in contact with physical things. Hence it is that there are moments of transgression in which man may weaken, and lose his feeling of unity with the vital source of life. From the Christ-Impulse, humanity has learnt that compensation for suffering and affliction is not to be sought in the physical world alone. We now know that in every case when man is overcome by bodily distress—in sorrow and in pain—then, if he but remain steadfast, he may indeed triumph over that which is material. For his Ego is not merely illumined by the ultimate source of all that is spread throughout space and time, but is of a verity so conditioned that it may yet absorb the mighty power of the eternal.

We find the same uplifting thoughts underlying St. Paul’s words:—‘Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Gal. ii, 20). Moses had brought humanity so far that it could realize that all things that live and weave throughout the cosmos, manifest in deepest and most characteristic form in the Ego. Man may comprehend the world, if it be pictured as a simple unit proceeding from some great universal Ego centre. If we would indeed receive the eternal spirit within our being, then must we not regard temporal things; nor take heed only of the Jehovah-Unit hidden and beyond all that is of space and time; but look also to that spontaneous and glorious benefaction—The Christ-Source—which underlies and is concentric with all unity.

Thus do we recognize in Moses the personality of one who paved the way for Christianity; and we have learnt in what manner he instilled into humanity a consciousness of self, a consciousness which throughout the development of all future generations would be as a store-house to be filled with the substance of eternity; which means that it was yet to become a fitting receptacle replete with the essence of the Christ-Being. It is in this way that we picture the patriarch Moses in his relation to the progress and evolution of mankind. History ever reveals its deepest truths when subject to thought and reflection of the above nature.

In a previous lecture devoted to Buddha, we drew attention to the fact that from time to time some outstanding personality arises, through whose agency the eternal fount of wisdom springs once more into life, thus causing humanity to advance yet another step in its growth and development; and when we ponder upon the circumstances connected with this or that great figure, there comes to us a sense of his true relation to the collective evolution of mankind.

When we regard the development of the human race from this stand-point, we find that we are involved in its progress in a vital sense, and it is at once apparent that the Spirits of the cosmos have some fixed and definite purpose associated with our existence, the object of which becomes more and more discernible as life proceeds. It is through the earnest consideration of the example and works of lofty spiritual individualities, together with profound meditation concerning outstanding events in the world’s evolution and the history of mankind, that we may gain that sense of power, confidence of soul and unswerving hope, through which alone we may take our proper place in the totality of human evolution. If we regard the history of the world in this manner, we feel anew the beauty of Goethe’s words, and we realize that the greatest benefit which can accrue to us through the study of universal history is the awakening of our enthusiasm. But it must be an enthusiasm which is not mere blind admiration and wonder, for it should prompt us to implant in our souls the seeds which are borne to us from the past, so that they may bring forth goodly fruits in the time yet to come.

The words of the great poet live again, in somewhat modified form, when, through the contemplation of those grand outstanding personalities and events of olden times we realize this glorious truth:—

‘The age is as a field in flower,
Where wondrous growth and life proceed;
Fresh buds unfold with every hour—
Lo! all is fruit and all is seed.’4

Notes for this lecture:

1. The underlying suggestion here involved is, that the fact that it is necessary that the perceptual faculties be held in abeyance for the time being, indicates that this particular personality, already possessed other faculties of a spiritual order, which being thus freed would become operative. [Ed.]

2. The seven human soul-forces to which reference is here made, are those cosmic-influences which act through the soul in connection with the seven principles of man’s organism. These ‘seven principles’ are as follows:—
(1) The Physical body. (2) The Etheric or Life Body. (3) ‘The Astral Body. (4) The Ego or Body of Consciousness, which sets about transforming the first three by acting upon the psychic principles. Within the Ego is:
(5) Atma. Spirit-man as transmuted Physical Body.
(6) Buddi. Life-spirit as transmuted Etheric or Life Body.
(7) Manas. Spirit-self as transmuted Astral Body.
The latter, Manas, is partly developed; but of Atma and Buddi there is merely a seed.
Vide, Investigations in Occultism by Rudolf Steiner. Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, London and New York. [Ed.]

3. In the Middle Ages, the Liberal Arts (artes liberales) were considered to be seven in number, namely, music, grammar, rhetoric,logic, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Plato and Aristotle, distinguished between the practical arts, and the so-called liberal arts, which latter were concerned with progress of an ethical or literary character. [Ed.]
4. Die Zeit, sie ist eine blühende Flur,
Ein grosses Lebendiges ist der Menschheit Werdegang,
Und alles ist Frucht und alles ist Same!

This evening, too, I would like to take a look at the more general conditions of the German essence within this lecture cycle, because it seems to me that in our great, but also painful and sorrowful time, spiritual-scientific considerations have a kind of ethical obligation in a certain respect, and because, in addition, the truly human feeling is to illuminate the horizon of the fateful events within which we stand from a spiritual-scientific point of view. This evening, however, it will be more a matter of allowing the “light of feeling” given by spiritual science to fall, as it were, on certain processes in German intellectual life and on the understanding that is brought to bear on this intellectual life. Tomorrow I will again take the liberty of dealing with a more specific spiritual-scientific topic.

If we look at those phenomena in German intellectual life that can particularly express the whole character of this intellectual life to us, one of them is the one that has already been these lectures: Herman Grimm, the great German art historian, who viewed art from the deepest sources of what German intellectual life, with all its impulses, has poured into his soul. In one of the lectures this winter, I took the liberty of calling Herman Grimm, so to speak, “Goethe's governor in the second half of the nineteenth century.” In the way he lived with everything he produced, in what – concentrated in Goethe – was contained as German essence, as essence in the German folk soul, and what then poured into the stream of German intellectual life – in this way Herman Grimm is, in a certain respect, a representative personality of German intellectual life from the second half of the nineteenth century.

Not quite two years before Herman Grimm's death, essays from the last period of his life appeared, which he gave the collective title “Fragments”. In the preface to these fragments, he says something extraordinarily characteristic. He points out that these individual, sometimes very short essays on this or that question of German or foreign culture arise from a whole of his intellectual world view. And Herman Grimm mentions that he had intended to combine the lectures he had given on this subject over fifty years at the University of Berlin into a single book, which would present the growth and development of the German spirit. But at the same time, he points out how, each time he moved on to the next lecture, he found himself compelled to rework what he had already written. And now he says that this would have to be done for the last time if these lectures were to be combined into a book on German intellectual life as a whole; he does not know whether he will live to do so, because this reworking requires a lot of effort and time. But – and this is the characteristic thing – this whole of German intellectual life stands before his soul, and he wants the individual essays that he publishes to be understood as if they were individual parts, taken from the whole, that stands before his soul.

Herman Grimm did not live to write the book he had in mind. He died in 1901, not quite two years after publishing these “Fragments”. He had actually planned to write an entire spiritual history of the development of the European peoples during his youth. And if we now consider how he in turn – as he often emphasized – wanted the individual main parts that he had given to be understood from this overall presentation of European intellectual life – his great work on Homer, his biographies or monographs on Michelangelo and Raphael and finally his work on Goethe – if we take this into account, we are confronted with something extraordinarily characteristic. We are actually dealing with something that lived in Herman. . Grimm's soul, which was never really portrayed by him in the form in which it lived in his soul, but from which, one might say, every single line he wrote and every single word he spoke in his life emerged. And if we now consider the whole way in which Herman Grimm speaks about art and German cultural life, something else in addition to what has just been said emerges. Herman Grimm always endeavors to advocate with all his soul, with his entire undivided personality; and anyone who has the urge to have all things clearly “proven,” who loves a line of argument that advances from judgment to judgment in a demonstrative manner, will not find what he is looking for in Herman Grimm's presentation. One would like to say: everything he has written springs directly from his entire soul, and one has nothing as proof of the truth but the feeling that overcomes one: the man, this personality, has experienced a great deal in the broadest sense in the things he presents; and he presents his experience. Thus the individual thing he presents springs from a whole that is not really there at all.

What is it, then, that lives in Herman Grimm? What is it that teaches us the conviction that every single thing arises out of a whole? What do we sense, as it were, as a shadow of the spirit behind all the details that Herman Grimm presents, that he has given to the world?

I would like to describe what one senses and what permeates one as one turns the pages of his books: it is the sustaining power of the German spirit, that German spirit which, for those who truly understand it fully, is not just some abstraction that one categorizes with concepts , with ideas, that one expresses in images, but which is really felt like a living being through all of German history; like a being that one feels as if one were holding a dialogue in one's soul with this being and allowing oneself to be inspired by it for everything one has to say. So that basically, once you have such an experience, you need nothing more than the certainty that this spirit is behind it as an inspirer – and you have given something that has good “proven” reason. This being, which one can say is the living German spirit, is slowly and gradually approaching German development; but it is entering the consciousness of the best minds in the most definite way.

We can find this German spirit, this fundamental German spirit, particularly characteristic in one remarkable place. It is there where one of the best, one of the most brilliant Germans, Johann Gottfried Herder, has tried to depict the overall life of humanity in its development. Herder, this great predecessor of Goethe, basically set out early on to let his gaze wander over all the development of the peoples in order to get an overall picture of the forces, of the entities that live in this development of the peoples. And what he was then able to accomplish as a presentation of his ideas about this process of development, he summarized in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”. In these “Ideas” we encounter a tableau, a journey through the development of humanity in such a way that we sense that in all the individual phenomena and events, beings and forces live that all have a fully vital effect on Herder's soul. Already in his early youth, Herder turned against Voltaire's historical approach. He fully recognized that Voltaire was one of the most ingenious men; but what he found in his view of history was that this whole view ultimately culminated in a sum of ideas that prevail throughout history, as it were. In contrast to this, Herder objected that ideas only ever give rise to ideas. Herder did not want people to speak only of the “ideas” that are effective in history. He wanted to speak of something less abstract, something more alive and more concrete than the ideas of history. He wanted to speak of how invisible living beings are behind all historical events. He once said, for example: What the outer historical events are is actually only of value to the observer if one takes into account the spirits and spiritual forces at work behind them, from which what can be perceived through the senses first clearly emerges; for what takes place externally is only like a cloud that arises and passes away, but behind which lies the whole activity of the spirit that runs through human history, which one has to observe.

Slowly and gradually, German development rose to such a grandiose historical perspective. It can be said that such a historical perspective was already present in ancient Greece. We find there already echoes of it, longings to give such an overall picture of human development. But such efforts then receded again; and only later, as in Italy in the fifteenth century, do we find new attempts in this direction, as well as in the rest of Western Europe, in France and England. People began to seek connections in the historical development of humanity. But these connections were conceived in a certain materialistic sense. What happens in the course of history is made dependent on climate, geographical conditions and all sorts of other factors. It was only when the German mind took hold of this comprehensive view of history that it was truly brought to life, one might say. And in Herder's soul arose an image that synthesizes natural events and the crowning human events that take place upon them. Herder first turned his attention to how the beings of nature develop and how the spirit, which works in nature at a subordinate level, comes to be more characteristically expressed in man. This spirit, which Herder consciously lets emerge from the essence of the All-Divinity, works in nature, but it also interweaves the human soul. And what man accomplishes in history is not for him merely a sum of successive events, but it has significance in that man on earth himself continues the coherent plan of the divine spiritual entities through what he does.

There is greatness in Herder's calling man an “assistant of the deity” in his earthly work. In this there is again something of the ideas and intuitions and feelings of German mysticism, which seeks God directly in the human soul itself. Herder seeks God in history, as He manifests Himself in the deeds that take place in historical development. God Himself does what historical development is; and man, insofar as he is imbued with God, is God's assistant. For Herder, the whole of nature is built upon the next, then the human kingdom and on that the kingdom of higher spirits; and he makes the significant statement: Man is a middle creature between animal and angel. Herder thus places man in the overall development in such a way that man appears as a direct expression, as a revelation of divine spirituality. And when one examines how Herder, who was not a systematizing philosopher and was far from constructing any abstract ideas, came to sketch out an overall picture of development with inexpressible diligence and truly ingenious foresight, through which the deeds of man can be summarized with the deeds in nature, then one must say: It is a divine power that inspires Herder himself. He is aware that the divine powers that rule in history live in himself. It is the sustaining power of the German spirit in Herder that creates an overall picture of human development and also of natural development.

“Evolution” has become the magic word that seems so significant for the world view of our time. In the days when Herder lived and when Goethe spent his youth, he rose through Herder and others to the world view supported by the German spirit. The idea of evolution entered into German intellectual life. This idea of development was more profound and more profound than it is taken from the materialistic world view. For in what is regarded as “developing”, the German mind saw the mind at work; and in every single natural product, insofar as development is considered, he saw mind as the architect, the carrier, the accomplisher of development. Thus he was able to introduce the idea of the spirit as developing, shown in the becoming of man, fruitfully into the history of ideas, into the whole history of development.

And standing beside Herder as one of the great signposts in the spiritual life is Winckelmann, who first brought art history into that current which can be called: the world view based on the history of development and carried by the German spirit. Goethe says of Winckelmann, the first German art critic: “Winckelmann, a second Columbus, discovered the evolution and destiny of art as bound to the general laws of evolution, keeping pace with the rise and fall of civilization and the destinies of the people.

Thus we see how, through these minds – it has already happened through Lessing – mind is seen in all becoming as the actual bearer, as the actual substance of development. And this world view leads directly to a sense of being carried by the mind, to being carried by the mind. And this permeates the soul with confidence and inner strength. One is tempted to say that all this already contained an inkling that this German spirit, with all its idealism, contains the seeds of a truly scientific spiritual world view that humanity must move towards. For when we consider that spiritual science strives for knowledge of the world, which is attained through the soul developing its inner powers slumbering in its depths, so that it comes to see with the organs of the spirit or — to use Goethe's words — with the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to see what, as the invisible, works and lives behind the visible. If one considers this and then recalls a certain saying of Herder's, then a feeling of confidence comes over the soul: humanity will one day partake of spiritual world-view. For how beautifully Herder's saying resounds: “The human race will not pass away until the genius of enlightenment has passed through the earth.” Herder's gaze was always directed towards the intimate weaving and essence of the spiritual that prevails in all sensuality. Herder regards every human being – not just the great historical figures – as thoughts that are not merely thoughts grasped by our brain, but as something living, existing and weaving. And when they are suited to be seized by the spirit of the age and incorporated into the stream of events, then Herder speaks of those people who, through such thoughts, have a formative effect on an entire era: often these people – the geniuses – live and work in the greatest silence; but one of their thoughts, grasped by the spirit of the times, brings a whole chaos of things into good form and order.

When we consider these things, we can never say that they arose out of mere abstract philosophical reflection; for they do not stand in isolation as the impressions of a personality, but stand as if organically with the continuous stream of German intellectual life, and always in such a way that one must regard the personalities who express them, who thereby reveal their convictions, as inspired by the sustaining power of the German spirit. And this sustaining power of the German spirit is deeply felt even in the most recent times by those who have an inkling of it. What is felt as this sustaining power of the German spirit is not only taken up in an abstract philosophy; it is taken up in the deepest feeling of souls.

Thus, for example, when the late Paz! de Lagarde (who died in 1891) – another of the most German minds – once said the following, which is quite characteristic of his whole attitude to this fundamental force of the German spirit: “On one occasion I was requested by a relative of a friend whom I was accompanying to the grave to deliver the funeral oration, and to do so first at the cemetery.” Apparently, Lagarde then spoke of what connects the human soul with the eternal, with the spiritual, what passes through the gate of death as a living being, for now he continues: “Now I actually felt ashamed. What was I then actually? What am I then actually, that I dare to speak of that which is connected with the eternal-spiritual? I was ashamed, but I found that what I had said found fertile soil in the minds that had escorted the dead to the grave.” And now Lagarde says, drawing the conclusion, as it were: “That is how it is for the German when he speaks of love of country: he feels that this speaking of love of country is basically such an intimate, sacred thing that he feels ashamed to speak of it; but he also feels: if he speaks of it, it can fall on receptive minds.”

One need only recall this saying, which truly captures the essence of the German character in the most eminent sense, and one can see from it how the German, when he feels truly at home within the German national character, must to the spirit of his nation, in which he perceives the expression of the divine spirituality of the world in general, and how he feels it to be a living being, which he approaches — even with knowledge — only in reverence. Lagarde is one who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, out of deep learning but also out of deep, soulful feeling, spoke about Germanness in many ways, about the sources of Germanness, about the prospects of Germanness. He is one of those who never tire of pointing out again and again that the essence of Germanness resides in the spiritual, in that which, as the spirit common to all, permeates the entire German evolution. He who wishes to grasp the essence of Germanness at its root is not satisfied with what a materialistic view designates as “blood” or “race” in the nature of a people. Lagarde was not satisfied with this; for he felt that the essence of Germanness can only be expressed through spiritual ideas, through spiritual perceptions. Thus Lagarde says: “Germanness lies not in the blood but in the soul. Of our great men, Leibniz and Lessing are certainly Slavs, Handel, a son of a Halloren, is a Celt, Kant's father was a Scot: and yet, who would call these un-German?” — In which Lagarde, one of the most German of Germans, seeks the German essence, that is the supporting force of the German spirit, in which the one can immerse himself who understands German essence within himself and how to realize it. Time and again, the best Germans never tire of explaining how the essence of the German can only be expressed and revealed through the spiritual.

When one reflects in this way, the German spirit takes on an ever more concrete and real essence. One feels it flowing through the stream of German life, especially through the stream of German intellectual life; and one then understands how the German, in the course of his development, felt the need to enrich his own being in the present more and more with what the German spirit had already allowed to flow from its sources into the German nation in older times.

Thus we find, as the German Romantics, leaning on Goethe, as it were, renewing the old German essence, delving not only into the folk song but into the entire German spiritual being, in order to absorb it and revive it in their souls, so as to allow what is peculiar to Germanness as a whole to take effect in their own souls. And then we see again how the German development in the Brothers Grimm is inspired by what German essence produced in ancient times. We see how the Brothers Grimm descend to the people and have the old fairy tales told to them in order to collect them. And what lies in this collection of German fairy tales, which really convey such a hundredfold impression, taken directly from the people's minds? Nothing else lies in them but the fundamental power of the German spirit!

And how does this fundamental power of the German spirit continue to work?

We have been able to see it particularly in the achievements of the already mentioned Herman Grimm. Often, when one allows these fine, elegant, comprehensive artistic characteristics of Herman Grimm to take effect on the soul, when one especially visualizes some of the extremely intimate subtleties that lie in these writings, one must ask oneself: How did this personality manage to make the soul so elastic, so pliable that it could delve into the deepest secrets of artistic work and artistic creation? And I believe there can be no other answer than the one that follows from the clues as to how Herman Grimm, before he began to contemplate the art of humanity, expressed himself poetically and artistically. For this expression is particularly characteristic of the supporting force of the German spirit. I would like to point out only a few.

The first of the stories and poems collected in the volume Novellen is Herman Grimm's The Songstress. This is a story that, as is usually the case when presenting novellas, is used only to depict events that take place before the eyes of people, that can be grasped directly with the imagination that is tied to the body. Herman Grimm also masterfully presents what takes place in the external world: he presents a female personality that is deeply attracted to a male personality; but through her character and her whole being, this female personality rejects the male one. It would take too long to go into the details now. So it comes about that the male personality commits suicide. The female personality remains behind. And now, after the death of the man who loved her, she feels not only pain and suffering; no, something intervenes in her soul life that is directly supersensible. She spends a night at a friend's house, the friend at whose house the suicide of her lover had taken place. She feels disturbed. At first she does not know the reason for it. But then she says that she cannot sleep alone in the room; the friend should watch over her. And as he watches over her, it turns out that she has a vision, which the poet clearly shows that he wants to express more than a mere play of the imagination. At the door of the bedroom, the ghostly figure of the deceased enters. And if one investigates what Herman Grimm actually wants to express with this apparition, it is that he wants to say: with what is happening here before the eyes of man on earth, the event is not yet exhausted; but spiritual factors, spiritual entities intervene in physical events; and when death has occurred, what has passed through the gate of death is present there in the spiritual world and is effective for those who are receptive to it.

Herman Grimm is thus a novelist who allows the spiritual world to shine through his artistic portrayal. What actually appears to the bereaved lover has often been described in these lectures. It is what the etheric body of the deceased in question can be called, which can show itself in the form of the deceased to those who are receptive to it. But not all people are receptive to this.

Herman Grimm also wrote a novel, “Unüberwindliche Mächte” (Insurmountable Forces), which is of great importance as a cultural-historical novel and also otherwise in the spiritual history of humanity, but unfortunately it has been neglected. Here too, the lover dies. And when she seeks healing in a place in the south, she wastes away more and more in the memory of her lover and finally dies. Herman Grimm describes her death in a very unique way in the final chapter of 'Unüberwindliche Mächte'. He describes how a spiritual figure rises out of her body and rushes towards her lover. Again, Herman Grimm does not conclude the account with the events visible on earth, but brings together what is visible to the senses, what is visible to the mind, with the supersensible, which continues beyond death.

I would not cite such examples if they did not correspond entirely to what spiritual science has to say about these things. Of course one cannot cite artists as proof of spiritual science. But if one cites such examples as proof of what spiritual science has to offer humanity, it can be done to the extent that the nascent spiritual science lies in a spirit like Herman Grimm, who was artistically active in the second half of the nineteenth century. He is not yet able to express spiritual science as such, but artistically he presents things in such a way that one perceives: spiritual science wants to make its entry into the spiritual culture of humanity out of the supporting power of the German spirit.

Herman Grimm — this emerges from his entire literary work — never wanted to admit to himself what actually formed the basis for his giving such descriptions. He was somewhat shy about bringing these things, which he only wanted to approach in the most intimate, artistic and spiritual way, into ordinary concepts. But if he was not able to approach these things in the way that spiritual science can speak about them today, and yet these things are properly – one might say “expertly” – presented by him, then what lived in him? The inspiring force was the sustaining power of the German spirit! And so we find this sustaining power of the German spirit to be a very real entity, and we must turn our spiritual gaze towards it if we want to get to know the German character at all.

Now Goethe once spoke a very significant word, which should be taken into account when speaking of the relationship between the German spirit and the individual German, when speaking of how German essence lives directly in German lands – one might say – lives before the eyes of people when they have fixed their eyes on any personalities and any people within the German lands. In a confidential conversation in recent years, Goethe said to his secretary Eckermann: “My works cannot become popular; anyone who thinks and strives for that is mistaken. They are not written for the masses, but only for individual people who want and seek something similar and who are moving in similar directions.”

This is a significant statement. One would like to say: it is in the nature of Germanness — to use this word of Fichte's — to really feel the German spirit as a living thing and to still experience the totality of the German essence, the unity of the German spirit, as something special alongside what appears externally as German life. The totality of the German essence is no less real for that; it can at least be present for each individual. Hence the urge of the German to consider the individual phenomena of the world in connection with the whole development of the world and of humanity. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a poet living in the German-speaking districts of Austria went, one might say, around the whole world to understand the individual human being from the perspective of the overall spirit, despite the most diverse cultural influences. I refer to Robert Hamerling, who in his poem 'Aspasia' attempts to make the collective Greek spirit speak through an individual human being; who then attempts to portray the intensely personal German character in his 'King of Zion'; who further tries to express the actual spirit of the French revolutionary hearth in his drama “Danton and Robespierre” and finally wants to express the spirit of our time in his “Homunculus” in a grandiose, comprehensive way through poetry. Hamerling always feels the need to depict the individual in connection with what, as a spiritual weaving and becoming and as a sum of spiritual entities, animates and permeates the stream of human events. The view of the whole, of a living spiritual reality, interweaves the German intellectual work through the individual phenomena where it appears in its most intense manifestations.

Therefore, for someone who—one might say—does not look much further than a few meters beyond his own nose and considers something in a limited area of German life, it is extremely difficult to grasp the German character; for it can only be grasped by really considering the connection between the German soul and the spiritual entities that are weaving through the world and bringing themselves to revelation in the German spirit. And this is, in addition to much that has already been mentioned in these lectures, the reason why this German spirit, why this fundamental German spirit can be so misunderstood, why it is now so reviled and so insulted. One must ask oneself: How does this German spiritual life relate to the spiritual life of other nations?

I would like to discuss a characteristic example today, tying it in with a specific occasion when it became clear how difficult it is for a German who feels connected to the German spirit to make himself fully understood when the application of what he feels from the German spirit is to be applied to a single phenomenon. Recently, there has been much talk of the fact that the aging, somewhat decadent French intellectual life has undergone a kind of rejuvenation, that there are young French people who no longer go along with official Frenchness. And in many circles, which will hopefully have their eyes opened more by this war than they were previously open, people had begun to see something in this young Frenchness that would now understand the German mind much better than official Paris and official Frenchness. People had pointed to characteristic phenomena within young Frenchness. Indeed, there is much to be found there that one might say is quite significant. There are young French intellectuals who are not satisfied with official France itself – but that is the France that is currently at war with Germany.

What do such young Frenchmen say? – I would like to give just one brief example by quoting what Leon Bazalgette has said:

You can see how they swell with satisfaction when they utter the words: “French Renaissance” (three years of existence – they announce – the child is chubby-cheeked and already playing with little soldiers), “Awakening of national pride”,

These are the men who would divert the entire energy of a people to pour it into the enthusiasm of that still unknown virtue: hatred. In an age when the whole world trembles with activity, ambitious endeavors, dreams and new desires that cross borders, their only thought and aspiration, of which they are proud, is to settle an old neighborhood dispute with a fist fight. Oh, poor conceited people, who are incapable of conjuring up other forms of heroism than the “revenge”. Poor little fools of passion, who have no more appropriate desires to satisfy your hunger for action...

... In the name of what great idea – one of those ideas for which almost no one at all times has hesitated to give up his life – would we go to war with Germany? Is it about our freedom? Do we live under the yoke or are we threatened by it? Is it about countries that need to be civilized by being annexed, or about peoples that need to be snatched from slavery? No, it is solely about trying to reconquer territories that belonged to us and that we lost in a war, territories of which a good half are no more French than German...; and even less is it about reconquering these territories as such as it is about satisfying an old desire for revenge. That is the “idea in the name of which this country, which likes to give itself the title of ‘fighting for noble causes,’ would start a war.

One was — one would like to say — somewhat touched by the charity in certain circles at the sound of some voices that came from the young Frenchmen, those young Frenchmen of whom it was said that they wanted to found a new France. And one of those who, especially before the war, was also counted among these young Frenchmen by certain Germans who would create a new France, is Romain Rolland, who wrote a great novel, “great” in the sense of spatial expansion, because it has very many volumes. It is interesting to note how certain circles here, albeit perhaps smaller ones, viewed this particular novel by Romain Rolland.

One critic could not refrain from saying that this novel “Jean Christophe” — the German name is Johann Christof Kraft — is the most significant act that has been done since 1871 to reconcile Germany and France. In fact, there were quite a number of those who said: This novel 'Jean Christophe' shows how one of those young Frenchmen looks at Germany with love, with intimate love, and how he is one of those who will make it impossible for these two nations to live in discord in the future.

Not only has this proved to be a deceptive hope, but something else has emerged: Romain Rolland is one of those who, with Maeterlinck, Verhaeren and so on, immediately expressed themselves in a rather unmodest way about Germany and the German character when the war began. But now it is interesting to see a little how this man, Romain Rolland, of whom so many of us said that he could understand the German character so well, that he really grasped from the innermost core of the German national soul and the German spirit what is the supporting force of the German spirit – how this man understood the German character. I am well aware that I am not offending any true aesthetic sensibilities by saying what I must say, uninfluenced by the many judgments that have been passed on this novel, especially in the direction I have indicated.

What particularly excited people is that the Frenchman portrays a German, Johann Christof Kraft, who has outgrown the German way of being — we will see in a moment how — and who, after spending his youth in Germany, goes to France to find his further development there. In this, one sees a very special bridging of the contrast between the German and French way of being. Now, in order to fully understand what is to be said, we must first visualize the basic structure of this Jean Christophe.

I know how highly the critics regard this novel, and they have expressed their opinions as follows: the character of Jean Christophe is one that has been taken directly from life; no trait—so they feel—could be different in this drawing. But I must say: this Jean Christophe seems to me to be a rather indigestible ragout, his character welded together rather disharmoniously from the traits of the young Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Karl Marx. The admirers of Jean Christophe may forgive me, but that is the impression. This Jean Christophe grows up – he is simply transported to the present – in much the same way as Beethoven grew up. One recognizes all the traits of the young Beethoven – but distorted into caricature – down to the last detail, but in such a way that the life of the young Beethoven appears everywhere as a grandiose work of art, while the life of Jean Christophe appears as a caricature. Now, it is not the poet's task, when he alludes to history, to be faithful to that history. I can make all the objections that critics make in this regard myself; nevertheless, I must say this: Jean Christophe grows up in an environment that, in the opinion of many people, provides a picture of the German character. His grandfather, grandmother, uncle and other friends are presented. He grows up in such a way that the German character, which he outgrows, is perceived as the greatest obstacle to his developing genius. German character, for example, is presented as follows. Like Beethoven, young Jean Christophe is a kind of early composer; he makes compositions at a young age. His father, who is a drunkard, feels compelled to show off this precocious talent to the world. This father is a secretary, servant to a small German prince. The particular Germanic nature of this father is presented in cultural-historical terms when, while planning a concert with the young, seven- to eight-year-old Jean Christophe, at which the prince is also to be present, he reflects on how he should dress the boy. In the end, he comes up with a very clever idea, which is described as “a culturally historical idea of genuine, true Germanism”: he has him put on long trousers and a tailcoat, along with a white bandage, so that the boy looks like an eight-year-old little man. I will not recount how this German undertaking later unfolds, because that would take us too far afield. I will also not describe in detail how he feels disgust for everything that the entire German environment offers, this environment that is marked with “love” — according to some people — and that is supposed to give a true picture of the German character. But when he can no longer stand this environment, he feels compelled — as it says in the book — to be inspired by the Latin spirit. So he goes to Paris. There he finds a friend who is a clear reflection of Romain Rolland himself in many ways. This is the person who expresses what the young, newly emerging French identity promises for the future; it is he who teaches this confused mind, this doll welded together from the young Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss and others, some order of mind. That is the “love” with which, according to certain people, a German character, Jean Christophe, is drawn. Jean Christophe then also goes through various experiences in Paris – we now notice some traits of Richard Wagner. And when he loses his friend, he turns further south, undergoes many experiences that border on the criminal, which even lead him to suicide, which then only fails. And now, after Jean Christophe, who has not been able to flourish in his German surroundings, has gone through Latin ways, he comes to himself, as it were, in a lonely old village; he conquers his own spirit. Eternity opens up for him.

Now let us just take in a few examples of the truly loving immersion in the German character, taken from the novel. For example, the father, who is portrayed as Beethoven's father, Melchior, is characterized. Of course I know that someone might say: You are taking words out of a novel that may not actually reflect the author's opinion. But the artistic composition of this novel is entirely in line with what Schiller demanded in the beautiful words he wrote about “Wilhelm Meister” and what really belongs in the artistic composition of a novel. When Goethe was criticized for the fact that certain traits of the personalities in his novel did not appear entirely morally, Schiller said: “If people can prove to you that the immorality comes from your own soul, then you have made an aesthetic mistake; but if it comes from the characters, then you are justified in every respect.” This golden rule of art is also something that was later incorporated into the sustaining power of the German spirit. The best works of art that we find in Germany were truly written under the influence of this Schiller-Goethe attitude. But in Romain Rolland's work, one constantly encounters, almost on every third page, statements that clearly show that it is the author speaking and not the characters. Therefore, it is only an excuse in this case if one objects that one should not find what the author says on occasion – one cannot even say that it is the characters who express it – but what the author says on occasion of the characterizations characteristic of the way in which the author has immersed himself in the German essence. For example, Father Melchior is described in the following way:

“He was a smooth-talker, well built, if a little plump, and the type of what is considered classical beauty in Germany: a broad, expressionless forehead, strong regular features and a curly beard: a Jupiter from the banks of the Rhine.”

Then, to characterize Melchior's friends, how they gathered at the father's house and played and sang there together:

“Occasionally they would sing together in a four-part male choir one of those German songs that, one like the other, move along with solemn simplicity and in flat harmonies, ponderously, as it were, on all fours.”

What a loving description of the German character! I will only quote it as a characterization. Then there is an Uncle Theodor in the novel who is actually the grandfather's stepson; he is described in the following way. I have nothing to say against the fact that individual persons are presented in this way, but I do object to the fact that this description is supposed to be a cultural image of the German character; for one notices that Romain Rolland continually mixes in what itches him so that he can say it about the German character. Of this Uncle Theodor it is said:

What a loving description! Then Jean Christophe falls in love with a young noblewoman, who is portrayed as the epitome of a young German girl. Her name is Minna:

“Minna, for all her sentimentality and romanticism, was calm and cool. Despite her aristocratic name and the pride that the little word ‘von’ instilled in her, she had the mind of a little German housewife –” and then it continues:

“Minna, this naively sensual German little girl, knew some strange games.”

And now, to explain in cultural-historical terms what is supposed to be particularly characteristic of the German character, it is stated that she also understood how to spread flour on the table and put certain objects in it, which one then had to search for with one's mouth.

Now it will be shown why the German character becomes so unpleasant for Christof; and again, one can only say that the author is itching to express how he himself feels about the Germans. He wants to describe the dishonesty and hypocrisy in German idealism, the idealism that Romain Rolland believes was invented because people find the truth uncomfortable and therefore look to the ideal. They lie about the truth and call it idealism. Thus the Germans have the characteristic of not looking at people calmly, but of “idealizing” them, of lying to themselves about their true characteristics. Christof had also appropriated this characteristic, but it had become increasingly distasteful to him:

“Once he had convinced himself that they” — certain people — “were excellent and that he should like them, he, as a true German, tried hard to believe that he really liked them. But he didn't succeed at all: he lacked that compliant Germanic idealism that doesn't want to see and doesn't see what it would be embarrassing to discover for fear of disturbing the comfortable calm of their judgment and the comfort of their lives.” ‘German idealism’ invented for the sole reason of not disturbing the comfort of life! Now, once again, a young girl is described, with whom Jean Christophe naturally falls in love, an archetype of ugliness, “little Rosa.” One can literally feel from the novel how her nose is hardly in the right place on her face, and much more; but from a loving cultural description of her, it is said:

"The Germans are very indulgent when it comes to physical imperfections: they manage not to see them; they can even come to embellish them with a benevolent imagination, finding unexpected relationships between the face they want to see and the most magnificent examples of human beauty. It would not have taken much persuasion to get old Euler – Rosa's grandfather – to declare that his granddaughter had the nose of Juno Ludovisi.

But after he had tested the mendacity of German idealism on his own person – we have experienced this again and again with well-known “geniuses”; but we did not believe that it should be characteristic of the German character, that it should be a special characteristic of the Germans, that they 'idealize' people, was not believed earlier – he now also comes to the conclusion that basically all German musicians have a catch, something is wrong somewhere; this is also connected with German idealism! And now he comes to the conclusion that he must be more significant than all the rest. As a characteristic example, a few words about Schumann:

Now that he is only a: returned Beethoven – who of course lives according to Wagner – and is supposed to become a genius the like of which has never been seen, he must also vent his anger on Wagner. And so all kinds of affectionate things are then put into his mouth – you really can't say, “Johann Christof,” which would be forgivable; instead, they are always expressed in such a way that they are separate from the person of Johann Christof and become something that the author himself gives the absolute coloration to. So, with reference to Lohengrin and Siegfried, it is said about Richard Wagner:

“Germany revelled in this art of childish maturity, this art of wild beasts and mystically quacking maidens.”

Well, I would like to say that the German character is characterized even more profoundly in such a loving way. Here is another example:

"Especially since the German victories, they did everything to make compromises, to bring about a disgusting mishmash of new power and old principles. They did not want to renounce the old idealism: that would have been an act of courage that they were not capable of; in order to make it subservient to German interests, they contented themselves with falsifying it. They followed the example of Hegel, the cheerfully duplicitous Swabian, who had waited for Leipzig and Waterloo to adapt the basic idea of his philosophy to the Prussian state,” – it may perhaps be said that Hegel's fundamental work, ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’ – but Romain Rolland probably knows very little about this when he says that Hegel's philosophy was created after Leipzig and Waterloo – was written during the cannonade of the Battle of Jena, that is, in 1806, and already contains Hegel's entire philosophy –

"And now, after the interests had changed, the principles were also changed. When they were defeated, they said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that they were beating the others, they said that Germany was the ideal of humanity. As long as the other countries were the more powerful, they said with Lessing that patriotism was a heroic weakness that could very well be dispensed with, and they called themselves citizens of the world. Now that victory had been achieved, there was no lack of contempt for “French” utopian dreams: world peace, brotherhood, peaceful progress, human rights, natural equality; it was said that the strongest nation had an absolute right over the others, while the others, as the weaker ones, had no rights over it. It seemed to be the living God and the incarnate spirit, whose progress was achieved by war, violence and oppression. Now that it was on their side, might was canonized. Might was now the epitome of all idealism and all reason. To give honor to the truth, it must be said that Germany for centuries...

perhaps the only thing people seek in Germany, to do honor to the truth! — “had suffered so much from having idealism without power that after so much trial it was well justified in now making the sad confession that it needed power above all, however it might be constituted. But how much hidden bitterness lay in such a confession of the people of a Herder and a Goethe! And what renunciation, what humiliation of the German ideal lay in this German victory! — And, alas, this renunciation found only too much compliance in the lamentable tendency of all the best Germans to subordinate themselves.

“What characterizes the German,” said Möser more than a century ago, “is obedience.”

And Frau von Stael:

"They obey well. They use philosophical reason to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear that transforms respect into admiration.” Christof found this feeling in Germany at all levels, from the greatest to the smallest – from Wilhelm Tell, the deliberate, small-minded bourgeois with the muscles of a porter, who, as the free Jew Börne says, in order to reconcile honor and fear, walks past the post of “dear Mr. Geßler” with his eyes downcast, so that he could appeal to the fact that he who did not see the hat was not disobeying – “up to the honorable seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the most respected scholars in the city, who, when a lieutenant passed by, quickly left the footpath to him and went down to the road.”

And further it says:

“Moreover, Germany did indeed bear the heaviest burden of sins in Europe. When one has won the victory, one is responsible for it; one has become the debtor of the vanquished. One tacitly assumes the obligation to lead the way for them, to show them the way. The victorious Louis XIV brought the splendor of French reason to Europe. What light did the Germany of Sedan bring to the world?”

This is the loving description. But I must not forget anything, and in order not to be unjust, I must not conceal the fact that at one point something of the loving description of the German character from this novel shines through clearly and distinctly. It is where a German professor in a small town – his name is, of course, Schulz – is enthusiastic about the early works of Johann Christof, which are misunderstood by everyone else. Johann Christof is once able to visit the old professor. Two other acquaintances turn up, and then there is – in addition to Johann Christof demonstrating his works to the delight of the three people – a feast, a huge midday feast. Salome (!), the old professor's cook, who has been a widow for a long time, takes particular pleasure in how everyone can eat. And now a piece of German character is described in a truly “historically accurate and loving” way.

Salome, to see how they were enjoying a piece of German culture inside, looked through the crack in the door; and what she saw is described as:

It is not surprising that Johann Christof, after having gone through all that, wants to get out of this environment, because his genius cannot flourish in this environment. But he doesn't really know anything about France, this Johann Christof. He is completely uneducated, just a great musician. But since he knows nothing, his going to France is characterized in the following way:

“Instinctively (since he didn't know France!) his eyes looked towards the Latin south. And first of all towards France. Towards France, the eternal refuge from German confusion.”

In France, he meets his friend Olivier, who enlightens him about the young French. And perhaps it is what these young French say about the Germans that is so appealing on this side of the Rhine. Olivier tells Johann Christof about the young French's particular view of the nature of official Paris and about what he used to polemicize against like the others:

"The best among us are shut out, imprisoned on our own soil... Never will they know what we have suffered, we who cling to the genius of our race, who, like a sacred trust, guard the light we have received from it and desperately defend it against the hostile breath that would extinguish it; and yet we stand alone, feeling the polluted air of those metics all around us, who, like a swarm of mosquitoes, have attacked our thinking and whose disgusting larvae gnaw at our reason and defile our hearts; we are betrayed by those whose mission it would be to defend us, our superiors, our stupid or cowardly critics; they flatter the enemy to obtain forgiveness for being of our generation; we are abandoned by our people, who do not care about us, who do not even know us... What means do we have to make ourselves understood? We cannot reach them... And that is the hardest part. We know that there are thousands of us in France who think the same; we know that we speak on their behalf, and there is nothing we can do to be heard! The enemy occupies everything: newspapers, magazines, theaters... The press shuns every thought or only allows it if it is an instrument of pleasure or a party weapon. Intrigues and literary cliques only leave room for those who throw themselves away. Misery and overwork crush us to the ground. The politicians, who are only concerned with enriching themselves, are only interested in the corruptible proletariat. The indifferent and self-interested citizens watch our dying. Our people do not know us; even those who fight with us, who are shrouded in silence like us, know nothing of our existence, and we know nothing of theirs... Unhappy Paris! It is true that it has also done good by organizing all the forces of French thought into groups. But the evil it has created is at least equal to the good; and in an epoch like ours, good itself turns into evil. It is enough for a pseudo-elite to usurp Paris and ring the immense bell of the public to stifle the voice of the rest of France. Far more than that: France confuses itself; it remains silent in dismay and fearfully pushes its thoughts back into itself... I used to suffer greatly from all this. But now, Christof, I am calm. I have understood my strength, the strength of my people. We just have to wait until the flood has passed. It will not gnaw away at France's fine granite. I will let you feel it under the mud it carries with it. And already, here and there, tall peaks are emerging...

You don't really need more than that to characterize the French character that is now waging war against Germany. But now, I would like to say, there is something even more beautiful. So this novel was published. It has also been translated into German. I would now like to read you a few words from a German critic of this novel, addressed to Romain Rolland in the form of a letter printed in a Berlin newspaper.

"For me, the completion of your 'Jean Christo is even more of an ethical event than a literary one... Gobineau, Maeterlinck, Verhaeren and even Verlaine have had their greatest impact and achieved their greatest fame in Germany rather than in France, and it would be only fair if you too were appreciated earlier in our country than in your homeland, because your book belongs in Germany, in the land of music, more than any other book. In many ways it is a German book, a coming-of-age novel like Green Henry or Wilhelm Meisten. German music, which Germany has given the world, has also made you its advocate. It was music that led you to the German language and made you love Goethe, whom you have memorialized many times in your work with love and admiration.

I find myself at a loss as to how many times I should actually thank you. The human being, the connoisseur, the artist, the German, the world-joyful in me, each of them wants to come forward and say a word to you. But another time the artist will say a word about this novel, another time the connoisseur, and the human being will wait until he can shake your hand again. Today only the German should thank; because I have the feeling that French youth has become closer to us through this book, which has done more than all the diplomats, banquets and associations."

This is a prime example of how the sustaining power of the German spirit can be misunderstood, and how the painfully great events we are having to live through must have an eye-opening effect in many respects, truly: must have an eye-opening effect. And please forgive me if I bring up something at the very end that seems personal, but which only ties in with personal matters because I have only just learned about it today.

The spiritual science movement to which we belong was for many years connected with a theosophical movement based in England and India. This movement gradually became so absurd that anyone with a sense of truth could no longer have any connection with much of this Anglo-Indian theosophical movement. Therefore, many years before this war, we completely separated from it. At that time we were reviled enough, even by German followers of that movement; perhaps stronger words could be used. But one would have thought that the matter was now over and that there would be no reason to return to it now. But the president of this Anglo-Indian movement has found it necessary to refer to this matter again and to characterize us Germans. And she does so with the following words, which are not mentioned here out of personal considerations, but to show how, from a certain point of view, one is capable of characterizing in such a way what we as Germans had to do out of our sense of truth:

”... Now, looking back, in the light of German methods as revealed by the war, I realize that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I frustrated those efforts, the complaint that I had spoken about the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace, instead of giving the honor to the Kaiser – that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, skillfully used by German agents here – in India – to push through their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into a weapon against the British government and trained it to look to Germany as its spiritual leader – instead of standing, as it has always done, for the equal alliance of two free nations – then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India.

So that is what we are, seen through English-Theosophical eyes, in our spiritual scientific movement. But I may say – forgive this remark; you know that I do not like to make personal remarks – I can give the assurance that I had no intention of doing all this, and especially had no intention of leaving the German spiritual scientific movement. For such a thing did not live in me and, I believe, did not live in many others either, who know that they are connected with the German spirit and its sustaining power – something that lived in Johann Christoph Arnold, who was driven out of Germany by his instinct. For even if it is difficult to find the immediate manifestations of the sustaining power of the German spirit in the immediate phenomena that Rolland, the traveler, with his uncomprehending eye, has focused on, it must be said that the truthfulness of the German spirit will make it more and more possible, especially through the experiences of our fateful time, to build a bridge between what we experience in everyday life and what is the fundamental force of the German spirit. And when we are presented with all the figures in Johann Christian's environment, from which his “genius” drives him out, then perhaps, in conclusion, and without arrogance, something may be said.

I don't want to quote a foreigner now. But I may quote someone who has been dead for a long time, who died in 1230 and who, for his part, also expressed an opinion on whether a German genius must necessarily be driven out of all that lives in it by its environment, out of all the Minnas and Rosas with crooked noses, which German idealism knows as the nose of Juno Ludovisi. Perhaps not with a genius like Johann Christoph, but with one of whom we know from the context with the supporting power of the German spirit that he was a German genius. With such a German genius we may perhaps, without arrogance, think for a moment: with Walther von der Vogelweide. And we may admit to ourselves: it is not with Johann Christof, the hero that Romain Rolland has drawn, that we judge how German men and German women affect a genius, but rather with a spirit like Walther von der Vogelweide. With his words, then, let these reflections be closed, to be followed tomorrow by a special lecture on the humanities.

Walther von der Vogelweide is not driven out of Germany by his instinct; he must think differently about those among whom he lives. I don't know how they would be described if they were to fall under Romain Rolland's fingers; but Walther von der Vogelweide says of them – and this seems to me to indicate a better understanding than Romain Rolland reveals –:

German men are well-bred,
their women are as pure as angels.
He who scolds them is deceived,
I could never understand it otherwise.
Virtue and pure love,
Whoever seeks them
Shall come to our land, where there is much bliss.
Long may I live in it!

Reflections on the eternal forces of the human soul from the point of view of spiritual science, as this spiritual science is meant here, are naturally, one might say, quite naturally exposed to misunderstandings in our time. And it is quite natural for it to be refuted from this or that point of view, which is undoubtedly justified from a certain side. When such refutations take place, the following occurs: the person who supposes to refute such results of spiritual science puts forward these or those reasons and then thinks that what he wants to have is met, and that the spiritual scientist cannot agree with his reasons at all. Precisely such a consideration as is to be undertaken here today on the basis of the results of spiritual science is subject to the misunderstandings indicated, for the matter usually lies — yes, one can say, in the cases that have come to light the matter always lies — in such a way that the person who refutes brings forward things with which the spiritual scientist absolutely agrees. It is just that spiritual science has something to say that is not affected at all by such objections, by such objections, which the spiritual scientist often accepts to a much greater extent than the person making the objections.

This applies in particular to the question that is to be asked today, and to what is often said on the part of the scientific world view. I have often emphasized from this platform that the humanities scholar is in no way opposed to the scientific world view based on the great achievements of modern times, especially when it comes to questions of the human soul. Of course, there are many things that can be said about the eternal character of the human soul from the point of view of those who want to practice psychology, the study of the soul, in a sense that is still valid today. Then the natural scientist comes, and I say expressly, often with full justification, and says: There we see the human soul-expressions, man's thinking, man's feeling, man's willing, as they express themselves from birth or from the time when man can develop conscious ideas, until death. If we look at this life of the soul, then the representative of the scientific world view must say that it appears to be bound in the strictest sense to the bodily processes; and one can show how it is bound to the bodily processes, how the bodily develop little by little from the earliest childhood, and how, in strict parallel with these physical processes, the faculties of thinking, of perceiving, of understanding and perceiving, develop as these physical processes, as they say, perfect themselves. One can see, again, how, with the fading of the physical processes of the human being, the mental processes also gradually recede into the background, gradually recede, subside. Yes, one can show even more. One can show how, in the case of illness or the like, parts of mental life disappear due to the exclusion of some brain activity or some part of the nervous system; how inability takes the place of ability when organic functions are excluded. What has been stated could be multiplied ad infinitum. So it is justified to say: Is not everything that man develops with his thinking, feeling and willing bound to the physical processes that are gradually being discovered by natural science, just as the flame is bound to the fuel of the candle? And in fact, some of the so-called proofs that are presented for the existence of a soul-core within ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, they really resemble something that one would imagine by saying that one finds something in the flame that cannot perish if the material of the candle is somehow removed from the flame. It may be said that much of the ordinary teaching on the soul is so constructed, according to the reasons and the kinds of proof, that it corresponds exactly to the thought one would have in order to prove that what lives in the flame cannot disappear if the flame is deprived of its fuel.

Now it must be emphasized that with regard to all that has just been indicated, spiritual science stands entirely on the ground of natural science, and indeed, as we want to see in particular through today's consideration, it must place itself more intensely and more strongly on this ground of natural science than natural science itself can do according to the current state of its research. In its method, in the way it thinks and is minded, spiritual science also stands in the same direction as indicated for human research through the newer methods of natural science. But the way in which these newer methods of natural science have been applied to the life of the soul shows that they do not lead to those regions in which the real riddles of the human soul are to be found.

In order not to make merely general remarks, I would like to consider a specific case. One of the more recent scientists who wanted to place psychology entirely on the basis of the scientific way of thinking was the psychologist Franz Brentano, who has already been mentioned here in these lectures on several occasions. His scientific endeavors took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the natural scientific way of thinking quite rightly made a great, even overwhelming impression on the personalities of this age, so that no kind of scientific research wanted to escape what lay in the fertility of natural scientific observation. And one of those who went along with it completely and said, ” If strict scientific results are to be achieved, then they must be achieved by a method that is constructed according to the model of natural science, otherwise they are not truly scientific results. One of the personalities who took this position, both with regard to the study of the soul and to the study of nature, was Franz Brentano. His theses, which he formulated at the beginning of his teaching career in Würzburg in the 1850s, went something like this: The future of the study of the soul depends entirely on its moving in the same channels as the study of nature. Now, with regard to the hopes that the study of the soul can have for our age and the future, Franz Brentano is a characteristically strong personality. He has begun to write a “Psychology,” a book that has achieved a certain fame in the narrower circles of the soul researchers. When the first volume of his psychology was published, he promised that the second volume would appear before the end of the year in which the volume was published – it was 1874 – and then the third volume in quick succession. So far, only the first volume has been published! And this is characteristic precisely because Franz Brentano is one of the most conscientious and energetic of thinkers.

Franz Brentano sets out to pursue the science of the soul in the spirit of modern natural science. He begins by examining the soul life as it presents itself in the ordinary existence of man; by investigating how, as man lives within the ordinary physical world, thought follows thought; what are the laws that cause one thought to evoke another; what are the laws that give rise to this or that sensation of pleasure or pain in the human soul. In short, he endeavored to investigate in a natural-scientific sense the life of the soul as it takes place within the ordinary physical existence of man. The aim of psychology is already clear to this student of the soul, but he sees no possibility of doing anything to approach this aim in any way. A saying of Franz Brentano is characteristic here, and runs as follows: “For the hopes of a Plato and Aristotle, to gain certainty about the survival of our better part after the dissolution of the body, the laws of association of ideas, of the development of convictions and opinions, and of the sprouting and driving of lust and love, would be anything but a true compensation.... And if it really meant... “– he means the newer natural scientific way of thinking – ‘the exclusion of the question of immortality, then [this loss] would have to be called an extremely significant one for psychology.’

Franz Brentano is quite typical of those representatives of newer psychology who, while wanting to stand on the ground of newer natural science, that is, wanting to observe mental life exactly as one otherwise observes external natural phenomena, but who, in the course of their observations, let slip precisely those questions that are important, significant, and intimately connected with human life. We can, as Brentano says, in the sense of modern natural science, come to an understanding of how ideas are linked, how opinions take hold in the human soul, how pleasure and suffering are mutually dependent, but one cannot comment on the important question of what the eternal forces of the human soul are from what one wants to achieve with this method. And so it must be said that in more and more writings and literature on psychology in recent times, the question of the eternal forces of human existence has disappeared. Just try to leaf through the literature on psychology and you will see how true what I have just said is.

Spiritual science now attempts to find its way to the riddles of the human soul by adopting the attitude of the natural sciences. But it is convinced that the way of thinking that is so fruitful for the observation and study of the secrets of external nature must be internalized and completely transformed if one is to pursue spiritual science from the same attitude from which one pursues natural science. Spiritual science shows that the processes of the soul life that take place in ordinary thinking, feeling and willing between birth and death really contain nothing that is not as bound to the physical body as the flame is bound to the candle's material. Spiritual science shows that one cannot get at what is present in the soul as eternal with those functions of the soul life that are completely suitable for ordinary life and are also completely suitable for ordinary scientific research. Spiritual science shows that the soul of man, as it is in everyday life and in ordinary scientific research, is bound to the physical functions of the body, and that one must first seek out what is eternal in the soul by seeking a way from the ordinary soul functions to where these ordinary soul functions do not reach, where they do not come when they only accomplish what is accomplished in everyday life and ordinary science. An inner development of the soul abilities to a point that is completely superfluous for ordinary life is necessary if one wants to find the eternal powers of the human soul.

In earlier lectures I have already spoken about this development of the soul abilities of the human being from certain points of view, to a different view than that of everyday life. Today, I want to put the question in a different light from a different point of view.

What is considered the most important thing in ordinary science, the most important thing in ordinary life, for example in thinking and imagining, comes into play in a completely different way for spiritual research than in this everyday life. In ordinary life, it is a matter of our recognizing something by thinking about something that initially approaches us from outside. We perceive what approaches us from outside; we perceive even that which is in historical becoming; we think about it, and in so doing we explore the laws of external facts and of historical becoming. Thought arises in us, and precisely because we can think, because our thoughts have a certain content, we know something about the external world. And so it is right for our everyday life. It is also right for the activities of ordinary science.

But if one wants to grasp thinking in such a way as it must be grasped in order to arrive at true spiritual-scientific results, then one must grasp it in the following way. I will show, by means of a comparison that I have already used here once before, the quite different way in which the spiritual researcher must approach thinking, imagining, as compared with the way in which a person in ordinary life or in ordinary science approaches it. I have already hinted at it: When we use our hands for some external work, it depends, first of all, on our doing this external work, that the results of this external work be there. What is realized in the outer world through our work is what is seen. But that is not the only result of the work. The outer world must look at this result, and it has a right to look at it. But by repeatedly doing this or that, man also strengthens the strength of his hands and arms at the same time, and not only strengthens them but also makes them more adept at doing this or that. One can say – if we may use the word, which is of course only correct in a relative sense – that man makes the dexterity of his hands and arms more perfect by working. In terms of external labor, this is perhaps a very small thing, if we look only at how the result of the work fits into the context of human life. In this respect, it is a secondary result that the human hand and arms become more skillful. But for humans, it matters a great deal. Or even if one did not want to accept that, it is precisely this that is there as a secondary result! But with this we can compare what man achieves in imagining, in thinking. In ordinary life and in ordinary science, it is important to form a certain content of thought. Certainly, that is also quite right. But in forming this content of thought, in thinking, something similar really happens to thinking as happens to the strength of the hand and arm when one works. Thinking undergoes something inwardly, and it is precisely this, which is really quite unimportant for ordinary life and for ordinary science, even in relation to their achievements, that spiritual scientific research must now turn its inner gaze to: to what happens in thinking. The soul must be directed not to the content of the thoughts, but to the activity. And not to the mere activity either, but to what happens in the activity of thinking — if I may use the expression, which has only relative validity, once more — in the direction of perfection, of the development of thinking.

The soul's gaze must be trained to do this. And it must be possible to do so in order to enter into regions where the eternal powers of soul life open up, to disregard the content of thinking and to direct the soul's gaze to the activity of thinking, to what one does by thinking. This is achieved systematically and methodically through an intimate inner activity, which could also be called an intimate inner soul experiment, and which I have often referred to here as meditation. The word meditation need only be taken in the sense in which it is used here, as a technical term for the striving to develop such an ability by which the gaze of the soul can be directed precisely at this development of thinking. And one can really achieve this setting of the inner soul forces in this direction through what is called meditation, if this meditation is practiced in the right sense. Of course, I can only give the principles here with regard to what meditation is. More details can be found in my books, especially in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” where the soul's activities, the inner soul experiments, as it were, that set the whole soul life on the path that is to be indicated here in principle, are discussed in detail. Thinking and imagining must often be brought into a possibility, so that it stands, as it were, as external things stand, that one can look at it, that one holds it, as it were, more firmly, in the inner soul capacity, than one is accustomed to holding it when one lets thinking proceed only in such a way that it serves one in understanding the external world. And to bring the soul into such a direction, one must again and again, now out of the most inner freedom and arbitrariness, give the thinking a direction, which one gives it only to really feel inwardly what has just been indicated, to experience it inwardly, to strengthen this thinking so that one can inwardly experience what has been indicated. To do this, one must bring into one's thinking, into one's imagination, thoughts, ideas, upon which one then draws one's entire inner soul life, so that one really forgets the world and everything around us, disregarding the whole course of the rest of one's soul life, in order to concentrate all one's soul powers on one point, on one thought content that one has placed at the center of one's imagination. It is a seemingly undemanding activity of the inner soul life, but with reference to what is meant here, as it is said in Goethe's “Faust”: “Although it is easy, yet the easy is difficult!” In general, it is easy to give thought a direction such as that indicated here. But in order to summon up the inner strength needed to observe thinking in its activity, the process must be repeated over and over again. Depending on the individual, it may take weeks, months or years before any result is achieved. So that most people, if they take such an inner path, have long since lost their patience by the time any result might come.

Then there is another factor to be taken into account: if we take any thought from our soul life, as it presents itself to our memory, then this thought, which we have thought often, and which is linked to this or that external stimulus, cannot help us much in the activity we have indicated. For when a person draws a thought from the depths of his soul, a vast number of other sensations and remnants of sensations that would otherwise have remained unconscious are associated with it; and one experiences many things through this thought that one would otherwise not experience in the ordinary course of life. We cannot know whether what we experience in these thoughts is not somehow a reminiscence, some hidden memory from ordinary life. And finally, when we take a thought that is linked to something external, we cannot be quite so sure either. For, although we form a thought from the external world, this thought does indeed enter our consciousness, but we are never fully aware of the impression that we still receive more or less unconsciously alongside it. For my part, one can bring into consciousness any thought of an external object that one has seen. And by concentrating all the soul's power on it, something that one did not bring to consciousness in an immediate contemplation can well emerge, and one can believe that one has somehow brought what one is experiencing up from unknown worlds, while one has only brought it up from one's own soul, from the part that otherwise remains unconscious. Therefore, it is best to form ideas that one can easily keep track of and that do not run the risk of conjuring up something from one's soul life and then making us believe that we are experiencing something that is nothing more than reminiscences of our own subconscious soul life. To prevent this from happening, it is good to form a thought or take a thought from the literature of spiritual science that one can survey, to which one has not yet attached any habits, so to speak, of which one knows how its individual parts are composed, of which one knows that it does not subconsciously evoke something from one's soul life that then presents itself to one's mind instead of one experiencing something new. I have therefore often said: Since it is not at all important to recognize anything external through these activities of the soul life, which one calls meditation, to visualize any external truth, it is good to to take symbolic images, about which one is clear from the outset: they express nothing external, they are only placed at the center of thinking in order to exercise the thinking, to strengthen the thinking. For everything depends on taking hold of the processes of thinking in a living way by performing them. Through free inner activity, one must place a content at the center of one's soul life and then limit oneself entirely to that content. Only a few minutes need be spent on the individual content for the individual exercise, because as a rule it does not depend on the length of time at all, but on how far one really succeeds in concentrating the soul power in such a way that it is directed at one point and thereby strengthens inwardly, so that this inner thinking activity does not go unnoticed, but occurs with such strength that one can feel it inwardly, that one can experience it inwardly. If one now, with sufficient patience and persistence and energy, repeatedly performs such an experiment on the soul, one finally comes to really place one's thinking, that which otherwise withdraws as an inner thought process, in front of one's soul, to really place oneself in relation to one's inwardness in a completely different way than one has otherwise related to this inwardness. One comes to discover something quite new in oneself. But it is only new for one's consciousness; it is always there in the person. The soul's processes that one has accomplished merely lead to noticing it. What one discovers is always present in every person. But as a new human being in man, as something of which we notice that it also fills us, which we did not know before - we can now grasp a new human being in man with the power that we have become aware of through the comprehension, through the inner energizing, strengthening of thinking. And if we practise this long enough, with sufficient intensity and patience, it really takes us beyond the realm of ordinary thought and imagination, leading us to a completely different way of looking at our soul from the one we are accustomed to. But at the same time we notice something that can only be noticed at a point where the human being really arrives at a result. One must patiently wait until what is now being related as a result comes about. One arrives at a shattering result. |

This shattering result is always reminiscent of an expression that has often been used in the course of human development. It has been used within those circles that have known something of the fact that there is such an expansion of soul life as that which is spoken of here. Now, in order to explain what is meant here, it must be said that spiritual science of the kind meant here has only become possible in our age. Humanity is evolving. What occurs in some form or other in a later age was not possible in an earlier one. The newer form of natural science, as it has developed since the time of Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus, was not possible in the earlier epochs of human evolution. But these earlier epochs had to precede the newer one. In these earlier epochs, attempts were made to penetrate to the innermost nature of things in a quite different way from that which is the case in the present epoch. Just as natural science in its newer form was not yet possible in the Greco-Roman period, for example – not possible in terms of purely external facts, not only in principle – so spiritual science, as it is meant here and is described here according to its method, is something that can only dawn upon our time within the evolution of humanity. But just as man delved into nature in the same way as the human faculties that lay closest to the surface in the evolution of humanity, so too did he seek to gain access to the eternal forces of the human soul and develop the soul faculties in the same way as in ancient times, so that they might see in the old way what is eternal in the development of the human soul. In days gone by, people often spoke of the goal of developing the inner life of the soul as I have just described. They said that in order to reach the eternal foundations of his soul life, man must approach the portals of death. The full significance of this saying, “to approach the gate of death,” is only realized when one has truly brought this inner experience, which has just been described as meditation, to a certain point. One comes to a point where one discovers within oneself a real second person, a person who can only be grasped through strengthened thinking, just as one grasps the ordinary physical person through ordinary comprehensive volition, through what one can otherwise do within oneself. One comes to this second man in oneself, who is felt inwardly, so to speak, by the invigorating thinking, but at the same time one comes to realize, to see through direct observation, how this second man is connected, not with constructive but with destructive forces of our human organism. One comes to realize that, basically, one carries within oneself the conditions of death since birth or, let us say, since conception; that certain processes in the human being are real, that they take place and that, when they reach a certain point, they must lead to death. Alongside that which animates the human being, alongside that which is the ascending life process, which of course cannot be seen with the ordinary soul powers either, stands that which is the eroding soul powers, which, I would say, are destructive soul powers. And with the highest development of these destructive soul powers, with that which rules and lives in man as, one may say, the cause of death, as the lasting cause of death, one sees most intimately connected with it that which is now this second man, whom one feels inwardly, as it were, with one's thinking. Indeed, only through an inner experience can one come to assert what I am now asserting. Just as little as someone who does not know that water is divided into hydrogen and oxygen in electrolysis can discern anything about hydrogen or oxygen , just as little can anything be recognized in the ordinary life of the soul that is similar to the experience that has now been hinted at and that has been expressed at all times with the words: one approaches the gate of death.

One experiences that just as there is something in water that cannot be seen directly when looking at the water, even though it can be seen as hydrogen and oxygen, there is something in man that is connected with his thinking, but at the same time with the forces that give him death. One looks within oneself at the human being who brings it about that one can have precisely the purest, most abstract thinking, the one that furthest advances one in ordinary life, between birth and death, but that one could not have it if the death-giving powers in man did not come to their highest flowering. And by discovering through the strengthening of thinking that which brings death, an experience is directly linked to it, an inner experiential knowledge — one cannot call it anything other than an inner experiential knowledge —, not something that could ever be reached by a conclusion of reason; just as little as looking at water externally can be reached by a conclusion of reason, that hydrogen and oxygen are in it. One gains the experience by saying to oneself: One now looks beyond the scope of what ordinary consciousness overlooks and gets to know the human being who, between birth and death, is connected to the forces that give birth. But at the same time, one gets to know oneself in such a way that, by looking through oneself, one gets to know in this second self that which was there before one entered into physical existence through birth or, let us say, conception. From this moment on, one comes to know that not only have the hereditary powers of the ancestors, of father and mother, placed the human being in existence, but that spiritual powers, which come from a purely spiritual world, have combined with what lies in the hereditary current.

In ordinary life, we are accustomed to calling only that 'knowledge' which is arrived at by pointing to certain facts that already exist before the knowledge is acquired. For spiritual facts, this way of thinking would be exactly the same as saying: I want to communicate something to someone, but I don't say it out loud, because by saying it out loud it is no longer an objective fact that is there; it has to come about by itself. Just as in speaking one produces something that is not exhausted in the content of what is spoken, so spiritual scientific knowledge is bound to an activity in which what is the content of knowledge is first realized, just as what is the content of speaking is first realized in speaking. And now we really come to realize that in spiritual fields there exists in a higher form that which natural science has been striving towards since about the middle of the nineteenth century: what is called the “transformation of forces”. Transformation of forces is, for example, in its simplest form: you press on the table, and the force of your pressure, the work of your pressure, is transformed into warmth. Your pressure force is not lost, but transformed. This law of the transformation of forces has indeed taken hold of the scientific mind and thus acquired great significance. The spiritual scientist who brings himself to the point I have indicated learns to recognize that what underlies all our thinking and what I have just called “the death-bringing forces” are in fact eternal life forces, but can only become active as eternal life forces if they take hold of an organism, a physical organism. If they are present in the purely spiritual world before birth or, let us say, before conception, they are eternal life forces. And they must lose the form of eternal life forces; they must transform themselves into such forces that build up the organ of physical thinking between birth and death. They have to do this in order to build up the organ of physical thinking. They can therefore only again occupy themselves with their spiritual character when the organ of the physical body, the organ of thinking, has been broken down. Therefore it is really impossible to find within the physical life that of which has now been spoken. For one could not think at all in the ordinary sense if one could find that of which has been spoken. One thinks in the physical life — this is particularly shown by spiritual science — with the organ of thinking. It is not the thinking that is created by the eternal activity and the eternal powers of the human soul, but the organ of thinking; this must always be there first, so that thinking can take place. This ordinary physical thinking would therefore have to cease if one wanted to look at the very thing that matters. It is not thinking that comes from the eternal powers, but the organ of thinking, which remains hidden behind thinking. And it is precisely this organ of thinking that must remain hidden so that thinking can come to the fore.

Therefore, as one progresses in this inner development of the soul, one has an experience that is, I might say, no less harrowing than that which has just been described by the traditional expression “approaching the gates of death”. One experiences: Yes, your thinking, you thus strengthen it; your thinking becomes stronger in itself, so that it can inwardly feel a second person who is within you. — But one thing applies above all to this thinking. All that I have said is meant only in the main, for the reason that, since one is developing in the inner life of the soul, a residue of ordinary thinking always remains; otherwise one would have to leap out of ordinary thinking and leap into the other. So what I say is always meant only comparatively, that is, not in the full sense, but only in the main.

What stands out as particularly characteristic, as particularly significant, in that thinking strengthens itself, is something that represents a certain importance precisely for the ordinary life of the soul and now for this life of the soul, which has actually ceased to exist as a result of the strengthening of thinking. It is possible to retain through ordinary memory, through the ordinary ability to remember, what one has thus attained through thinking. The convenience of ordinary life also ceases, that one simply transmits one's thoughts to memory and then has them and only needs to remember them; that too actually ceases. So, when one has strengthened one's thinking, one has, despite the strengthening, reached a point where, by placing oneself in this strengthened thinking, one is continually faced with the feeling that this thinking will soon be lost again as it arises. And that is precisely the difficulty, which causes a great many people to lose patience and never to develop such inner soul powers as are meant here. Someone who does exercises like the ones suggested may do them for a long time, but he does not realize that what one produces in this way is just as difficult to retain as it is sometimes to retain a dream. When you wake up, you know exactly what you dreamt, but you can't hold on to it, it disappears. And that's how it is with what you have achieved. It can only be incorporated into your ordinary memory with great difficulty.

That is why, when you present spiritual truths, they always have to be created in the moment; however strange or paradoxical it may sound, it is simply true that you cannot retrieve them from ordinary memory. And why is that so? It is because man, as he is in ordinary life, continually tends to let what he actually achieves through the formation, the development of the organ of thinking, what comes out of the eternal, slip down into the physical. No sooner has one attained what the eternal presents than it slips into the ordinary organ of thinking. That is, it passes over into the ordinary life of the soul and thereby loses its eternal form. One constantly sees that one grasps something as it arises, only to lose it again immediately. And only long practice is necessary to observe to some extent what arises and immediately passes away; to have in the soul that which arises and immediately passes away. Thus, one realizes that one actually needs a completely different consciousness than the consciousness that simply comes from the ordinary organ of thought. And one gradually comes to realize – which in turn is a harrowing experience of the soul – that yes, you do attain something through your soul development; but with the consciousness that you have there, which serves you in the most fruitful way in ordinary life, you cannot hold on to it after all. For this ordinary consciousness is organized in such a way that the eternal escapes from it, so that it may be efficient. The conviction finally arises: You need another consciousness, you need a consciousness that goes beyond the consciousness that is fruitful for your ordinary life, because with this consciousness you cannot hold on to the eternal.

Therefore it is necessary that such pure mental exercises, as they have been designated as a member of the meditative life, are supplemented by other exercises, which one can now call exercises of the will, of the feeling will It is not enough to exercise the power of thinking, of visualizing, inwardly in the indicated manner, for by this inward exercise alone one would arrive at a state where what arises continually ceases. Therefore, spiritual science must also advise us to treat the will in a different way than it is treated in ordinary life. In everyday life, the will functions in the soul life in such a way that, when we will, our attention is actually directed to that which is to happen, to that which flows out of the will into action, even if we only will inwardly, if it remains with the intention – with the inward presentation of the volition. Attention is always directed to that into which the will is lived, into which the will flows. If we apply the same effort to an inner cultivation of the will as can be applied in the manner indicated to the cultivation of imagination and of thinking, we can develop the will to such a point that we attain the possibility of developing the will that is necessary to reach the eternal powers of the human soul. To do this, however, it is necessary to practise the will inwardly in such a way that one really does establish a quite intense calmness of soul, that one quiets the surging and swaying of desires, the surging and swaying of the other impulses of desire that play a great role in life, so that one, as it were, establishes complete calmness in the inner life of one's soul and then reflects on what one may have wanted at some time. All the liveliness that the will is imbued with when it is directly present is, so to speak, taken away by placing remembered will in front of you, by looking back in the evening, for example, at what you willed during the day, and now letting this will work on you in such a way that you do not become an inner critic, but you look at this volition; you look at it now that it no longer directly tempts you to direct your attention to external deeds alone, but now that the volition has detached itself in your inner soul life from the external activity, you can direct your attention to what the soul life is and what it does in the volition. We also make progress in this field if we make an effort, I might say, again as an inner experiment, to will that which we have found good for this or that reason, to place it in the inner life of our soul, and then to visualize in a fine, intimate way: What do you experience when you place yourself in the position of your soul in wanting this? — whereby one completely disregards what is connected with the desired itself, but only places oneself in what the soul inwardly feels by undergoing the volition.

Again, long exercises in this direction are necessary if one wants to come to a conclusion; but one comes to a conclusion: namely, one discovers that during one's life one actually carries an invisible, an imperceptible spectator with oneself all the time. Again, one discovers a person, a new person, but a person who is always there, but who is not noticed. Just as the inner man, as characterized above, is not noticed in thinking, so the inner spectator is not noticed in willing, because attention is directed to something quite different. This inner man is now actually a consciousness that is unconsciously — if I may use the paradoxical expression — always in us, that is not raised into the ordinary consciousness, but that is there nevertheless.

It is difficult to talk about these things for the reason that one talks about things that are realities, but are actually unfamiliar to man; unfamiliar because they are not brought to consciousness in ordinary life. The spiritual scientist is not talking about anything new. He is not talking about anything that does not exist. He is only pointing out what exists in every human being. But in order to show it, it is necessary to approach it in such a way that one approaches it actively; that one does not merely point out facts that want to guarantee a being, but for which observation first brings forth what is, but what can only be shown through the activity.

And now, when one has progressed to a certain point in this field, something happens in the soul that can bring one to the deepest shock. One now gets to know something to a great extent, which one experiences in the outer life, namely within the intentions, the desires, the will that one has in the soul, but, I would say, only on the outside, only in bits and pieces. One experiences in a comprehensive way what one can call: the direct contemplation, the direct feeling of what suffering, what pain is. For basically, each piece of this attainment of consciousness, which otherwise remains unconscious, is connected with deprivation and pain. But the two experiences now come together. The one experience that led one to the perception, I would say, the flowering of the dying power in man, and the one that led one to the perception of an unconscious consciousness that is always present in man, that always watches man as an observer – these two experiences are linked together. From the first experience one realizes: This basically cannot be designated as such being as otherwise any being is designated. It cannot maintain itself in existence if it is not borne by consciousness, if, in other words, it is not remembered by a certain consciousness. And one makes a discovery - one of the most magnificent, powerful inner experiences that one can have on the path of knowledge at first: one makes the discovery that what you produce out of an energizing of your thinking is like a fleeting dream. It cannot approach the ability of ordinary consciousness to remember. But if you really strengthen that which lives in the will, as your observation, as your subconscious consciousness, then this is now the consciousness that can grasp the other, which otherwise cannot be remembered, and which can hold it.

And now one is at the experience, which in relation to the scientific attitude can be compared entirely with the way one does it in the outer natural life, how one observes the outer natural life. One looks at the plant. You see how it develops into the germ in the flower and how this germ, when it is planted in the earth, is the beginning of a new plant. The end is combined with the beginning to form a cycle, a circle. In the same way, but at a higher level, the end and beginning of the physical life of a human being is grasped. It is known that that which existed before birth, or let us say conception, has united from the spiritual world with that which lies in the physical line of inheritance, and which permeates and interweaves with the physical organization in the human being. We know that this lives itself out in such a way that it brings forth an organ, that this organ brings it to thinking, and that its outermost development brings it to memory; but that in so doing, having emerged from the spiritual world, it has has attained a form in this transformation that is, so to speak, a highest bloom, which must now be grasped by a consciousness that is of a completely different kind than that through which it first comes out of the spiritual world, is produced. This consciousness lies like a seed of consciousness, like something that underlies as will, but in ordinary will, because attention is not directed to it, does not become conscious. That which lies in man as death-giving unites, when man passes through the gate of death, with this seed of consciousness that lies in the volition. And the ordinary physical life is only a holding apart of the one and the other. We live physically so long as the one and the other are kept apart, so long as we place ourselves with our being in between. In the experience of death, the first is grasped by the second, the consciousness grasps the former and carries it through the gate of death back into the spiritual world.

Just as one can see from the plant seed in the flower that it will begin the cycle again if it goes through the necessary intermediate conditions, so one experiences that what was present before birth, what lies in man as the power to give birth, descends to a renewed earthly life when it has gone through spiritual conditions. By linking end and beginning in a way that is entirely in keeping with the spirit of natural science, one arrives at a confirmation of what has emerged in one of the most beautiful phases of modern spiritual life and — one might say — has emerged as if from the thinking of a great thinker: what was brought to light by Lessing when he concluded his most mature work, 'The Education of the Human Race', with the reference to the necessity of thinking of repeated earthly lives. At that time it leaped forward as if from a thinking that had struggled to an independent world-view. The more recent spiritual science strives to substantiate scientifically, but, as we shall see, inwardly scientifically, that which presented itself in Lessing's thinking, this teaching of repeated earth-lives! Today it is also regarded as something fantastic, as something dreamy; just as at a certain time, which is not far behind us, the doctrine was regarded: Living things can only arise from living things. — But anyone who has recognized such a view as truth also knows that truth has a difficult path to follow in humanity, but that it will also find this path!

It seemed fantastic and dreamy to most people when the more recent natural science-minded people came forward and said: Man thinks that a firmament above limits the space, while this firmament is nothing more than the expression of the end of the ability to see itself. What you see as the firmament is only brought about by yourselves; that is precisely what your gaze penetrates, that is precisely where your seeing penetrates! It is not externally present in nature, but externally in nature is the infinity of space, in which countless worlds are embedded! From the standpoint that was adopted at the time when the old concept of the firmament of space was to be overcome, spiritual science today stands, I would say, with regard to the spiritual firmament of the human soul between birth or conception and death. Man initially looks after conception, after birth, or to a point, to which his memory reaches, and to his death. But there is nothing that limits life, just as the firmament does not limit space. Rather, what man does not see expands behind it because he does not try to expand his capacity for knowledge, his capacity for thought, beyond this temporal firmament. Out there, beyond this firmament, lie repeated earthly lives and the intervening lives in which the soul lives in a purely spiritual world.

It is certainly even more difficult to become accustomed to the thought processes that are necessary to reach this spiritual firmament than it was to reach the removal of the physical firmament. But our time is quite ripe, out of a scientific attitude, I would say, to go beyond what the external natural science can achieve. And so I do not hesitate, even if it must lead to even worse misunderstandings than what has been said so far, to make the concrete application, the particular application of that kind of spiritual research that I have just characterized, in a particular case that can interest us at all times, but especially in our fateful time.

We speak and will speak more and more of the immortal forces of the human soul when we come to a true science of the soul. But we will also learn to speak again of what invisibly reigns in the visible, what imperceptibly reigns for the ordinary historical view in the course of human life. In connection with the eternal forces of the human soul, we have spoken of death, which is indeed a mystery, not only for those who say that they desire a life beyond the gates of death, but above all for those who must grasp life itself; for much of the understanding of life lies in the unraveling of the mystery of death. But in our time, death approaches us in a completely different way, in the midst of pain and suffering, but also in the midst of hope and certainty about the future. Death comes upon us in such a way that it seizes blossoming human life, not in the sense that the forces that give death internally expire, depending on how it is allotted to the person; this cannot be explained further today, but it could also be characterized in the sense of spiritual science. Death does not come upon us in such a way that these death-bringing forces from within, from the organic, take away the physical body from that which, as higher consciousness, unites with the Eternal in the life of the will, which is death-bringing, but which is one with the Eternal —, not only does death approach us in this way, but it also takes the physical human body away from the soul in the prime of life through violent interventions from the outside, let us say, through a bullet or otherwise. Although I shall be giving more exact details in a week's time in the lecture on 'The Human Soul and the Human Spirit', I would like to venture to simply relate here a research result that lies on the path just characterized.

It would take a great deal of time to fully explain how the same method that has just been demonstrated for ordinary, simple results also leads to the investigation of what is to be discussed now. But it is exactly the same method that, in the further course, also leads us to the knowledge of precisely the great connections in life.

We must bear in mind that no force is lost; it remains available, it transforms. If the physical body is taken away by an external influence, say by a bullet, in the prime of human life, then, based on the general human disposition, such forces are available that could have provided for the person for a long time in relation to his life in the physical world. These forces are not lost. The spiritual researcher must ask: where do these forces come from, and where do they go? A significant question arises before us. Last winter, in a lecture, I spoke from the point of view of how this force lives on in the present. Now I will speak about it in so far as these forces are linked to the historical course of humanity. The spiritual researcher must ask: Where do these forces, which cease to work in a person when his body is forcibly taken from him, reappear elsewhere? Just as one searches in natural science when some force is lost, how this force, transformed into other forms, reappears, so the spiritual researcher searches in the spiritual world phenomena to find what is lost on one side on the other. And it is precisely by seeking what is being discussed here that one comes to say: In the development of mankind, forces arise that we observe, for example, when we educate a human being. We observe how a person can become capable of thinking, doing or feeling this or that. We guide the abilities present in him in such a way that we know: we do nothing special when we develop human abilities in general. We know that when he is later able to do this or that, it is because this or that has been developed in him.

But besides all this, other forces arise in human life, forces that are called ingenious forces, forces that appear while one is educating a person. One can be much more stupid than the one one is educating: these ingenious forces still come out. They come to light, one speaks of a divine favor, of a coming forth of forces, without one being able to do anything about it. Of course, I am not just talking about the powers that the higher geniuses, the higher minds, show, but about the genius that is in every human being. Even the simplest person needs a certain amount of inventiveness in their most everyday tasks in order to really make progress. There is only a difference in degree between what is needed in ordinary life and the highest powers of genius. These powers of invention arise, one might say, out of the twilight of becoming; they arise in man as something that is bestowed on him by the world spirit, by the divine spirit that pervades the world, as one might say at first, without being able to claim that one has cultivated them, that one has nurtured them through education. And then the remarkable and surprising result emerges, that these powers, which thus come to light as powers of invention, as powers of genius, are transformed powers. Those forces are transformed into ingenious forces that disappear when a person's physical body is taken from him externally, which he would have been able to retain in the normal course of events if the bullet had not hit him. This is a surprising connection that emerges: The forces that a person carries into death by passing through the gate of death by force, by having their physical body taken from the outside, not by internal organic processes, these forces are not lost; these forces emerge, and not only in the later earthly life of the individual human being — that appears in a completely different way — but they emerge in the course of history, they emerge in completely different people. They become, so to speak, embedded in historical evolution, if I may use such a trivial, philistine expression. And what are the forces of a violent death in prehistoric times are transformed into forces of genius in an earlier or later post-historical period, which arise within the evolution of humanity.

If one follows spiritual science to such points, then for those who have practice in thinking, I mean inner practice in the paths that thinking must take in order to approach realities, true connections arise that come to light in the spiritual world — but which are no more wondrous than when mysterious natural connections occur, connections that only live in a higher sphere, and because they live in a higher sphere, they are all the more important for the elevation of our life, more important than how the soul feels in existence, how the soul can also permeate itself religiously with the cosmic connection, more important than mere external knowledge of nature. Spiritual science does not want to replace any religion; religious feeling has a completely different origin. But spiritual science is, if one can say so, suitable for deepening these religious feelings, for stimulating them even in those who have lost all religious feeling through the influences of modern natural science. Spiritual science shows connections within the spiritual life that arise entirely from the attitude of a scientific way of thinking. Not that all the riddles of the world will be solved, but what otherwise presents itself only as fact alongside fact is inwardly illuminated, in a similar way to how natural facts are illuminated when they can be traced back to the chain of causes and effects.

Now, in conclusion, I would like to say something that is not logically connected to the above as a final consideration of what has just been explained – I will have more to say on this next Friday – but rather something that is only is connected to it only through the logic of feeling, a logic of feeling that must be understandable to anyone who is connected to what permeates and moves us all in our time.

It is precisely this that we see: the people of Central Europe surrounded, beset, fighting for their existence. Yesterday I tried to show what spiritual endeavors are present within this circle of existence. I do not believe that I am forced, I might say, to serve the times in an outward way, to drag together what I have to say. Yesterday I tried to show how in German spiritual life, just as this German spiritual life was seeking its paths of knowledge in an idealistic way through its great philosophers, a path lies into the spiritual worlds. It must not be taken dogmatically, as I emphasized again and again yesterday, but rather in terms of the way of seeking, in terms of the way of striving. One must examine the direction in which the inner soul forces of the German idealistic philosophers moved. And if we follow, as I tried to do yesterday, the way in which, on the one hand, through abstract, sober thinking, and on the other hand, through energetic views of the will, as with Fichte, or through powerful poetic creative powers, as in Goethe, opened up Germany's idealistic path to the world, then one has an impression of how the soul of the nation itself, this German national soul as a whole, has immersed itself in meditation, the meditation of an entire national soul in the idealistic development from the end of the eighteenth century into the first third of the nineteenth century! He who sees in meditation, in the particular training of thinking, feeling and willing, the way into the spiritual worlds, may say, without having to forcibly wrench anything into such an assertion, what can truly be the most intimate conviction for the modern spiritual researcher: The progress of spiritual science can be depicted as the development of a germ that is rooted in German idealistic philosophy; it is present in all of German idealistic spiritual striving around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has continued to have an effect into our days, as I attempted to characterize yesterday. Indeed, in all that I have been able to speak about here in these lectures over the years, I have always been aware that what is now being presented as spiritual science is nothing other than Goetheanism, German idealism. I mean this specific idealism as it emerged at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the German mind, transferred to our time; not simply viewed historically as it was at that time, but grasped in a living way in our time! And I was aware that, in essence, I was never presenting anything other than Goetheanism by presenting spiritual science in the sense in which it can be in our time. However strange it may sound to some people today, if one looks at it from this point of view, one finds that striving for the spiritual world is firmly anchored in what German spiritual striving has once risen to as its highest peak, as a highest inner peak.

And when this connection is allowed to work in one's soul, one can place oneself in our fateful days in such a way that what the German people sought on the one hand in the most extreme development of their spiritual efforts is only a different side of what must work in our time so that the historical task set for the German people in our days can be solved in the external fields of action. That is why everything the German people accomplishes is intimately connected with the deepest soul life, with what was great and significant at a time when, in relation to the outside world, the ground was pulled out from under the feet of the German people. Therefore, it may be said that, if, besides the external struggle which will be decided by arms and about which it is not proper for the spiritual observer to speak, because things will be decided not by words but by arms, if, besides this struggle, something has developed that strikes us as so strange that this German spiritual life is disparaged by opponents, so that one might believe that these opponents only find the possibility of letting their own intellectual life shine in a special light by disparaging German intellectual life, then a consideration of the inner significance, the inner world significance of German intellectual life leads precisely to the realization of how little the German needs to look at his own intellectual life in such a way that, in a comparison, the intellectual life of others would have to be disparaged. The German need only look at the task set for him from the innermost part of the world spirit to know what he has to do in the world, what he has to carry over into the future.

Therefore, one may say from the bottom of one's heart: This German national spirit, which reigns in the totality of German life, which reigns in German thought, in German meditation, as I have indicated, which reigns in German action, this German national spirit may point out when it is now being reproached in such an unintelligent way from here and there with having produced a world view that is based solely on force and power. It may point out how it can refute this strange talk through its connection with the spiritual. And when it is said that the German national spirit has played its part in historical development, then it follows that the germ of the highest spiritual life lives in the meditation of the German national spirit, as indicated above. One has only to imagine how these germs develop into blossoms and fruits, and how these blossoms and fruits must develop in the future. Then, through the genuine consciousness that flows from such thinking, from such feeling, and from such sentiment, it can be said: To those who today belittle this German national spirit or even want to deny it its spiritually fruitful powers for the future, to those, out of the consciousness of its spiritual and historical deeds and tasks, this German national spirit holds up the book of destiny, which it believes it can correctly decipher by considering the German task and the German spirit. And he says to all those who believe that they must take a stand against German intellectual life, not only with weapons but also with weapons of words, and prophesy its downfall: he believes that he can hold this up to them as a sure conviction, based on an understanding of the course of German intellectual life, a page from the book of fate of the development of mankind. And on this one page is written – no matter what may be said or maintained – the future of the German spirit, the future of the German national soul!

It is a grievous time in which we live, a time more of effective actions full of courage and sacrifices, on one side, a time of severe ordeals for the human souls, on the other side. To stimulate some sensations just in view of our destiny-burdened time may be my task at the end of these considerations. Since we are allowed to be together in such a time, we want to let culminate our sensations at the end of our considerations according to this time. I may start from something that can spread light just about various matters which speak significantly to our souls in this time.

Since we started considering the world spiritual-scientifically, we call the four members of our human nature: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. We know that the ego or rather that in the human being which we name ego by which we express the ego which is the youngest, but is also for us the most significant member of the human being. If the human being only consisted of physical body, etheric body and astral body as the result of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, he would not be a human being. The human being is a human being because he received his ego from the spirits of the higher hierarchies during the earth evolution. He develops this ego in the course of his successive incarnations in different human communities, through peoples and periods, until the earth arrives at the goal of its development and the human being also arrives at his goal developing his ego. However, we also know that there are higher spiritual beings—we use for them the word “higher,”—who belong to the higher hierarchies which stand as it were above the human being. We speak of the hierarchy of the angels or angeloi, of the hierarchy of the archangels or archangeloi, the archai or spirits of the age and so on, upward rising. We call them with these names, we could use other names just as well, but the names are introduced in the West.

How have we to imagine, actually, these spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies in relation to the human being here on earth? We go out from the surroundings of the human being. We know, it is the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm, and the human being has to consider the human realm as the highest after all he can observe. So that we can say: if we take the visible realms on earth, we have the realms of the minerals, the plants, the animals and that of the human beings. Above these realms, as it were, as a continuation upwards, the realms of the angeloi, the archangeloi, the archai et cetera appear. We can simply imagine that the realms are not closed with the human realm, but also extend farther upwards, only that the higher realms cannot be seen with the outer senses.

It could seem remarkable if we go upwards from the realms of nature to the realm of human beings that above the human realm invisibility begins at once. However, this will be remarkable only as long as one does not think that the animals do not see the human being in such a way as a human being sees the other. That is completely clear to somebody who is able to transport himself into the animal view. If the animals could speak, they would only speak of visible realms, of the mineral realm, the plant realm, and the animal realm. They would consider themselves as the highest visible realm. The fact that the animals see the human being like a human being sees the other is only a prejudice.

We are human beings of a supersensible, ghostly existence to the animals; and if the animals had only such a perception as we have it, they would not see the human beings, but they would be as invisible for them as the realm of angels for the human beings. Only because they have a certain kind of dreamy clairvoyance, the animals see the human being as a ghost, as a supersensible being. The human being can have no idea directly of the image which an animal has of him. In return, the animals see something also downwards, or properly speaking, perceive something downwards that the human being does not perceive any more. Since the animals perceive not only like the human being perceives the mineral world, but still perceive—the lower animals most intensely—something else. If an animal, for instance, a snail creeps on the ground, and then it perceives the whole peculiarity of the ground. This would disturb the human being perpetually if he, while he goes on the surface of the earth, perceived this in the same way as a snail or a tortoise. With the higher animals which have warm blood it is somewhat different, but just the lower animals really perceive the whole peculiarity of the ground on which they creep. They perceive the whole peculiarity of the air; they perceive everything that is round them in another way as the human being. The animal knows whether it is on a soil which is marshy, or whether it moves on a sandy soil, because it perceives the whole peculiarity of the soil. Namely this is as similar as we hear the things in our surroundings. The whole mineral world is infiltrated with forces which make it shake and which the human being does not perceive. The animal perceives this fine shaking, these forces in such a way that it feels something as sympathetic, something not. If the animal turns back, for example, from one soil type to the other, it is not so that the animal sees it like the human being, but because something is a little bit painful to it, because the fine movements go on reverberating in it, because it feels as if it belongs to it. This is a kind of instinctive hearing like a hearing of that which takes action in the ground or this is like smelling. So that we can say: the animal perceives an elemental realm, and the higher hierarchies begin already with the human being for it.—We are put in the middle in the world which we know as the external sensory world, the external realms of the sensory world, and the world of the higher hierarchies. We call the lower visible hierarchies the realms of nature; we call the invisible ones the higher hierarchies.

We also know that such a being of the higher hierarchies, for example, an angel, once also experienced the level of humanity. This took place, while the earth went through the old Moon evolution. There the human being was not yet a human being; for he had no ego; he was on the preparatory level of humanity only and had the astral body as his highest member. The beings who belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi went through their human level during the old Moon evolution. The spirits to whom we turn as the guarding spirits of the individual human being are these beings of the hierarchy of the angeloi. To each of them, as it were, a human being is assigned. “Spirits of your souls” are those who stand immediately in the hierarchy above the human being who really spread out their protecting wings, symbolically spoken, over the human beings namely over the individual human being.

We come then to the hierarchy of the archangeloi. They also were human beings once. During the old Sun evolution the beings we call archangeloi today were on the human level. They were not so formed as the human beings today, of course not, they were formed quite differently, but they were on their human level in that time. We are not allowed to imagine that during the old Sun evolution the archangeloi looked as the human beings today, but concerning their development they were on their human level. The spirits of personality or spirits of the ages were on their human level during the old Saturn evolution.

Now, we pick out the spirits we call archangeloi. There we have such spirits as archangeloi who went through the human level during the old Sun evolution, ascended to the level of the angels during the Moon evolution, and today they have ascended to the level of the archangeloi. We leave these spiritual beings put before our souls at first, as it were, standing two levels above us; later we will come back to them. Then we have the spiritual beings who were human beings during the old Saturn evolution, today they are spirits of the ages, they are three levels above us. We let them put again. Now we want to look at our relation to these both types of spiritual beings.

When the human being goes through an incarnation, then stand above us the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the angels, then the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangeloi, and those we count to the hierarchy of the archai, spirits of the ages or spirits of personality. However, they also develop. Let us pick out the archai, the spirits of personality or spirits of the ages. We go through our incarnation, and then we go through the gate of death, come into a spiritual world after death, go through a certain purely spiritual development between death and a new birth and come to an earth existence by a new birth again. Now we can ask: what does this depend on that we move down to the earth again after a certain number of years? In public talks this question is often put. Then one can already give an answer from certain points of view, but intimately speaking in our branches we can give a more objective answer pointing to reality.

While we live here in the physical body, the spirit of the ages has a certain level of development. He does something that is connected with the development of the human beings on earth, and he experiences a development on his part. If this spirit of the ages has come in the course of a development so far that we all let flow into ourselves that which he has worked through on his part, then we are ripe, as it were, to come down to an earth incarnation. If he has advanced to a certain level and we have developed by the spiritual worlds up to a certain level, we can enter an earth development again. Let us understand well in this regard and refrain from our own development first of all. Let us look at the spirit of the ages developing in a very long period.

I may say the following. If we consider the development of the earthly humankind in such a way that we go back to the foundation of the ancient Rome, about eight hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that there a certain spirit of the ages started his development. Another spirit of the ages was leading and steering the destiny of the earth before. This spirit of the ages who took over the leadership of the spiritual earthly development in those days was leading up to the 16th century. A spirit of the ages leads the destiny of the earth for such a period. Since the 16th century, another spirit of the ages is there. We deal with two spirits of the ages. The human being who was, for example, in the third century before the Mystery of Golgotha in any incarnation on the earth experienced that which this spirit of the ages caused for the earth. For the time after his death if this human being has died in the third century or also in the second century, the spirit of the ages can give him nothing at first. He gave him what he could give him. Now the spirit of the ages must go through a number of years again, until he is able to give something new to the human being. This human being comes again down to the earth who was between death and birth in a spiritual world, when the spirit can give him something new.

Now, however, it is arranged that way that the human being comes down several times on average, because the spirit of the ages is not able to give the human being everything that he could give him because of the imperfection of the human beings. That is why the human being comes down repeatedly in the time in which a spirit of the ages develops. But basically it depends on the fact that the spirits of the ages regulate the successive incarnations of the human beings. Now, however, the spirits of the ages regulate this whole course of the human destiny, as it were, by their subordinates. These are the archangels. Such archangels govern in subordinated positions for a much shorter time than the spirits of the ages.

While the spirits of the ages rule as long as I have stated just now, we can assume a spirit of the ages from the foundation of Rome up to the 16th century, the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangels rule only for three to four centuries. They alternate in such a way that about six or seven come one after the other, while a spirit of the ages is ruling. So that we have that archangel we call Oriphiel in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Samael, Gabriel rule successively; and now since 1879 we have the government of that archangel we call Michael. So we have, if we look at the spiritual worlds, the higher government of the spirits of the ages and subordinate to them, the successive governments of archangels. Because the human being cannot take up everything that the spirit of the ages would give him, he does not take it directly from the hands of the spirit of the ages, but from the hands of the less powerful archangel. Keep in mind: our personal guardians belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi. Above them there are the spirits who regulate the interrelations of the human beings. Above them there are the archai or spirits of personality or spirits of the ages.

If I talk in such a way, it always concerns those beings who went through their development properly. But not all the spirits develop regularly. There are spiritual beings who were archai already during the Saturn evolution who lagged behind, however, on the level of the archai at that time, the level of humankind. They have not gone beyond their Saturn level during the earth development. They did not ascend to the level of the regular development. They maintained their human character, are supersensible Saturn beings on one side, however, are on the level of humankind. There are also beings of the hierarchy of the archai who stopped on the human level during the Sun evolution and stand there now in the supersensible world still as human beings. We term these beings that lagged behind the luciferic beings or ahrimanic beings with collective names. We cannot get involved in the difference between luciferic and ahrimanic beings today. These are spirits who lagged behind.

We have now to answer the question: how does the human being conceive, here in his earthly incarnation, the influence of the spirits who have properly progressed, the spirits of the ages, the archai, and the archangeloi who are their servants? These beings are supersensible; the human being cannot get a relationship to them like to the sensory world. Hence, the human being does not know as a rule if he only relies on the sensory world that he has been put in a development which is directed by the archai and archangeloi above him. He does not know it; but these supersensible beings intervene in his whole nature. Also those spiritual beings we call folk-spirits who lead whole peoples are among the archangeloi, the archangels. And in so far as we have the people to which we belong to thank for that which we are, we have to look at that what the nation's being gives us as a gift of the corresponding being of the hierarchy of the archangeloi. It is the inspiration of the archangeloi which comes to us because we are put into a people. Now we only need to think what it means for the human being to be put into a people. In the people's being there flow mental qualities, but also customs; a certain configuration of the being flows into the human being. One cannot imagine at all that somebody would have become that who somebody is in an incarnation because of the gift of the folk-spirit, in reality of the gift of an archangel.

Except that we stand within a people and receive, inspired by an archangel, certain configurations of our whole being, we stand in the development of the whole humankind. There we are exposed to the intuitions into which the spirit of the ages of the hierarchy of the archai leads us. Imagine that we receive something today in our present spiritual culture that goes beyond any national differentiation; what we have because we live from the 19th to the 20th centuries what we would not have had if we had lived during the Roman or Greek times. We have the spirit of the ages to thank for this. You can strictly make a distinction between the gift of the spirit of the ages and the gift of the folk-spirit. If only this were there which is a regular development of the human being, of the angel, of the archangel or that of the spirit of the ages then we would receive, every individual human being, the gift always from our spirit of the ages and from our corresponding folk-spirit and would develop by means of this gift. The human beings on earth would develop side by side. All members of the different peoples would receive the gift of their folk-spirits in such a way, as if five pictures would hang completely differently from each other in a gallery which would show miscellaneous things, but which would not disturb each other in the slightest.

Thus individual human beings would receive the gift of their folk-spirits on earth side by side. They would not disturb each other if their development had proceeded regularly. But there are beings who lagged behind. Among the guiding archangeloi are those who began their development properly on the Sun and have become right archangeloi up to the earth evolution, but also those who stopped on the Sun level who are basically only on the level of human beings. These beings are on the same level as the folk-spirits, and, nevertheless, they lagged behind them, have the qualities of invisible supersensible human beings, not those of archangels. They make the same claims to the world like the archangeloi in a certain way, but they have not reached the level of the archangeloi on earth. Hence, they must work with the same forces as on the Sun. The result is that they do not seize the human beings as the archangels do directing them from above, but penetrate them as invisible human beings. They do not lead the human being from above, but go into the human nature. These spirits, who compete with the really leading folk-spirits, cause that the nations feud with each other, do not live in peace with each other.

The human being would not be tempted at all to identify his personality, his humanness with his nation, but he would look at the person as something that feeds him spiritually. However, he would not stand up as a fighter for his nation, not identify his person with it. The human being would not say, I am of this or that nationality, but: nationality is there, and I have to get my spiritual food indirectly via this nationality into which I have been born. But while the archangel stimulates him to think that way, the other comes who is on the level of humankind, actually, and is basically a luciferic spirit, and leads him into his nationality.

The result is that the archangel-like does not come down as a gift to the human being, but that the human being identifies himself with the nation like with a completely personal affair, and thereby this quarrel of the nationalities comes into being on the earth. That must absolutely be clear to us: because we were not only exposed to the influence of the leading archangel, but also to the influence of the retarded archangel, we identify ourselves with the nationality as we do on earth. That is just the spiritual-scientific feeling that we as human beings are able to rise above the only national to find access to the general humanness. Then we can be national in the most remarkable sense. As well as the one human being may do that or the other may do something different as art, and the former doing his art does not need to be the adversary of the other, one did not need to be the adversary of the other concerning nationality if there were no retarded archangels who cause the identification. One has to presuppose that if one generally speaks about the basis of the human development with reference to the national or other differentiations.

Concerning the spirit of the ages you will still see further details, in which way the luciferic element works into the regular element if we consider the following. A spirit of the ages works for a certain time. Since the 16th century a new spirit of the ages is there. This spirit of the ages has a particular task. He has the task to add the whole materialistic skill and understanding of the world to the former impulses of development. Hence, materialism made so big progress since the 16th century in the world. Therefore, we do not need to look at the materialistic understanding as something more inferior to the former kind of understanding if we identify ourselves not only unilaterally with it. What will somebody who looks at the matters that way say about the government of the different spirits of the ages? He says: we are now controlled by the particular spirit of the ages; before we were controlled by another spirit of the ages. The human beings had other ideas, other impulses then. If the human being now were able to be influenced by the properly developing spirits of the ages, he would say: we must now adapt ourselves to this spirit of the ages, while we penetrate more the laws of the evolution of the world, of the materialistic thinking. Then another spirit of the ages comes after a time; he causes another attitude of mind in the human thinking.

I emphasised it often that we as supporters of spiritual science must say: today we announce spiritual science using particular words, ideas and concepts, but it is not correct that we believe, that what we say today holds good for the whole earth future, but it changes. When two thousand years are over, our knowledge of spiritual science today is announced with other words, just as we talk differently than in the Greek epoch; nothing remains of the kind of our words. We do not rely on anything that externally remains but we know that one spirit of the ages replaces the other and that they all stand equally side by side.

Somebody who is influenced by the retarded spirits of the ages of the Saturn and identifies himself with their influence says: at that time all the other human beings were silly; this was the nursery of humankind. We have advanced so far today; we have found completely valid truth for all future.—One becomes humbler, more modest in the field of spiritual science. Somebody who identifies himself with the spirit of the ages says: Copernicus found the right thing finally; something different was once believed. Now the human beings will say forever: the earth and the planets move in ellipses around the sun. The sun is in its centre.—Spiritual science already knows today that this is a one-sided teaching. It is very good for our materialistic time to imagine the world, but it is wrong. It is not true at all that the sun is in one focus of the ellipse and the earth moves around. It is, actually, a materialistically calculated apparent movement. In truth it is in such a way that the sun moves and the earth and the other planets run after it in a helical movement. Because certain positions originate in this helical movement, the earth stands once here, another time there. That appears as an ellipse. In truth it is another line. The time will come when the external science knows this, too.

One becomes more modest if one knows that truth is announced in a certain way for certain times. We never state as correct supporters of spiritual science: from now on into all future all human beings say, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. But the future speaks quite differently, because everything is developing. The ideas of yesterday are as justified as the ideas of today. We can be controlled not only by a spirit of the ages who leads us to believe that all previous knowledge was a pack of lies and we have advanced so wonderfully far. With reference to the spirit of the ages you see people possessed by the luciferic spirit saying: how wonderfully far we have advanced. How imperfect everything was what one thought and said about the world once. What we have found since the 16-century remains as eternal truth.

The folk-spirit is basically a complicated being on the whole. He is the regular folk-spirit who floats above us and if we only followed him we would follow in such a way that we take up his gifts because we are in his sphere. But he is impaired perpetually in his effectiveness by his luciferic companion who obsesses us and induces us to identify ourselves as individual human beings with the whole nationality. However, the individual human being does this differently. It is very important that one really sees that in the middle of Europe a people has to develop that has another relationship to its folk-spirit as the peoples have in the periphery of Europe. We have to learn this insight. What takes place under the surface of the human consciousness and what depends really on the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies is extremely important.

The materialistically thinking human being regards it still an insanity if one says that such impulses go out from the spiritual beings like this is one in Central Europe who stimulates the unaware people to such a feeling towards the divine or—because in Central Europe Christ is working—to the Christ Impulse. So that the Central European human being learns to feel Christ in such a way as He speaks to the core of the soul. This came nowhere else into being as in Central Europe. Still during the Roman time of the Christian development one understood, for example, Christ as a being who came to earth and worked for the human beings. Indeed, the advanced human beings and partly those who thought already in such a way, as we think today who we are in the possession of spiritual science felt as Paul thought: “not I, but Christ in me.” However, it is a difference compared with a feeling as we find it with Master Eckhart, with Tauler, with Angelus Silesius and similar minds. How these spirits took up the Mystery of Golgotha. We only need to ask Angelus Silesius; and he answers us with the nice saying:

Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem
And not in you, you would be lost forever.

It depends on the commiseration of the Mystery of Golgotha in the own soul. These Central European human beings tried to internally experience something that is an internal picture, an internal expression of the Mystery of Golgotha. And how wonderful is it when Angelus Silesius says once about death: everything that happens in me happens in the end because God is in me and carries out the matters in me. And if I die, I do not die, but, actually, God dies in me.—Imagine what a wonderfully intimate idea of immortality already is given when one says: God dies in me.—Since God is immortal, of course. If God dies in me, death is only apparent; then one feels like Angelus Silesius felt: God dies only apparently in me, because God cannot die. So is death not that it seems externally, it is only a fact of life. Because God cannot die—but dies in anyone,—one already feels immortality with it.

This most intimate being together with God whether one feels it as something divine or as something Christian was prepared for long times in the course of the Central European development. There the Central European folk-spirits worked, so that it found an external symbolic expression, a real symbolic expression. Except in Central Europe nowhere anybody says “ich,” if he means his own self, his own being. The whole development was led by the folk-spirit who manifests himself as a spirit of language in such a way that the own being was expressed with the word ICH. But ICH, “I-Ch,” is Jesus Christ. It lies in Jesus Christ. Because in “ICH” Christ Jesus is expressed in His initial letters, it is expressed allegorically what in the Central European spiritual being is as it is connected with the most intimate experience. Whenever somebody pronounces “Ich,” he pronounces the initial letters of “Jesus Christ.” If one turned the spiritual eyes only once to such matters which are really considered even today as fantastic, somebody would already think that the spirits of the higher hierarchies work unconsciously in the human development, and would then find something significant in the matters which one takes for granted today.

I want only to mention a really significant fact. One calls a certain group of European human beings Germanic people or Teutons. And while one speaks in Central Europe of Germanic people (“Germanen”), one includes England, Holland, Norway, Sweden and still others. One expands the concept of the Germanic people. I do not talk out of agitation, but out of that which is given in the language. The English do not speak of themselves as Germanic people, because they call only the Germans Germanic people. The German calls himself “deutsch,” and if he speaks of Germanic people, he encloses a bigger group of human beings. The English apply the term Germans only to the Germans, to those who are not like “him.” This is a tremendously significant fact. It is something that is in the deepest sense typical for the kind in which way on the one side and on the other the folk-spirit works; he works in Central Europe to embrace a bigger entity and the folk-spirit of the English people takes care to put away that and only to apply it to the other.

That will be obvious to the human beings gradually in a wonderful way which the language teaches as the outflow of the effective folk spirituality. Now one is little understood if one speaks about the different European peoples as I tried it some years before this war—not caused at all by the war—in the cycle The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology. This is understood in such a way, as if I wanted to express any value judgments. But I do not want to express value judgments, but only a characteristic. We can now characterise the West-European peoples expressing exactly what I expressed in this lecture cycle.

We know that the soul of the human being consists of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul or mind-soul and the consciousness-soul, and the ego which works in these three soul nuances. If we look at the Italian nation with its folk-spirit, we find the peculiarity that there the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. This is the typical of the Italian people, that the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. If now something is possessed by the luciferic folk-spirit, it is also the folk-spirit. Imagine that on one side the brilliant aspect of the Italian people is based on the fact that the sentient soul is inspired. Think of Dante, of all the great Italian artists. But this people also identify themselves, on the other hand, with something superhuman that lagged behind luciferically in all the passionate impulses of development which appear within the Italian people. I do not pronounce any value judgment, but I characterise it only.

We can see everywhere with the French people the folk-spirit inspiring the intellectual soul or mind-soul.

With the British people it is the consciousness-soul. The consciousness-soul is for the present human cycle that which connects the human being mostly with the external physical world. Hence, this nation which is inspired in the consciousness-soul is entrusted above all with the task of furthering the materialistic civilisation. No value judgment is expressed again, but it is characterised only that just the British nation has a vocation to get the consciousness-soul inspired. In so far as the individual human being belongs to his nation, in so far as he is inspired by the luciferic folk-spirit, he identifies himself with the purely materialistic civilisation of the present. We find this really in the British culture. Like the individual human being positions himself in the British nation, this comes out what is just the materialistic spirit of the British nation, this peculiar spirit who waged thirty-four wars of conquest from 1856 up to 1900 and made fifty-seven million people new British subjects, and who pretends to stand up for the liberty of single human groups in our time.

If we consider such a time like ours, we must absolutely be clear to us that just this time teaches people very much to feel like an admonition what one puts up now as the contrast of the single national groups of Europe or of a big part of the earth. The members of thirty-four nationalities—apart from minor tribal differences—are in war with each other. One should regard this as an admonition to refrain really from that which one has called history up to now. But this approach is used just for the time being still up to nonsense. We find it really driven up to nonsense what the individual nations of Europe reproach each other for everything. One weighs up the single external facts to discover the causes of this dreadful war. But just this war will teach people that one finds nothing in its external causes, but at most external symptoms of that which exists deeply hidden in the human groups by the guidance of advanced and retarded spiritual beings. The ordeals of this time force us to appeal to the spiritual subsoil in which the causes of the external events in the world can be found today.

From the most different sides one can show how in the subsoil of the consciousness that works which appears externally. I want to point, although most of the friends already know this example, once again to the fact that the whole map of Europe was determined towards the end of the Middle Ages by the Maid of Orleans who intervened in the war between England and France. Everybody who looks understanding at our external history has to recognise that the map of Europe would have turned out quite differently if at that time England had not been defeated by France because the Maid of Orleans intervened in the fight. But the Maid of Orleans was not a qualified strategist; she was no one who stood at the summit of education. She was a simple human child—a farmer girl. But the spirits of the higher hierarchies worked through her in the way as they had to work in this time. It has been absolutely necessary up to our time that these spirits worked in the subconscious because the human beings could not yet understand what must now be understood spiritual-scientifically.

The intervention of spiritual beings in the subconsciousness is often nicely expressed in legends. And rightly, not because of superstition, but because it really corresponds to facts, one set particular store by the time when the external world has withdrawn mostly from the year, the time from Christmas up to the sixth January. If one does not want to attain spiritual knowledge in the way, as we do today using the instructions given in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but in a more elementary way, one could be inspired in these thirteen nights. This is expressed, for example, very nicely in the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson. This legend relates that Olaf Åsteson goes to the church before Christmas; that he falls asleep before the church and sleeps during thirteen nights. He wakes up at the Epiphany day and is really able to tell his experience. What he tells there figuratively in a clear, but primitive way corresponds to that we call the passage through the soul-world and the passage through the spirit-land. Olaf Åsteson experienced that in the time in which Christmas was rightly put. This makes it clear to us that the clairvoyance of a nature child could be developed best of all during these thirteen nights from Christmas till Epiphany.

Because the Maid of Orleans was such a nature child, one could assume that she would have experienced the world in these thirteen nights in a sort of dreamy state of which she spoke when she led the French army against the English that she would have been inspired in these thirteen nights. This happened in a peculiar way. Every human being experiences a sleeping state, a state when the senses do not yet speak, namely in the body of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. This is still a kind of sleeping state, and the ripest state is that during the last thirteen days before birth. This is the great thing and fills our souls with such amazement: the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. She went through the inspiration actually in the thirteen nights, but before she opened her eyes to the earth light. That is why the sixth January is noted as the birthday of the Maid of Orleans intentionally in our calendar. We have to understand that in its big world-historical connection; since it can say to us how mysterious the connections are in the world and how mysterious forces work in the world. Mysterious powers worked in those days on the sixth January, because people gathered in the little village where the Maid of Orleans was born in the morning; where the animals themselves behaved so wonderfully. On this sixth January, an inspiration could be finished. In thirteen nights a being could be inspired which was disposed by its own karma. Of course, not everybody who is born on the sixth January is disposed, but karma has to coincide with the other conditions.

I wanted to give this example of the Maid of Orleans which shows us so surely how subterranean powers intervene in the historical development. Indeed, the materialistic development of the following centuries came then. It is completely comprehensible that this had to consider such tips to historical backgrounds as insanity. This does not harm; even it does not harm at all if today people still look at this spiritual science like insanity. This spiritual science will be accepted finally.

But such significant events, within which the human beings of the present time live and in which they themselves incarnated to take part in them in one or another way, do not always mean the same in the historical development. Today these destiny-burdened events mean an admonition to the human beings. Such a flood of literature has been written about this war, but in everything that appeared in books, pamphlets and so on we do not yet find this from which one has to assume, actually, that it is found and that it must be found bit by bit. One often hears: one can talk about the causes not really, maybe after the war, maybe people find the true causes of this war from documents only after decades and know who was to blame for it.—You can read this in every third newspaper. But that does not concern, it concerns that which one finds—and just as a result of this time—that the real causes are not to be seen in these external occasions, but that one has to look for the causes in the spiritual world. One will find that this war was the significant karma of materialism which must be experienced, so that the human beings take up a sum of convictions in them leading from materialism to spiritualism. Humankind must experience this ordeal.

What does happen basically today in such a distressing way round us?—We know, when the human being goes through the gate of death, he leaves his physical body behind in the physical world. He enters in the spiritual world with his etheric body, astral body and ego. He soon takes off the etheric body which is given to the remaining world. Then he goes with astral body and ego through the soul-land, through the spirit-land. But imagine now that today a big number of human beings goes through the gate of death in relatively short time and with a particular consciousness; that they take off etheric bodies which could have supplied, so to speak, their lives normally still for decades. If a human being dies between the twentieth and thirtieth years, he takes off an etheric body which could have supplied his physical body for sixty to seventy years. The forces are in the etheric body, because nothing gets lost also in the spiritual world. All human beings, who go today in the prime of life through the gate of death, hand over to the world etheric bodies which could still have maintained their lives for a long time. These forces are there in the spiritual world. How are they there, these forces?—I may give you an illustrative example of the significance of such a phenomenon which is taken from our circle itself.

Last autumn, a family belonging to our anthroposophical circle lost a little son, a dear boy of seven years. The external circumstances were exceptionally tragic ones. The father had been called up to the army as a German citizen; he just fell ill and was in the military hospital. One evening, even as a lecture took place in Dornach where our construction is built, somebody informed us that the little seven-year-old boy was missing. He had not come home since the evening. I have to mention that the family has settled down in Dornach as a gardener family. I had come from Germany to Switzerland shortly before. The boy had already met me before the construction and shaken my hand; it was a sunny very dear child. In that evening, we were informed that the boy was missing. Now one could imagine nothing else, as that a removal van, which had brought pieces of furniture for our members, had toppled over and fallen on the boy near the construction. You must also take into consideration that since countless years no removal van went at that place or since that time. You must think further: the boy lived with his mother who manages the garden. He was such a dear boy that he said to his mother when the father had to go; now he would muck in, because the father is not there any more.

That evening, he had been sent to the so-called canteen to get something for his mother. It was not far at all; it is only a short way between the canteen and the flat of the mother. On this short way is a crossroad, so that the removal van had to do a bend. Now the boy intended to leave, actually, ten minutes sooner, was detained by somebody who wanted to go with him. If he had left sooner and through the door through which he was used to leave, he would have passed the carriage sooner and on its left side, while he went now on the right. Because he left later, through another door and on the right side of the removal van, the carriage when it tipped over fell just on the boy. People had looked at this, also those who were busy with the horses. Nobody anticipated that the boy had got under the carriage. Then one said: The carriage is too heavy to lift it still this evening, tomorrow we do this.—Between five and six o'clock p. m. this had happened. We had definitely to lift the carriage a quarter past ten o'clock. At twelve o'clock it was lifted; and we recovered the dead child.

The first thing I would like to mention is that just such an example is suited to show how wrongly people think concerning life. I would like to give an often used comparison for this wrong thinking. Assuming, you see a person in some distance who goes along a riverside. Suddenly you see the person falling into the river. You run to that place and you find a stone at the same place. Of course, you say, the person tripped over the stone, fell into the water, and found his death that way. However, the matter can be completely different; it could be the other way round. The man could have experienced a heart failure. He fell into the water, because he was dead before; and he did not find his death, because he fell into the water. This mistake is done any minute, in the natural sciences in particular. One does not notice it, of course, if it is well hidden.

That was also the case concerning this child. The karma of this child had run off. The removal van went there because of the child. The spiritual beings who exist behind the secret arranged the matter in such a way that the child could find its death. The boy was seven years old. The rather youthful etheric body would have supplied life for many decades, its forces were there. Now, I will always confess what it means that since some time our Dornach construction is embedded in the enlarged etheric body of the little boy Theodor Faiss. The etheric body is increased—it grows after death,—and the etheric body of this little seven-year-old Theo forms something like an aura of the construction since that time. If one deals with the construction, if one needs to find ideas for the construction which put himself rightly in the spiritual world, since the death of this boy he knows that he is co-inspired by the etheric body which is involved in the aura of the construction, the etheric body of the little Theo Faiss.

Of course, no longing to appear original could inveigle me into denying that a lot is co-inspired by that which contributed to the construction since that time, because the aura of this etheric body is round the construction, and one has, as it were, this help that this unused etheric strength works in favour of the construction. Imagine which important internal facts are behind the external facts: a family moves their residence near to the construction. There is a boy, especially gifted by his soul-being; he sacrifices his etheric body, so that the construction is wrapped up in the strength of this etheric body. There we have such an example at which we see that unused sacrificed etheric bodies have their task in the world.

There only that begins basically which should flow as the sentient content from our spiritual science. That one knows, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, that one goes through different lives on earth—one knows that in theory, it does not matter really. But it matters that which is inserted in our real experience by these views. One tries to bring life also into our movement and to overcome the difference between the living and the dead not only theoretically by teaching, but by life. When recently a very dear assistant, Fritz Mitscher, was snatched away from us just in his thirtieth year, and I had to hold the address at the cremation in Basel, an important word consisted in the fact that I turned to this soul, I would like to say, begged him to continue working among us after death. For we do not only need the so-called living, but we need the cooperation of those who have gone through the gate of death. They will co-operate in a double way. On one side, a big number of etheric bodies co-operate in the next time which the human beings have taken off going through the gate of death in the destiny-burdened events.

Youthful unused etheric bodies form a big aura in which we live. On the other side are the individualities themselves who work on from their etheric bodies. We can look at the unused etheric body at the example of the little Theo Faiss where the etheric body becomes the inspirator for something that was achieved in the construction. I would look at the individuality of Fritz Mitscher in my address. It is the task of our spiritual science to feel how the abyss between life and death is filled. It must become conscious content of our earth times not only to know in theory, but to penetrate vividly that which the dead are to us like the living that the dead give something like the youthful, unused etheric bodies. In these etheric bodies, which belonged to the human beings who have now found their death as a result of the big destiny-burdened events, the echoes live of everything that is felt if one considers death as a sacrifice for the events demanded by this time—more or less consciously. This goes into these etheric bodies.

Looking for death, or properly speaking, foreseeing death and nevertheless knowing that this death has a meaning, this will be the case with the numerous human beings going through the gate of death in the present. One can be a materialist; if one exists in such a way, one may say: folk-souls, folk-spirits are only names for something that in the abstract holds together a group of human beings of the same language and the same characteristics. Speaking of folk-spirits as of real beings is a weirdie.—Some people going now through the gate of death may speak that way according to the words; because they go through death they agree unconsciously to that which spiritual science has to say that a folk-soul, a folk-spirit is a real being. For what would it mean if folk-spirits, folk-souls were not real beings and the human beings stand on all sides in this bloody war?

Provided a materialistic world creation it would be impossible to imagine that. If the individual human being sacrifices himself for the folk-spirit, if the folk-spirit is a real being to him, it has the deepest sense that such events have befallen the human beings. Thus we will feel the next time in which many unspent etheric bodies float in the spiritual atmosphere admonishing everybody that there is something spiritual. These etheric bodies are good assistants in future to deepen the human world view spiritually. The human beings have only to feel the dead calling in their souls. When again peace holds sway over the fields on which now the dreadful events take place, the human beings who live then will work much better if they hear the voices of the dead. But this is meant not only symbolically. The unspent etheric bodies are calling. The world cannot exist in future without the human beings feeling their connection with the spiritual world. Humankind of the future would turn out lifeless if it were not able to hear the admonitions of the dead.

In physics, everybody admits that energy does not get lost; one speaks of the transformation of energy. That also applies to the spiritual realm. The forces the unused etheric body carries through the gate of death do not disappear; they will be there. They can be taken up in the souls of the future, and these souls can receive strength and confidence for their spiritual work from the connection with the soul leftovers which remained from unused etheric bodies.

Beside many things this war can say to us, it is for us as supporters of spiritual science above all that we already look up in spirit at the atmosphere of the unused etheric bodies. However, here below souls have to be who have a feeling for the admonitions of the dead. It belongs to our task as supporters of spiritual science to bring about that. We must already find a spiritual point of view also towards such events, not the point of view of an abstract thinking. But we must really imagine the future population of the earth in such a way that below souls exist who are in the physical bodies, and from above forces of unused etheric bodies work; and that these souls below can say: we have no doubts that better times come for the spiritual cognition, because the unused etheric bodies help us with their forces.—If we take this specifically, not in the abstract, we have understood something of the admonitions which this destiny-burdened time can give us in particular as supporters of spiritual science. It must take place that way, because real effects in the human development are necessary. We would have to work on for long times if we had to intellectually convince people of that which the spiritual-scientific world view wants to give. With the Maid of Orleans a subconscious initiation took place. In the future, spirituality works in another way in the human development. The unused etheric bodies support us and also those who as individualities want to work on the physical plane.

It is sometimes strange what people can understand also today. On account of the given example you will admit that at the time of the Maid of Orleans the strategists, the generals did not bring about that which was brought about. I have sometimes given another example: when at a determining hour the army of Constantine marched against Rome, these were not also the generals who brought about the victory and defeated the five times stronger army of Maxentius who led his armies before the gates of Rome against Constantine. Constantine followed not his generals, but a dream that said to him, he should make his armies carry the monogram of Christ. Dreams and Sibylline oracles brought the armies together at a particular place and decided everything in those days. However, because Constantine was victorious, the map of Europe got its corresponding appearance. Who steered the events in those days taking place under the threshold of consciousness? It was the Christ Impulse, but the Christ Impulse, as it was real, not as human beings understood it.

We do not get to know the Christ Impulse listening to the squabbling of the theologians. The Christ Impulse did not work in that which the human beings accomplished consciously which the human beings understood; but it worked in joining together the events with Constantine and Maxentius, and later again with the Maid of Orleans. Also in this time one experiences something, even in little facts. You can compare the little thing with the big one sometimes.

An excellent philosopher wrote a longer article about the spiritual-scientific world view represented by me some years ago in a South German monthly magazine. This article had a big effect; it was written in an opposing way, infiltrated with many a benevolent judgment about theosophy on the whole, even some acknowledging notes. For example, I got the advice instead of using my talents for such matters to find out finally whether Mickiewicz¹ is really the reincarnation of the Maid of Orleans and so on. Nevertheless, on the whole, the article was very suitable to show how our spiritual-scientific world view has to be regarded so that an inadequate impression was aroused.

The philosopher who had written the article was regarded as a great Platonist, as a great logician. He himself said that he devoted himself to no other task than to announce the truth, and, therefore, he would be able to know the truth. The editor of the magazine seemed to be very satisfied to publish such authoritative an article about this spiritual science. This was already some years ago. Then the war came. The person concerned does not belong to those who sympathise with Central Europe, but he sympathises in determined way with England and France and even with those who also fight on the side of England and France. Now what happens? He writes a number of letters to the same man, the editor of the magazine. This editor of the mentioned magazine also publishes these letters because they are too typical, in another magazine, the South German Monthly Magazine. He even reminds of the fact that he is the same man—it is Karl Muth—who publishes the magazine Hochland and printed the article about the “Steinerean theosophy,” as he says. In these letters, a West-European minded person rants at the Central European population as much as he can do. Among other things, this man explains: black people are free aristocrats compared to people who do not know anything they are fighting for. One had to compare the British Empire with Central Europe, the former were established like the Catholic Church by God and would never have done anything but what is according to the divine world order.

Printing this letter is a matter of course. The mentioned editor adds to this: in whole Central Europe nobody could be found except in madhouses who could support such a view.—Now the dear Mr. Muth admits that the man whom he had chosen to let him loose on our spiritual-scientific world view is ready, actually, for the lunatic asylum. Of such a quality are the objections generally which are raised against our spiritual-scientific world view. Only Mr. Muth would already have had to know in those days that the man is ready for the lunatic asylum. But he needed the admonition of the war. His view had to be challenged only by that which he could easily see now. Some people who are ready for the lunatic asylum walk around and criticise our world view, only it does not come to the fore so absurdly.

I said that this example shows that the reason which people have today would limp for a long time if it concerns the spiritual-scientific world view and that one must say: not only the living but also the dead are necessary that a certain quantity of spirituality comes into the world. Those belong to the best helpers who had to stand up with their souls and lives for the course of our present destiny-burdened events. That is why we would want that such considerations remain not only something theoretical in the souls, but become a deeply honest feeling, the feeling that we may bear witness of spiritual science in such a way that we know attentively that there are admonishing voices in the spiritual world saying to us: let us dead be a landmark of the spiritual deepening which must come to the human beings, because we have gone through this death with consciousness—not for our matter, but for that which is independent from us, so that we have thereby confirmed the confession of something that goes beyond the individual material human life.

If among the supporters of spiritual science those are who anticipate, feel or know the serious murmur of the dead, then something real is achieved that has to be achieved by spiritual science in the feelings of the human souls; in other words, if souls are inspired by spiritual science who know to turn their senses to the realm of spirits, because a lot is said to the human beings from the realm of spirits in the times to come.

It is this that I wanted to suggest to you for your feelings, because the circumstances were such that we can be together just in this time also in a branch meeting. One would want that at such meetings not only a knowledge as a germ is given, but that that which is spoken in such meetings would work like a living germ which is planted in the ground of the feeling soul. What you carry on from such a consideration, this is the central issue.

That is why we want to close these considerations, while we think of that which might be assigned to us from the destiny-burdened events of this time:

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

• 1. Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Polish poet, stood up for the liberation of the Polish people from the Russian rule.

When once our construction, dedicated to spiritual science, is finished in Dornach, it contains a sculptural group at an important place. This group primarily presents three figures. In the middle of this group a figure stands as, I would like to say, the representative of the highest human which could develop on earth. Hence, one can also feel this figure of the highest human in the earth development as Christ, Who lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years within the earth development. It is the particular task to form this Christ figure in such a way that one can see, on one side, the concerning being living in a human earthly body, however, this earthly body being spiritualised in every look, in everything that is in it by Christ Who entered from cosmic, from spiritual heights in the thirtieth year of his life in this earthly body.

Then two other figures are to be found, one on the left side, the other on the right side of the Christ figure, if I am allowed to call this figure the Christ figure. This Christ figure stands there like before a rock which towers up in particular on the left side of Christ, so that its peak is above the head of the Christ figure. On top of the rock is another figure, a winged figure; but the wings are broken, and this figure falls, because it has broken wings, into the chasm. What has to be worked out artistically in particular is the way how this Christ figure raises the left arm. Because the Christ figure raises his left arm, it happens that this falling being breaks the wings. But this must not look in such a way, as if possibly Christ broke the wings of this being, but the whole must be artistically arranged so that, while Christ raises the arm, already lies in the whole movement of the hand that he has an infinite compassion, actually, also with this being. However, this being does not endure what flows up through the arm and hand and what is still visible because the fingers of the stretched hand hollowed the rock, as it were. What this being feels in itself, because it comes near to the Christ being, I would like to dress in the words: I cannot bear anything pure like that shining on me.

It is that which lives in this being and lives so substantially in this being that its wings are broken and it falls consequently into the chasm. This is one especially significant artistic task. You notice what could be missed if Christ stood there plastically and such a force were simply emitted by raising the hand, so that He breaks the wings of this being so that it falls into the chasm. Then it would be Christ who would shine on this being like with hatred and make it fall. However, this must not be shown that way, but the being should make itself fall. Since this being who is shown falling down with broken wings is Lucifer.

On the other side, toward the right side of the Christ figure where the rock has a projection the rock will be hollowed out there. In this hollow is also a winged figure. This figure turns to the rock cavity on top with his arm-like organs. You have to imagine: on the right the rock cavity and in this cavity the winged figure which has, however, quite differently formed wings than the figure on top of the rock. This figure has more aquiline wings, the figure in the cave bat-like wings. The latter figure locks itself up in the cave, you see it in chains, and you see it working there on the ground hollowing out the earth.

The Christ figure in the middle turns his right hand downwards. Whereas it turns its left hand upwards, it turns the right hand downwards. It will be a significant artistic task again not to show this in such a way, as if Christ wanted to put this figure which is Ahriman in chains, but that Christ Himself has an infinite compassion for Ahriman. However, Ahriman cannot endure this; he writhes in pains by that which the hand of Christ emits. This causes that the veins of gold, which are at the bottom in the cave, wind like strings around Ahriman's body and tie it up. Just as that which happens with Lucifer happens by himself, it also happens with Ahriman. Then we will attempt to paint the same motive above the sculptural group, but the view of the painting must be completely different from that of the sculpture. So that we have this group of three figures: Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman as a sculpture group at the bottom and above them the same motive painted.

We put this relationship of Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman in our Dornach building because spiritual science shows us in a certain way really that concerning the understanding of the Christ Impulse the next task is that, finally, the human being learns to know which relationship exists in the world between these three powers Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. Since, indeed, up to now one often talks about Christianity and the Christ Impulse, but that which has entered the world by the Christ Impulse, actually, as a result of Christ's Death and Resurrection, this has not yet become completely clear to the human beings. One speaks probably of the fact that there is Lucifer that there is Ahriman, but while one speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman, one speaks very often in such a way, as if one had to flee them, as if one had to say almost always: I want to know nothing, nothing at all about Lucifer and Ahriman.

If the divine-spiritual powers, which are found in the way, as I have described it in the public lecture yesterday, also wanted to know nothing about Lucifer and Ahriman, the world would just not be able to exist. You do not position yourselves in the correct relationship saying: Lucifer, I avoid him! Ahriman, I avoid him! You rather have to look at that which the human being has to strive for as a result of the Christ Impulse like the equilibrium position of a pendulum. The pendulum is in the middle in balance; however, it must swing to and fro. That is similar also in the earth development of the human being. The human being must tend on one side to the luciferic principle, on the other side to the ahrimanic principle, but he must learn and stand firmly on that which Paul said: “not I, but Christ in me.”

We have to understand Christ in his effectiveness absolutely as a reality. That is we must be clear to us that this really happened which flowed by Christ's Death and Resurrection in our earth development. How well or how badly people understood this up to now, it does not depend on it, but on the fact that it was there that it has worked in the human earth development. One could say a lot that people have not yet understood of the Christ Impulse. And spiritual science will contribute a little piece to the understanding of that what flowed in from spiritual heights by the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ Impulse onto the earth development. To realise Christ's working, we want to make clear to us, as this has also happened at other places, two moments of the earth development of humankind, two moments which became important in the whole western development.

You know from history, what an important moment it was, when Constantine, the son of Constantius Chlorus, defeated Maxentius, and Christianity was introduced by Constantine externally in the western development. Constantine had to go into that important battle against Maxentius through which Constantine then made Christianity the state religion in his western empire. The whole map of Europe would have become different if in those days this battle had not taken place against Maxentius. But strategic art, that of what people were capable with their intellects in those days, did not decide this battle really, but something else.

Maxentius made read up in the so-called Sibylline Books, the prophetic books of Rome, and got the advice to lead his army out of the walls of Rome, whereas they would have been saved well within the walls. So he positioned his troops in the free field against the army of Constantine. However, Constantine had a dream before the battle which indicated to him: if you go in the sign of the Mystery of Golgotha against Maxentius, you arrive at a big goal.—And carrying the sign of the Mystery of Golgotha, the cross, Constantine went to the battle with an army about three quarters smaller than that of Maxentius. Filled with enthusiasm by the power which came from the Mystery of Golgotha, Constantine won that important battle through which Christianity was introduced externally in Europe. If we remember what people understood of the Christ Impulse with their intellects in those days, we find an endless theological quarrelling.

People quarrelled whether Christ is identical from eternity with the Father and the like more. One must say: it does not depend on that which people knew about the Christ Impulse in those days, but on the fact that it was there, the Christ Impulse, that it induced the necessary events by Constantine, by a dream of Constantine. It depends on the reality of Christ, on the real power of Christ. In our spiritual science, we only begin understanding the Christ Impulse.

Another moment was that when in the fight between France and England Europe was formed in such a way that one can say: if France had not been victorious against England in those days, all the circumstances would have become different. But how had this happened?—The Christ Impulse has just worked in the subconscious of the soul up to now, when it has to become more aware. We see then in the western spiritual development the Christ Impulse seeking for those conditions in the human souls through which it can be effective with individual human beings. Legends have preserved the way how the Christ Impulse in the western spiritual development can make itself noticeable. These legends point partly back to old pagan times, when everywhere understanding of Christianity was prepared just in paganism.

If the soul does not strive for initiation consciously in the way I have described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but gets it as it were in natural way, as it was filled with the Christ Impulse by a natural initiation. The most convenient time in which this Christ Impulse is able to inspire the soul is the time of the Christmas Eve up to the Epiphany day, the time from the 25th December to the 6th January. We can understand that if we get the following clear in our mind: for the esoteric knowledge it is unambiguously evident that our earth is not only that of which the geologists talk. That is only like the skeleton of the human being. But our earth also has its own spirituality. And Christ has just entered the earth aura. This earth sleeps and wakes as we sleep and are awake in twenty-four hours. We have to realise the fact that the earth sleeps during the summertime and is awake in the wintertime. The spirit of the earth is the most awake in these twelve or thirteen nights from Christmas to Epiphany. In olden times, in which—as you know from the various representations in my lectures—the human beings had a dreamlike clairvoyance and experienced the spiritual principle of the world that way. The most convenient time was the summertime. It is quite natural that somebody who wants to rise in a more dreamlike clairvoyance to the spiritual has it easier during the sleeping time of the earth, in the summertime. Hence, it was the St. John's-tide which was the most convenient in olden times to raise the strength of the soul to the spiritual. The new, more conscious way has replaced the old way in which the spiritual was working into the earth; now it is the best time when the earth is awake.

Hence, the legends tell us that especially gifted human beings, human beings who are particularly suitable because of their karma, get a special condition of consciousness at the Yuletide which is only externally similar to sleep but inspires it internally, so that the human being was raised to the world we call the spirit-land. There is a very nice legend, the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson about whom is told to us that he goes to the church at the Christmas Eve, falls into a sleep-like state and wakes up at the sixth January and can tell what he experienced in this state similar to sleep. This Norwegian legend actually explains to us that Olaf Åsteson experienced something that one feels at first like the soul-world, then something that one feels like the spirit-land, only just everything in pictures, in Imaginations.

This time was the most convenient in those epochs in which the human beings were not yet so advanced as in our time. Today, the times are over in which the Christ Impulse can flow into the souls like by a natural initiation. Today, the human beings have to ascend to initiation as consciously as it is described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? We live in a time in which natural initiations become rarer and rarer and completely disappear, finally, so that we do not have to count any more on them. But, basically, one can call a physical initiation that through which the Christ Impulse worked on the soul of the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, who brought about the victory of the French over the English. This victory reshaped the European map wondrously. The human reason could not perform that, but that which guided the Maid of Orleans in those days and outstripped all the skill of the military leaders, by which Europe got a new figure. It was the Christ Impulse, which worked on the unconscious of a single personality, but worked so that then from this personality spread out what was efficient in history.

We would have to notice if anything similar could have taken place as a natural initiation with the Maid of Orleans if the soul of the Maid of Orleans had been inspired in the nights from the 25th December to the 6th January. In the course of life it seems that such a matter cannot be verified that the Maid of Orleans also was once during twelve or thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January in a sleep-like state in which the Christ Impulse would have worked on her, so that she would be able to work as a human being only like the cover of the Christ Impulse on the battlefields of France. Nevertheless, it was that way. For there is a time which—if the karma of the concerning individuality makes it possible—can be filled with such a sleep-like state. This is the time of the last days in which the human being still lives in the body of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. The human being lives there in a dreamlike state similar to sleep. He has not yet seen anything by the senses that takes place externally in the world. If a human being were particularly suitable by his karma to take up the Christ Impulse during these last days in which he lives in the body of the mother, these days would also be days of the natural initiation. Then such a human being would open his eyes for the first time already strengthened by the Christ Impulse lying in him after the initiation, that means in this case, after his birth. And such a human being would have to be born on the 6th January. The Maid of Orleans was born on the 6th January. This is the secret of the Maid of Orleans that she was born on the 6th January that she spent the time from Christmas up to the Epiphany day in that peculiar state similar to sleep in the body of the mother and got a natural initiation. Consider the deep connections which are behind the external development which one normally calls history. What is shown externally in history with the help of documents is as a rule even the most insignificant. The simple date which is registered in our calendar that the Maid of Orleans was sent into the world on the 6th January is of authoritative historical significance. The forces work from the supersensible realm on the sensory realm that way. We have to read this occult writing which shows us the forces working from the supersensible realm on the sensory realm. So the Christ Impulse flowed into the Maid of Orleans like by a natural initiation, already before her physical birth.

I want to explain these matters to arouse a feeling in you that forces and connections unknown to the external view are effective behind that what one normally calls history. However, the Christ Impulse guides history, of the European humankind in particular, since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the East, in Asia a world view remained of which one can say: it has not yet approached the Christ Impulse in its feelings. Indeed, the European was enticed to call the Indian views particularly deep. But this is the typical of Hinduism—generally of the whole Asian religious feeling—that it stands with all its feelings before the Christ Impulse, but has preserved the state which was there in the religious feeling of the earthly humankind before the Christ Impulse. Lagging behind in the development always means taking up something luciferic. Hence, the Asian religious development carries a luciferic element in itself. If we look over at the Asian religious development, we must notice: indeed, we can see a lot in it that humankind had already once that it had to leave, however. But we have partly to purify that all in the western culture from the luciferic element, to raise it partly in such a way that the Christ-principle can flow into it.

If we go from Asia to Europe, we find in the east of Europe, in the Russian culture, the orthodox Christianity spread out which has stopped on a former level of the Christian development which did not want to go along which wanted to keep something luciferic. Briefly, we look at the East, we have what, I would like to say, the wise guidance of the world left behind in the whole development of humankind as the luciferic element.

Let us look at the West, particularly at the American civilisation, and then we have another characteristic. The typical of this American civilisation is that everything is searched for in the external. A lot of significant things are thereby produced indeed; but everything is searched for in the outside. Take an example. If we see in Europe, in particular in Central Europe, that a human being who did not have any opportunity in his life at first to turn his soul to Christ and the powers of the spiritual world and suddenly changes his life because of something, then interests us what has taken place in his soul. It does not interest us that he experienced a jump in his development, we find this everywhere.

Since most inaccurate is the saying which the external science has stamped: nature does not make jumps.¹—From the green plant leaf to the red petal is a big jump; from the petal to the chalices is again a big jump. It is an absolutely wrong saying, and the truth of the development is based just on the fact that everywhere jumps are made. The fact that a human being if he has lived for a while so externally is able to tend suddenly to spirituality induced by anything, in that we are not interested in particular. But the internal power which achieves such a conversion to spirituality interests us. We want to look into the soul of such a human being; we want to know what brought him to such a conversion. We are interested in the soul.

How does the American make it?—He makes something very peculiar. In America, one could often observe such conversions. Now, the American lets such people write letters who experienced a conversion. Then he puts all these letters together on a small heap and says: I received letters from two hundred people, more or less. Fourteen percent of those who experienced such a conversion wrote that they were suddenly attacked by fear of death or hell; five percent because of altruistic motives; seventeen percent because of striving for moral ideals; fifteen percent experienced pangs of conscience; ten percent because they observed teachings given to them; thirteen percent because they have seen that others were converted—by imitation; nineteen percent because they were forced, while they were thrashed at the suitable age, and so on. One selects the most extreme souls, sorts them and receives a result which is based on “sure data.” That is registered then in the books which one spreads as “psychology” among people. All the other documents are uncertain to these people, are only based on subjectivity, they say. There you have an example that something innermost is made superficial. That holds true in many respects in America. In the time which demands a particular spiritual deepening the most superficial spiritualism is rampant in America. One wants to have everything as something sensory.

Spiritual life is grasped materialistically that way. We could still give many such examples which would show you that the civilisation of the West is seized by Ahriman. This is the other deflection of the pendulum. If we look at the East, we have the luciferic element, if we look at the West, we have the ahrimanic element. The infinitely important task we have in Central Europe between West and East is to find the balance. Hence, we would like to put the biggest of the spiritual demands of our time in our Dornach building as a sculptural group: to find the balance between the relation to Lucifer and the relation to Ahriman. Then one will only recognise what the Christ Impulse wanted from the earth development if one puts outside Christ not so simply, but if one knows correctly that Christ is that power which shows us the relation to Lucifer and Ahriman exemplarily.

That the relation of the human being and Christ to Lucifer and Ahriman is not yet recognised clearly, this may become illustrative to you by the following. Also the greatest, which contains the greatest in one respect, is not always free of that which must still be there as an one-sidedness in time. Indeed, one cannot appreciate that picture enough which Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, The Last Judgement, this miraculous picture. Christ triumphing, directing the good human beings to one side, the bad human beings to the other. Let us look at this Christ. He does not have the features which we would like to give the Christ figure that should stand in our Dornach construction. It must become evident that Christ raises the hand in compassion, even though Lucifer is there above. Lucifer should not be brought down by the power of Christ, but he falls down because he cannot endure what shines from Christ in his nearness. Christ raises his eye and folds the forehead while raising the folded forehead to Lucifer.

Ahriman is overcome not by the hatred of Christ, but he feels that he cannot endure what flows out from Christ. However, Christ stands in the midst as somebody who introduces the Parzival element in the modern age. He has to get the others to overcome themselves not by His power, but by His existence, so that they overcome themselves and not he overcomes them. With Michelangelo, we still see Christ sending the good human beings to heaven and the bad ones to hell by His power. This is not the right Christ in future, but this is a Christ who is still very luciferic. That does not reduce our esteem of that picture. The whole significance of this picture is recognised, but one has to admit that Michelangelo could not yet paint Christ because the world development was not yet so far. It must clearly be seen that one has not only to turn the sense to Christ, but that one has to turn the sense to the threefold being: Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. I can only indicate that. Only in future, spiritual science finds out everything that lies in this secret: Christ in relation to Lucifer and Ahriman.

But now consider the following: if we look at the East, we look at luciferic powers even in the near East. In the West, we look at ahrimanic powers. In spiritual science, we have to get into the habit of considering the matters not with sympathy and antipathy and also the peoples and folk-souls not with sympathy and antipathy, but in such a way as they are in their characteristics. What one calls the national characteristic of a human being who stands in his people, depends—above all—on that which is effective in the physical and etheric bodies. When we live from falling asleep to waking up with our soul and mind as an astral body and ego, we live beyond the normal national element. We live only from waking up to falling asleep in our nationality when we are in our physical body. That is why the nationality is also something the human being overcomes gradually during his stay in kamaloka. The human being there strives for the generally human, while he overcomes the nationality in kamaloka to live then in the generally human for the longest time between death and new birth. It belongs to the qualities which are taken off in kamaloka, also that which makes us a national human being.

The single nationalities are very different from each other in this regard. Compare a French human being and a Russian human being. The French human being has the characteristic that he seizes that particularly which the folk-soul brings in his physical and etheric bodies during his life between birth and death that he lives particularly in it. This expresses itself in the fact that the Frenchman—not as an individual human being but as a Frenchman—has an idea of that which is a Frenchman; the fact that he puts ahead that above all which is, actually, a Frenchman. But these ideas which the French, also all the other neo-Latin peoples, have of their nationality cause that the ideas of their nationality are deeply stamped into their etheric bodies. When the Frenchman goes through the gate of death, he already detaches the etheric body after some days; then this etheric body is a clearly defined figure which exists in the etheric world for a long time. The etheric body cannot dissolve because the ideas of his nationality are deeply stamped on it; these ideas hold together the etheric body. That is why we see the field of death filled with clearly defined etheric bodies if we look westwards.

Look at the East now, at the Russian human being. It is the peculiarity of this Russian human being that he has such an etheric body in himself that it dissolves relatively quickly when the soul goes through the gate of death. This is the difference between the West and the East. The etheric bodies, which the West-European human beings take off after death, have the peculiarity that they want to be clearly defined. What the French calls “gloire” stamps itself to his etheric body firmly as national gloire, so that he is condemned to turn his spiritual view to this etheric body, to himself for long, long times after death. The Russian human being, however, looks at himself only a little after death. That is why the West-European human being is exposed to the ahrimanic influence; the materialisation of the etheric body is again exposed to the ahrimanic principle. The dissolution of the etheric body, the quick merging of the etheric body is accompanied by a feeling of lust, and this is just the peculiar, an instinctive feeling of lust in the national. How is this expressed in the East?

Central Europe does not understand that, as it also does not feel in that. If one pursues Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy or others who were setting the tone who talk always about the “Russian human being,” this is a feeling of lust in the national which cannot define itself. Even with Solovyov, we find that something sultry is living in his philosophy that is not compatible with the clearness and cleanness the Central European human being searches for. What is effective in Europe as a spiritual power is connected with all that. In Central Europe another, a middle state exists, namely something that one could explain even further than it was possible in the public lecture yesterday. I said: something exists in Central Europe that is an inner striving nature. Goethe would have written his Faust in exactly the same way in the forties of the last century: strive again and again.—But this striving is innermost nature. In Central Europe, the mystics appeared who did not only want to recognise the divine-spiritual, but wanted to experience it with their own souls. The mystics wanted to internally experience the Christ event. If one takes Solovyov, one thinks that he goes out above all from that: Christ died once historically for humankind. This is quite right, but Solovyov sees the spiritual life like a cloud outside himself, who sees that as it were everything already has happened, while the Central European human being demands that everybody experiences Christ in himself time and again. Master Eckhart would have possibly replied the following even to somebody like Solovyov. If Solovyov emphasised repeatedly that Christ must go through death, so that the human being can be a human being, Master Eckhart would say: you look at Christ as one looks at something external. It does not matter that we always look at the historical events only, but we ourselves have to experience Christ inside, we have to discover something inside that goes through such states like Christ, at least spiritually, so that Christ is experienced spiritually.

It seems tricky and fantastic indeed if anybody says to the modern humankind: the whole development, even the folk-soul worked in Central Europe, so that this connection of the ego with the Christ principle is expressed in the language: I-CH (= I) = Jesus Christ. I-CH which is composed in such a way that it means “I.” While one pronounces I (ich) in Central Europe, one pronounces the name of Christ. So near one wants to feel the ego with Christ, so intimately connected with it. One knows this intimate living together with the spiritual world, as it must be striven for in Central Europe in any spiritual field, neither in the West nor in the East. Hence, something must happen in the twentieth century, so that the Christ-principle can spread out gradually over the whole European continent in suitable way. I emphasised it often in various lecture cycles that in November 1879 that spiritual being whom we call the archangel Michael ascended to a special level of development. Michael became, so to speak, the leading spirit. Now this leading spirit prepares the event which I indicated in the first of my mystery dramas as the appearance of the etheric Christ over the earth, the event which must take place in the twentieth century. Then it will happen that single souls at first, then more and more souls know: Christ is there in reality, Christ walks again on earth, but in an etheric figure, not in a physical figure.

This must be prepared. If in the course of this twentieth century the spiritual eyes of certain souls were opened clairvoyantly—and this will happen—for the life of the etheric world, they would be disturbed by those etheric bodies which spread out from Western Europe. They would behold them first, and one would see the figure of Christ wrongly. Hence, Michael must fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute something that these West-European clearly defined etheric bodies are dissolved in the etheric world. For that he has to take those etheric bodies which enjoy dissolving, the etheric bodies in the East, and must fight with them against the West. This causes that since 1879 a violent struggle prepares itself in the astral world between the Russian and the West-European etheric bodies, and this struggle is raging in the whole astral world. It is actually a violent struggle in the astral world, led by Michael, between Russia and France. This forms the basis of the battle in the astral world, raging in Europe.

As we are often stupefied by the fact that something that takes place here in the physical world is the opposite of that in the spiritual,² managed by Ahriman's seduction, which is based mainly on the ahrimanic element, namely on twenty billions which France gave Russia, is the physical expression of a battle that is raging between French and Russian souls, of a battle in which Central Europe is put with its striving for meeting the Christ in its innermost soul element. And Europe is enslaved by karma that one has to experience just in Central Europe tragically what the East with the West and the West with the East has to fight out. The matters which externally the German element has to fight out with the French element are to be understood only in such a way that the German is just in the middle between the East and the West and serves as an anvil for both sides. Since that which is pushed together by both sides in Germany is negotiated by these both sides in truth. This is the spiritual truth which is completely different from the external events in the physical world. Imagine how different the spiritual truth is from the external events in the physical world. Indeed, everything like that sounds absurd to the modern human beings, but it is the truth. This truth must stupefy us.

But another matter is also exceptionally significant. Indeed, it counters everything that history can show us that England, after it was always an ally of Turkey against Russia, must fight now suddenly with Russia against Turkey. One can understand this gainsay if one does the following occult observation. While here below on the physical plane England is an ally of Russia and fights against the Turkish element, the following presents to the occult observation. If one observes this struggle clairvoyantly and looks as it were from below up at the physical plane and then at the astral plane, it becomes apparent: in the North, Russia seems to be allied with England, and in the South-East Turkey seems to be allied with England. This is due to the fact that the alliance between England and Russia has significance only on the physical plane, but there is no reflection in the spiritual world, because it is completely based on material interests. From below one sees England and Russia united only on the physical plane in the North. In the South-East, one sees through the physical plane to the astral plane where the English are allies of the Turks and are fighting against Russia. On one side, England fights together with Russia on the physical plane, and on the other side Russia is combated by England. We have to look at the external events this way, in so far as they manifest themselves as external history. Since that which lies behind is something completely different.

A time will come in which the human beings talk about the present events quite differently than it happens now. One must say that the whole war literature has something rather unpleasant. Something pleasant is also said, but also a lot of unpleasant things. Above all one matter is unpleasant. It is always said: today one cannot yet speak about the question: who is responsible for the war? Et cetera.—People console themselves passing over the matters. They say: in future one finds out of the documents in the archives, who was responsible for the war.—Concerning the external events the matter, however, is not hard to be found at all if one judges without passion. Chamberlain³ is right in his “war articles” even if he is mistaken in the details, when he says that one can know the most certain just about this war. This is right that no doubt exists about that, only one has to put the right question. A question can only be answered unambiguously, for example, if it is put correctly. It is the question: who could have prevented this war?

The always returning question: who is responsible for this war? And still many other questions, are not just right. Who could have prevented the war?—No other answer can be given than: the Russian government could have prevented the war.—One will only be able to find the right definition of the impulses which work in detail. Of course, the war, intended by the East since decades, could not have come unless a certain relation had existed between England, Russia, and France, so that one can ascribe the bigger guilt also—if one wants—to England. But all these matters do not take into consideration which causes are behind that showing the whole world war as a necessity. It is naive to think that the war could have failed to come. Now the people talk, as if this war did not need to come. It is the result of the European karma.

I wanted to indicate something by the spiritual contrasts between the East and the West. It does not depend on the fact that we ask, so to speak, for the outer causes in particular, because they are not important. We must only know that this war is a historical necessity. The single causes are not important there.

But all the heterogeneous effects to which we will have to position ourselves correctly are important. One effect can appear to us as particularly important. It is a great, typical phenomenon that such a war produces many unused etheric bodies. Because this is the biggest war which humankind has waged in its conscious historical development, this characteristic also exists to a very high degree. Unused etheric bodies are produced. The etheric body can supply the human being for long, until the human being is seventy, eighty, or ninety years old. However, during the war human beings are sacrificed in the prime of life. When the human being goes through the gate of death, he takes off the etheric body, as you know, after a short time; but the etheric body of somebody who was killed in action is taken off in such a way that it could still have supplied this human life in a physical body for long, for decades.

In physics one accepts that energy does not get lost. However, that also applies to spirituality. The forces of these etheric bodies, which early go to the etheric world, remain available. Think now that countless unused etheric bodies of those are there who go as young human beings through the gate of death. Nevertheless, it is something particular with these etheric bodies. I would like to explain this at an example which is obvious to our movement and to lead then to the etheric bodies of the warriors gone through death which are contained in the etheric world in the next future.

In this autumn, we experienced the death of the little son of an anthroposophical family which is employed in the area of our Dornach construction. This boy, Theodor Faiss, was seven years old. His father once lived in Stuttgart, and then he came as a gardener to Dornach in the area of the construction and lived there with his family. He himself was soon called up to the army after outbreak of the war and was in a military hospital at the time of the accident. The little, seven-year-old Theodor was a real sunny child, a wonderful, dear boy. Now one day the following happened. We had just a lecture as I give them in Dornach after the construction work. After the lecture somebody came and reported that the little Theodor Faiss has not come back to his mother since the late afternoon. It was ten o'clock in the evening, and one could imagine nothing but that a big tragedy has happened. A removal van had arrived in this afternoon and had gone a way near the so-called canteen where it had to turn round. This carriage had reached a place in those days, in which, one is allowed to state this, no such a big carriage has gone for many decades before, generally maybe no removal van has ever gone and just as little after. Now the little Theodor, before this van had turned round, had been in the canteen. He had been detained there a little bit, otherwise he would have gone sooner with the provisions he had got in the canteen for the dinner. Then he went the way home—it is only a short distance—so that he was just at that place where the van toppled over and fell on him, the little Theodor. Nobody had noticed it, even the coachman did not. He had only got his horses to safety when the carriage toppled over, and did not know that the child was under it. When the absence of the child was reported to us, we had to try to lift the carriage. The friends got tools, and the mobilised Swiss soldiers helped us. Of course, the child was already dead since possibly a half past five o'clock in the afternoon. The removal van had crushed it straight away, it died of suffocation.

There we have such a case to which one can apply what I often tried to make clear using a comparison that one confuses cause and effect. Imagine that we see a person going along a riverbank. The person falls into the river. One runs to him and finds a stone where the person fell into the river and thinks that the person tripped, then fell in the river and died this way. One says that the person has died because he fell into the river. But if one dissects him, one maybe finds that he experienced a heart attack and fell consequently dead into the water. He did not die because he fell into the water, but he fell into the water because he died. You find such mistakes of cause and effect in the judgement of life very frequently and in the usual science even more.

The karma of the little Theodor had run off in a certain way, so that one can really say: he ordered the carriage to that place. I mention this case which is externally exceptionally tragic, because we deal with the etheric body of a child which could have supplied through the life of this child still for decades. This etheric body is passed over with its unused forces to the spiritual world, the etheric world. Where is he? What does he do?—Somebody who is obliged to work on the Dornach construction since that time with artistic intentions, generally to have thoughts in the area of the construction knows if he beholds clairvoyantly at the same time: this whole etheric body and its forces is increased in the aura of the Dornach construction. We have to distinguish: the individuality is somewhere else, it goes its own way, but the etheric body is expelled after some days and exists now in the construction. Never will I hesitate before saying that among the forces which one needs to Intuition the forces of this etheric body are, sacrificed to the construction. Behind life the connections are often completely different than anybody only suspects it. This etheric body has become protecting powers of the construction. Something great is in such a connection.

Consider now, what a big sum of strength goes up to the spiritual world in the unused etheric bodies of those who go now through the gate of death as a result of the military events.

The matters are connected differently than the human beings can imagine. The world karma takes place differently. Spiritual science must be there just to replace fantastic ideas with spiritually true ideas. We can imagine hardly—to mention only one example—something more fantastic or untrue from the spiritual point of view than something that took place in the last decades. A special “peace society”⁴ was founded to put the law at the place of the war, as one said, “the International Law.”—In no time of humankind such dreadful wars were waged as since the “peace society” exists. In the last decades, this peace movement had a monarch among its particular protectors who waged the bloodiest and cruelest wars which ever were waged in world history. So that the installation of the peace movement from the part of the czar must really appear as the biggest comedy which was played in world history, the biggest comedy and at the same time the most hideous comedy. One has to call that luciferic seduction. This can well be investigated in details. One can say, it stupefies the soul if one sees—one may look at the matters as one wants—in the beginning when these war impulses entered Europe, Central Europe, where one assembled like in the Berlin Reichstag, people talking almost about nothing. One has only spoken a little, but the matters have spoken. A lot has been spoken in the West like in the East. But one has the most stupefying impression in a certain way of that what has been spoken in the St. Petersburg Duma by the different parties. In the various way the representatives of the Duma have really brought forward nothing else than the empty phrases with the biggest fire of enthusiasm. It was stupefying. This is a luciferic seduction. However, everything shows us that the fire, which burns during this war, is a warning fire, and that the human beings have to pay attention.

Everything that happens now points to the fact that at least some souls must say to themselves: it cannot go on that way as it has gone in the world, spirituality must flow into the human development. Materialism has found its karma in this most dreadful war of all the wars. In certain respect this war is the karma of materialism. The more the human souls see this, the more they will get beyond arguing, whether this one or that one is responsible for the war, and say to themselves: this war was sent to us in world history that it is an admonisher that we should turn to a spiritual understanding of the whole human life.

Materialism makes not only the souls of the human beings materialistically minded; it also corrupts the logic and makes the feeling dull. Within Central Europe, one still has to see something that is connected with that which I have said: that one has to deal most intimately with the further development of the Christ Impulse just in Central Europe. But that belongs to it that one has to start understanding the spirits who have already laid the germs. Only one example: Goethe wrote a theory of colours. The physicists look at it as something, about which they say compassionately smiling: what has the poet understood of the colours? He was just a dilettante.—Since the eighties of the nineteenth century I try to help the Goethean theory of colours on the road to success against modern physics. This cannot be understood. Why can it not be understood? Because the materialistic principle, which came from the British folk-soul, penetrated Central Europe. Newton whom Goethe had to combat won the victory over that which issued from Goethe's spirit. Goethe also founded a theory of evolution in which is shown by grasping spiritual laws how the beings advance from the most imperfect condition to the most perfect. This was too hard to understand. When Darwin brought his theory of evolution, the people accepted it, because they could understand it easier. Darwin was victorious over Goethe. The materialistic thinker who was inspired by the British folk-soul was victorious over Goethe who got everything from the most intimate dialog with the German folk-soul.

Ernst Haeckel has experienced something tragic. He lived mentally through his whole life on that which Huxley and Darwin have given to him. The materialism of Ernst Haeckel is basically a very English product. When the war broke out, Haeckel was outraged about what happened from the British islands. He was one of the first to send back the English medals, certificates and honourings. What must be sent back, however, are not the certificates, medals and honourings, but the English coloured Darwinism and the English coloured physics. One has to call that in mind, so that one sees what can be striven for in the Central European area as an intimate being together with the laws of the world.

One can corrupt the childish soul mostly if one already pours out in it that which develops then in only materialistic colouring. The centuries have worked towards it. Among the Britons over there, Ahriman inspired a great author, so that this author wrote a work which was completely intended to influence the soul materialistically from the childish age on in such a way that one does not notice it, because one does not consider it preparing materialism. This is Robinson Crusoe. The whole way, as Robinson is described, is so clever that these ideas of Robinson Crusoe if they are taken up prepare the mind in such a way that it can later think only materialistically. Humankind is not yet cured of inventors of such Robinsons; they always existed and exist even today. I could give many examples.

I talk about these matters not to say anything against the peoples of the West who have to be as they are, but to show how in Central Europe the human beings have to find the connection with the big, only germ-like values of the future development. The role of Austria is also significant in particular. In the last decades, one could see some spirits striving for high ideals like Hamerling⁵ in poetry, like Carneri⁶ who wanted to deepen Darwinism concerning moral, and like Bruckner⁷ and other artists in all kinds of fields. It matters such a self-reflection of the people

Now we look at the unused etheric bodies which exist there. These etheric bodies were taken off by human beings who learnt during a big event to sacrifice themselves for something that there is no longer for them, not as anything sensory at least: for the people. If somebody talks today as a spiritual scientist about the fact that there a folk-soul is as an archangel et cetera, then they laugh at him. What one calls folk-soul in materialism is only the summary of the qualities which the human beings of a people have. What the materialist calls people is only the sum of the human beings who live together and look similar in an area. We speak about a people in such a way that we know: the folk-soul exists as a real being of the archangel's rank. Even if anybody who sacrifices himself who goes through death for his people has no clear idea of a real folk-soul on the field of the events, nevertheless, he confirms by the way he goes through death that he believes in a further effectiveness after this death that he believes that there is more than that which the eyes see in the people: its connection and its keeping together with the supersensible realm.

Everybody who goes through death, whether he knows it more or less, goes through this death, confirming that there is a supersensible world; this is stamped to his etheric body. So that in future except those who will live on the physical earth when peace has taken place again, the unused etheric bodies will live for ever sending these tones to the music of the spheres: there is more in the world than that which can be seen only with physical eyes. Spiritual truth sounds into the music of the spheres by that which the dead leave behind in their etheric bodies, apart from that which they take with their individualities which they carry through the life between death and new birth.

However, one has to listen to that which will live and sound from these etheric bodies. For these etheric bodies were taken off by human beings who, confirming the truth of the spiritual world, went through death. The biggest sin of humankind will be if it does not listen to that which the dead call to it by their warning etheric bodies. How much is the view to the spiritual world enlivened if one has to imagine that the fathers and mothers, the sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, who lose dear relatives and friends, must say to themselves: what was there sacrificed, lives for the whole humankind, admonishing that which has to come.

If one relied on the events of the physical world, one could not have a lot of hope for the prosperous progress of the spiritual movement which should be cultivated in our spiritual-scientific world view. When recently a good, loyal co-worker died, in the thirtieth year of his life, there was in my words, which I directed to this soul after he has gone through the gate of death, the entreaty that he would like to co-operate as faithfully and courageously on our spiritual-scientific field as he co-operated here faithfully and devotedly, using everything that he knew. He co-operated diligently here on the physical plane, this co-worker. I gave him this as a message for his life between death and new birth that he may co-operate after death as he done it before death, because we count on these dead, the so-called dead, as on the living.

Our spiritual-scientific world view must be vivid, so that the abyss is overcome between the so-called dead and the living that we feel the dead among us like living human beings. We want not only theory, but life. That is why we also point to the fact that a living bond exists between those who live on earth when peace is again, and those who went through the gate of death. The human beings will be able to learn from the dead, will have to learn how these dead help in the big spiritual progress which must seize the earth.

Sometimes one recognises in life that the human logic does not suffice. I would like to give you an example, not for personal reasons, but to characterise the way people position themselves to our movement. Some years ago, one could read an article about our spiritual science in a South German very serious magazine written by a famous philosopher of the present. Spiritual science was treated there in such a way that it could make a certain impression on the people because the article was written by a great philosopher. The editor of the magazine prided himself in particular that he could publish an article on spiritual science by such a famous man. Of course, everything was shown badly and erroneously; a totally askew picture of spiritual science was given. What did the editor need, however, to see what a judgment about our movement he had delivered, actually, in his monthly magazine?

Then the war came. That man who had written the article wrote some letters to the editor. These letters contain the most repellent things one can generally say about the Central European culture. He ranted and sneered terribly about this Central European culture. The editor printed these letters as an example of how brainlessly one can think about this culture. Now he says: this person writes, nevertheless, as only a person can write who should be in the lunatic asylum.—The fact is that such a thing was necessary for a good editor to see that the man should be in the lunatic asylum who wrote this article about spiritual science some years ago and wreaked much havoc outwardly. If the man had to be in the lunatic asylum, he should already be there at that time. But at that time he wrote an article about spiritual science.

Such matters happen in the world. Quite different supports have to come to get a judgment than those the human being has today. However, the spiritual scientist stands firmly on the ground that shows clearly that truth finds its way. But spiritual science must have an effect on the development of humankind, so that the necessary matters take place. Like in that time, when the emperor Constantine had to complete his task, the Christ Impulse had to work from the spiritual world on the subconscious, like with the Maid of Orleans the Christ Impulse had to work, so that happened what had to happen, the Christ Impulse has to go on working, only now more in the consciousness. There must be souls in future who know: up there in the spiritual world are those who sacrificed themselves with their individualities and request us to follow them and believe in the effectiveness of spirituality they got through death. But also the forces of the unused etheric bodies call into the future what one only needs to understand to take up it in our own souls. On earth, however, must be the souls who hear this. Souls must be there who prepare themselves by the right and living understanding of our spiritual science. Our spiritual science has to create souls here on earth that are able to have premonitions of what the etheric bodies of the dead up there speak in future. The souls who know: there up are the forces which can admonish the human beings who had to be left to their own resources on earth. If here below souls aware of spirit direct their senses to the hidden tones of the spiritual world, the right fruits will originate from all the blood that flowed, from all the sacrifices that were accomplished, from all the grief that had to be endured and must still be endured. Looking at the hope which may be expressed that a lot of souls may be found by spiritual science who can hear these voices which sound from the spiritual world in particular as a result of this war, I would like to speak, to sum up, the last words of this consideration, words which should express only as a feeling what I would like to stimulate in your souls:

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

With such emotions in the heart we always want to penetrate ourselves with the sense of the rose cross, so that this rose cross is considered rightly by us as the slogan of our working and weaving and feeling. Not the black cross only. Somebody who tears the roses from the black cross would only have the black cross, would be enslaved by Ahriman. The black cross is the life striving for the bare matter. And anybody who tears the cross from the roses and prefers only to have the roses does not find the right. Since the roses, separated from the cross, would raise us to life, but this life would strive egoistically for spirituality and not reveal something spiritual in the material. Not only the cross, not only the roses, but the roses on the cross, the cross bearing the roses, both in harmonious interaction: this is our right symbol.

• 1. Carl Linné in his Philosophia Botanica, Stockholm 1751
• 2. agreement by the French president Faure and Czar Nicholas II in 1897
• 3. Houston Stewart Chamberlain: New War Essays, Munich, 1915
• 4. peace conferences in the Hague from 1899 to 1907, convened on the initiative of Czar Nicholas II
• 5. Robert Hamerling (1830–1889), cf. The Riddle of the Human Being and Autobiography, Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works volumes 20 and 28
• 6. Bartholomäus von Carneri (1821–1909), cf. Methodical Foundations of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works volume 30.2.29
• 7. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896), Austrian composer

Jesus ben Pandira and Initiation among the Essenes. The secret of numbers. Reflection of cosmic conditions in human evolution. The secret of the blood in the line of descent, and the secret of cosmic space

Ww have to realize that Jesus ben Pandira was in no way related to the personality or individuality of either the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew or of the Gospel of Luke, or any other Gospel; he lived a hundred years before the Christ Event, and was stoned and hanged upon a tree. It is most important that he should not be confused with the Jesus of the Gospels.

Of Jesus ben Pandira it need only be stated that neither occult knowledge nor any clairvoyant faculties are necessary to prove his existence, for information in regard to this can be had from the Hebrew Talmud. Confusion with the actual Jesus has occurred at various times, even as early as the second century of the Christian era. Having stated emphatically that Jesus ben Pandira is not to be identified with the Jesus of the Evangelists, it is nevertheless necessary to establish the real historical connection of these two personalities. This is only possible by means of occult investigation; the connection between them only emerges after a study of the evolution of mankind and those who guide it.

Gazing upwards to those beings who lead human development, we come at last to a group of high individualities who, according to Eastern terminology, are called Bodhisattvas—for it is in the East where knowledge of them has been established. There are many Bodhisattvas; they are the great teachers of mankind. From the spiritual worlds they infuse into humanity through the Mystery schools what according to the degree of human ripeness is appropriate to each epoch. Bodhisattvas succeed one another throughout the ages. Two of them are of special interest to present humanity, one, who as son of King Sudhodana became Buddha; and the other, his successor in this dignity, who is still a Bodhisattva. Both Oriental wisdom and clairvoyant investigation agree that the latter's mission will extend over the next two thousand five hundred years, when this Bodhisattva will rise to the higher rank of Buddha as did his predecessor. This, the present Bodhisattva will then be exalted to the dignity of Maitreya Buddha. In the long line of Bodhisattvas we have to recognize the great guiding teachers of evolution, but they should not be confused with the source of their teaching, the source from which they themselves draw what they bestow upon humanity. Rather we have to picture a collegium of Bodhisattvas, and the centre of this collegium is the living source whence this teaching is derived. This living source is none other than He Whom we call the Christ, from Whom all Bodhisattvas receive what in due course they hand on to humanity. A Bodhisattva devotes himself principally to teaching, but upon attaining Buddha-hood he ceases to descend into incarnation, and his mission becomes different. In accordance with all Eastern philosophy it can be said that Gautama Buddha, who, in his last incarnation, was the son of King Sudhodana, has since then only experienced incorporation as far as the etheric body. In the course of lectures on the Gospel of Luke we explained what the next task of this Buddha was.

When the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was born—the Nathan Jesus of whom Luke tells, and who is not to be confused with the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew—the Being of the Buddha, who was then incorporated as far as the etheric body, entered into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. It is therefore possible to say that having incarnated as Gautama Buddha, this Being did not come again as a teacher, but was henceforth present as a living force. He had become an actual force working from the spiritual world into our physical world.

To teach is one thing; to work as a living force with the forces of growth is something quite different. A Bodhisattva is a teacher up to the moment he attains Buddha-hood, from then onwards he becomes a vital force, filling with constructive power everything with which he is concerned. In this way the Buddha entered the organism of the Nathan Jesus as described by Luke. From the sixth century B.C. it is to the Buddha's successor, the coming Maitreya Buddha, that humanity must look for its teacher. His chosen instrument was the circle of the Therapeutæ and Essenes, and he poured down his inspiration especially through his disciple, Jesus, the son of Pandira, the purest, the most noted, the most exalted of them all. Thus we have to realize that the content of this Bodhisattva-teaching streamed forth into humanity through the Essenes.

The actual sect of the Essenes, as regards its profounder teaching, disappeared comparatively soon after the Christ Event, as external history testifies. Hence it need not sound improbable when I say that they were employed as a means for bringing down from the spheres of the Bodhisattvas what was necessary to prepare humanity to grasp the mighty event of the coming of Christ. The most important teaching man had received to aid him in the understanding of the Christ Event had its source in these communities. Jesus ben Pandira was chosen to receive inspiration from that Bodhisattva who was destined to become the Maitreya Buddha, and whose influence was active among the Essenes; he was inspired to impart a teaching that was to make comprehensible the Mystery of Palestine—the Mystery of Christ. External history knows little of the Essenes, more exact information regarding them is only possible with the aid of occult investigation; hence in a society like this I can speak without hesitation of secrets known to the Essenes and Therapeutæ that are needful to an understanding of the Gospel of Matthew.

These communities flourished a hundred years before the Christ Event, and taught how preparation was to be made for it. Their most important feature was the manner of their initiation. It was specially adapted to evoke an understanding, through clairvoyant perception, of the significance of Hebraism and Abrahamism as connected with the Christ Event. This was a mystery peculiar to these communities. The very purpose of their initiation was to impart clairvoyant perception in this connection. A follower of the Essenes had in the first place to attain full appreciation of the significance of what had come to pass in the Hebrew race through Abraham. Through his own individual vision, an Essene had to see in Abraham a true forefather of the race, one in whom a seed had been implanted which then, by means of the blood, percolated from generation to generation, as explained in the last lecture.

To understand how something of such great importance in human evolution could take place through a personality like Abraham, we must keep in mind a most important saying. This saying shows that whenever a man is destined to be a special instrument for human evolution he must be in direct contact with some divine spiritual being.

Those who attended the performance of the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, given at Munich, and those who have read it, know that one of the most important dramatic manifestations occurs where the hierophant informs Maria that her mission will only be possible after such an influx from a higher being has taken place. This was actually accomplished in her. What then took place may be called a separation of the higher from the lower principles, which made it possible for the latter to be possessed by a subordinate spirit. All this is to be found in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, and if allowed to act on the soul, and not accepted lightly, it directs our attention to mighty secrets of human evolution.

Abraham having been selected for his great mission, the Spirit that had been recognized in early Atlantis as the Spirit who moved and lived in all the surrounding world had to enter into his inner organism. This happened for the first time in the case of Abraham, and therefore a change in man's spiritual perception then became possible for the first time. A divine Being implanted as it were a germ in Abraham's organism that was to enter all the other organisms descending from him in the direct line.

An Essene of that time would have said: The seed which actually formed the Hebrew people so as to fit them to be the vehicle for the mission of Christ, was first implanted in them by the mysterious Being only to be discovered when they looked back through the generations to Abraham. This Being worked as a kind of Folk-spirit from out the inner organism of Abraham in the blood of the Hebrew people. To reach some understanding of the crowning mystery of human evolution, it is necessary to rise to the Spirit who implanted this seed, and seek him where he was before he had entered into Abraham's organization. In order to rise to this Spirit who had organized and inspired the Hebrew people, to know him in his purity, the Essenes felt it to be necessary to pass through a certain training; they felt they must purify themselves from all that had come to human souls from the physical world since the time of Abraham. And further, an Essene would declare: The spiritual being which man bears within him, and all the other spiritual beings concerned with his development, are only to be seen in their purity in the spiritual world. As found in man, they have become defiled by the forces of the physical world.

From the point of view of the Essenes (which in a certain sphere of knowledge is absolutely correct), every single person then living had impurities in his soul from early times which disturbed his free vision of the Spiritual Being who had implanted the attribute in Abraham which has been described. Every Essene sought in his soul to be purified from what had entered him in this way, and which dimmed his vision of the Being who dwelt in the blood passing through the generations, the Being who could only be rightly seen after much purification. All the methods of their training were directed towards freeing the soul from its inherited tendencies and influences that clouded its vision and hid the spiritual inspirer of Abraham. Not only had man a spiritual being within him, but this being had been sullied through these inherited tendencies.

There is a law in Spiritual Science which was perceived by the Essenes through their clairvoyant investigation and spiritual vision: that hereditary influences only cease to be active when a man has passed through forty-two stages in the line of descent; only then has he purged his soul of inherited influences. What is inherited by man from father and mother, from grandfather and grandmother, and so on, becomes feebler the farther back the line is traced; beyond forty-two generations nothing more of this could be found, which means that the influence of inheritance is then lost. By careful training and inner exercises, the Essenes directed their attention towards eliminating the impurities of the forty-two generations. This meant a severe training on a mystical path of forty-two clearly defined degrees or stages. Once these were passed, the Essene knew he was freed from the influences of the world of sense, and had reached the point where he experienced his inner self; where he felt the centre of his being to be united with Divinity. Therefore said he: ‘In going through these forty-two stages I ascend to God—to the God with whom I am concerned.’

The Essenes and the Therapeutæ had a clear vision of man's path to a divine Being who had not as yet descended into matter; they alone knew the truth of the fact which can be described as the ‘Event of Abraham’ they knew it at least in so far as it was concerned with inheritance. They also knew that if a man was to rise to a Being who was to enter the line of inheritance he must reach a place where he was no longer steeped in matter he must pass through forty-two stages of development corresponding to the forty-two generations; then he would find that Being. The Essene knew something more; he knew just as man has to rise through these forty-two stages to reach Divinity, so this Divine Being must descend, in the reverse direction, through forty-two generations if He was to enter into physical humanity. If man required to rise through forty-two stages before attaining to God, God had to descend through forty-two stages in order to become a man among men. So taught the Essenes, and so taught above all Jesus ben Pandira, who was inspired by the Bodhisattva. Having learnt this we know the source whence flowed the knowledge given out by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, and exactly why he traces back these forty-two generations.

Jesus ben Pandira, who instructed the Essenes in these matters, lived a century before these forty-two generations could be completed. He taught them that advance beyond a certain point on their journey through the forty-two stages was only possible if an historical event were connected with it, that any further achievement could only come by grace from above. A time, however, would come, he told them, when this would be a natural event; a man would be born who, through the power in his own blood, would be able to rise so high that divine Spiritual Forces could descend into him, which he had need of in order that he might make fully manifest the Spirit of the Race—the Spirit of Jahve—in the blood of the Hebrew people. Jesus ben Pandira taught them further; that if Zarathustra, he who would bring Ahura Mazdao, were to incarnate in human form, this could only come to pass if this human form had been so prepared that the Divine Spirit ensouling it had passed down through forty-two generations.

It is now apparent that the teaching concerning the descent through the generations with which the Gospel of Matthew begins had its origin among the sect of the Essenes. If these facts are to be fully understood we must refer to something still deeper in this whole connection.

Everything concerned with human evolution confronts us, as it were, from two sides, for the simple reason that man is a two-fold being. Seen during waking consciousness, when the four members of his being are united, the reason for man's dual nature is not at first discernible. But it is easily seen at night when one part, consisting of physical body and etheric body, remains in the physical world, and the other, composed of the astral body and ego, leaves it. Man is made up of these two parts. The human qualities and attributes of the physical world belong to the physical and etheric bodies alone, although the other members have a share in them during the waking state. When awake, man functions by means of his astral body and ego in the other two members; when asleep he leaves them to themselves. The moment that he falls asleep, however, the beings and forces of the cosmos begin to function in, and to permeate, the forsaken members, so that there is a constant influx from the cosmos into the physical and etheric bodies of man. That part of him, however, which is left sleeping in bed, is actually limited to the forty-two generations, during which time it is under the law of inheritance. Beginning with the first generation and taking all that then belonged to physical nature, we shall find at the end, if we trace this through forty-two generations, nothing of what was the most essential in the first case. Thus in six times seven generations are comprised all the active characteristics of the physical and etheric bodies of a man. The inherited tendencies found in these two bodies must be sought for among his ancestors, but only in the forty-two preceding generations; beyond that time they cannot be traced, all belonging to an earlier generation has disappeared.

Human evolution in time is based on a certain numerical relationship. If we consider this more closely we find everything concerning the physical body is limited to forty-two generations, because everything connected with evolution in time is connected with the number seven. The Essenes knew this. An Essene said to himself: ‘Thou must pass through six times seven stages—that is forty-two—thou wilt then have arrived at the last seven which complete the sevenfold count, making forty-nine stages in all.’ What lies beyond the forty-two stages cannot be attributed to the forces and beings active in the physical and etheric body. The whole evolution of these bodies is finished—in accordance with the sevenfold law—after seven times seven generations, but during the last seven of these a complete change has taken place, and nothing of the first generation remains. What we are now concerned with is something entirely new in the realm into which man enters after the forty-two generations. We are now no longer concerned with a human existence but with a superhuman one. The six times seven generations, therefore, are connected entirely with the earth, and the seven times seven that follows is connected with what is beyond the earth; that is fruit for the spiritual world.

Hence the people from among whom the Gospel of Matthew had its origin, expressed their thoughts somewhat in this way: ‘The physical body used by Zarathustra had to be so ripe at the end of forty-two generations that it was already on the verge of becoming spiritualized; it was at the point where deification could take place.’ This could have taken place at the beginning of the forty-third generation, but it did not; this body allowed itself to be used by another being, who, as the spirit of Zarathustra, incarnated on earth as Jesus of Nazareth. In the events capable of providing a fitting body and fitting blood for the soul of Zarathustra, in Jesus of Nazareth, everything was fulfilled in accordance with this mystery of numbers. Everything relating to the physical and etheric body in human evolution has been prepared in this way.

Now, however, there are in man—and hence too in him who was to be the bearer of the Christ-being—not only a physical and an etheric body, but also an astral body and ego. Preparation therefore had to be made not only for a suitable physical and etheric body, but what was needful had also to be done to prepare a suitable astral body and ego. For such a mighty Event not one, but two personalities were necessary. The physical and etheric bodies were prepared in the case of the personality described in the Gospel of Matthew; the astral body and ego were prepared in another personality—the Nathan Jesus, of whom the Gospel of Luke relates. For the early years this was another personality. While the Matthew Jesus received a suitable physical and etheric organism, the Luke Jesus received the appropriate astral-body and bearer of the ego.

How could this come to pass? We have seen that the forces of the forty-two generations had to be prepared in order that the sheaths might come about which were necessary for the Jesus of the Matthew gospel. The astral body and ego had also to be prepared in order to appear later in the appropriate manner. How this happened we shall now explain.

As an introduction to the understanding of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, for whom special preparation had also to be made, let us consider the nature of sleep. The notion, derived from the assertions of lower clairvoyance, that the whole astral and ego-nature of man is contained within the nebulous appearance seen near the body of a sleeping man, is entirely erroneous. For it is a fact that during sleep, when man forsakes his physical and etheric sheaths, he expands, and is spread abroad through the whole cosmos. The mystery of the sleeping state is contained in the fact that the astral body expands through the whole stellar world, attracting towards it the purest cosmic forces; and these forces man brings with him when at the moment of awakening he plunges once more into his physical and etheric bodies. Hence he emerges from sleep strengthened by what he has derived from the whole cosmos.

If man were clairvoyant to-day in the highest sense—and this was the same at the time of Christ Jesus—what must then take place in him? Modern man is normally unconscious during sleep when with his astral body and ego he goes forth from his physical and etheric bodies; clairvoyant consciousness must, however, become capable of perception by means of the astral body and ego, without the aid of the physical and etheric bodies. It will then belong to the world the stars, and will not only perceive this world but actually enter into it. Just as the consciousness of the Essene had to rise through successive stages (at the root of which lay the number seven), so man must surmount the stages which enable him to perceive universal space clairvoyantly.

The dangers attending both courses of development I have often pointed out.

The development of the Essenes was fundamentally a penetration into the physical body and etheric body, that they might find their God. With them it was as if a man on awakening did not see the world around him, but plunged into his physical and etheric bodies in order to realize their forces; therefore to see what was external from within. Man's descent into his physical vehicles on awakening is not a conscious act, for at that moment consciousness is attracted to the environment, and is not directed to the forces within his physical and etheric bodies. The essential fact for the Essene was, that, disregarding his environment, he should dip down into his own physical vehicles and perceive all the forces that in the sense of occult science had their rise in the mystery of the six times seven generations.

Similar and even mightier exertions are necessary if a man is to ascend into the cosmos and discover its secrets. In penetrating into his own inner being he is only exposed to the danger of being overcome by the forces of this being, the desires and passions of its depths, of which he is ordinarily unaware and of which he does not dream. Ordinary training usually prevents knowledge of these forces—his attention being attracted to the emergence of the outer world on awakening, so that he should not be overcome by this. Another danger meets him when he experiences ‘expansion over the whole cosmos.’ He who experiences this moment, by retaining his consciousness during sleep, he who is able to perceive the spiritual world through the instrumentality of his astral body and ego, is confronted by a great danger. Like a man attempting to gaze at the sun, he is blinded and bewildered by the overwhelming grandeur of his experiences.

Just as the different stages of wisdom striven for by the Essenes, in order to learn of the hereditary tendencies in the physical and etheric bodies, were connected with the mystery of numbers (six x seven), so there was a secret number in the Mysteries of the Great World, showing how knowledge of these could be acquired. The best approach to these mysteries is through the stars themselves which, in their movements and groupings into constellations, provide a form of expression—a language. As, by passing through six times seven stages man attains the key to the mysteries of his own inner being; twelve times seven or eighty-four stages are necessary before he can rise to the spiritual mysteries of universal space. When we have surmounted the eighty-four stages we are no longer blinded by the complexity of these spiritual cosmic forces. Beyond these eighty-four stages we have attained that calm wherein a way may be found through the mighty labyrinth.

This was taught to a certain extent among the Essenes. A person having attained clairvoyance during sleep, as just described, could pour his being forth into something that is expressed in the mystery of numbers as twelve times seven. Anyone who has attained to the ‘twelve times seven’ degree is already in spiritual realms, for when he has completed the eleven times seven, he has already reached the verge of the Mysteries. As in the other, the seven times seven, he is already in the spiritual realm; so he is in the twelve times seven. On the latter path the spiritual realm is beyond the eleven times seven stage. Such are the number of the stages to be passed through by the astral body and ego. All this is imprinted in the starry script, seven is the number derived from the planets; they are seven in number; what man has to pass through in cosmic space is derived from the number twelve, the number of the Signs of the Zodiac.

As the seven planets group themselves within, and pass through the twelve signs, so if man is to live into cosmic space he must pass through seven times twelve, or rather seven times eleven stages, to attain spirituality. The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac may be pictured as forming a spiritual periphery in the centre of which is man himself. Now man does not reach the spiritual realm spread around him simply by advancing from a centre outwards; he must expand in spiral form; he must advance, as it were, in seven spiral movements. Each time he completes one spiral turn he has passed through all the twelve signs; he has in this way to pass through seven times twelve points. Man gradually expands in spiral form through the cosmos—this is naturally only an image for what man experiences—and in circling thus, on the seventh journey through the twelve signs, spirituality is reached. Then instead of regarding the cosmos from the central point of his own self; he regards it from the spiritual circumference—from twelve points of view—and from these different aspects he views the external world. It is not enough to see things from one point only, they must be considered from twelve aspects.

He who is in quest of what is divinely spiritual must guide his astral body and ego in this way through eleven times seven stages, and at the twelfth he is in the spiritual world.

If Divinity wished to descend and assume a human ego, it would likewise have to pass down through eleven times seven stages. So when the Gospel of Luke wished to describe the spiritual forces that prepared a human astral body and ego to be the bearer of the Christ, it had to relate how the divine force descended through eleven times seven stages. This is truly told in the Gospel of Luke. Because this Gospel tells of the personality for whom the astral body and ego were prepared, it is not concerned, like the Gospel of Matthew, with six times seven generations, but with eleven times seven successive stages through which is traced down, from God Himself; that which dwelt in the individuality of the Luke-Jesus. These seventy-seven different human stages can be counted in the Gospel of Luke.

Because the Gospel of Matthew describes the mystery of the descent of the divine force which worked constructively within the physical and etheric bodies, the ruling number in it must be six times seven. In the Gospel of Luke, because it describes the descent of the divine force which built the astral body and ego, the number must be eleven times seven. Such is the infinite depth of the origin of these facts as related in the Gospels. These Gospels of Luke and Matthew reveal the secrets of initiation; the descent by certain stages of the Divine Spirit into a human individuality, and correspondingly the successive stages by which an individual can reach forth into the cosmos.

It will be explained in the next lecture how a table of descent is also found in the Gospel of Luke; and why, in an age when the Mystery of Christ was imparted only to a few, it should have been demonstrated that there were seventy-seven generations from God and from Adam, down to the Jesus of this Gospel.

On the eve of the day we call White Lotus Day let us remember the great individual to whom we are indebted for giving the impulse for the theosophical movement Fifteen years ago on the 8th of May, Mrs Blavatsky¹⁸ left the physical plane. We speak of the anniversary not of her death but of a second, different birthday when we remember the day when this individual, who did great things for humanity when in her physical body, was called to other spheres from where to continue her work. This day should arouse feelings and inner responses in us through which we get a sense of the way of working which human beings are called on to follow when they are no longer on the physical plane. This work may be all the more significant if they find suitable instruments for it on the physical plane. The members of the theosophical movement are meant to be such instruments. They are able to be such through the truths gained in the science of the spirit which you take into your hearts and minds all the year round.

The individual who was so incomparably selfless and the first to give the great messages that are taken up in the theosophical movement, may be brought a bit closer to us on this anniversary. Not many of us have an idea what Helena Petrovna Blavatsky truly was and will continue to be for the world. What does it matter? In the first century after Christ, Tacitus, a historian of incomparable significance, lived in Rome.¹⁹ A century after the spiritual movement on which the whole of our western culture has been based had arisen he had no more to say about it than that far away, on the edge of the Roman empire, an insignificant sect was reported to have been founded by a certain Jesus, a Nazarene.

Is it surprising, then, if academics, professors and many educated people know nothing of Mrs Blavatsky's mission, or at least have only wrong and confused ideas and prejudices? There are laws according to which a great person appearing in this world must arouse contradiction, prejudice and misunderstanding. It will happen again and again that something minor and insignificant is only slowly and gradually overcome by something great that holds certainty for the future. The event which has come into the world through Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is one that cannot be measured in a short time span. It was an event in the face of which our words today have grown too shadowy. If the potential that lay in Mrs Blavatsky's mission comes to realization, a new stage will be reached not only in the way humanity understands the world and sees things, but also in the way human beings feel and inwardly respond. Let us consider the tremendous change that will come today for some and for many more in the future.

So that we may understand one another, let me paint a picture for you. Let us go far back to ancient Greek times. The magnificent sculptures, poetic works and scholarship that have come down to us from that time, the divine poetry of Homer, the penetrating thoughts of Plato, the teaching of Pythagoras—all this comes together for us if we cast an eye on what we may call the Greek mysteries. Such a mystery centre would be both school and temple. It was not open to those who were not yet able and worthy to take in those truths, but only to those who had prepared themselves to face truth with hallowed feelings. When they were admitted to the centre from which all the art, poetry and scholarship came, onlookers who were not yet initiated into clairvoyant power were able to see in an image—those in whom the dormant powers of mind and spirit had already been awoken would see the reality of it—how the god descended into matter, embodying himself there, and now rests in the realms of nature to await his resurrection. The mystery pupil would see that all realms of nature, the mineral, plant and animals worlds, have the sleeping god at their foundation, and that man is called to experience the resurrection of this god in himself, knowing his soul to be part of the godhead. Everywhere out there the human being can perceive something from which he is meant to arouse the slumbering godhead. In his own soul, however, he feels the divine spark itself, feels himself to be the god and gains certain knowledge of his immortality, of being at work and alive in the infinite universe. Nothing compares with the sublime feeling the mystery pupils would experience in such centres. Everything was to be found there—religion, art, knowledge. His religious feelings were aroused by the objects of veneration, holy feelings of wonder and awe would be kindled by works of art, and the riddles of the world were revealed to him in beautiful images that inspired devotion. Some of the greatest people who knew this were to say: It is only through initiation that a human being rises above the transitory and earthly to reach the eternal. Perhaps the most beautiful word we can use to speak of a scholarship and art that is deeply immersed in the sacred flame of religious feeling is ‘enthusiasm’, which means ‘to be in god’.

Having contemplated this picture and now letting our thoughts move to the present time we see not only that it has all become separated for us—beauty, wisdom and religious devotion—but that our civilization has grown so abstract and rational that the living fire of those times has been lost and grown shadowy by nature.

Some of the outstanding representatives of cultural life in our present age who felt they were not understood and thus isolated, therefore looked back to those great periods in the infinitely distant past when human beings still had communion with the spirits and the gods. They knew this, and in the stillness of the night would often long to be back in the past, at the Eleusinian Mysteries. Those were the last, wonderful times of the ancient Greek mysteries. A profound German thinker, one of those who had contemplated the riddles of existence, reflects for us the mood that would come on him when his thoughts went back to the ancient centres of Greek wisdom—the mood of one who went far away in the spirit. It was Hegel, that great master of thought, who sought to encompass the images once seen by the pupils in the mysteries.²⁰ He wrote:

Eleusis
To Hölderlin²¹

Around me, in me, calm is reigning.
The ever-active cares of busy people sleep.
They give me freedom and a breathing space.
Thank you. O night.
That frees me—White mists are drawn
Over the distant hills to veil them By the moon.
The bright ribbon of the lake Reflects a gentle light.
Memory puts far away the endless noise of day,
As if many years had passed since.

Those are the words of the reflective thinker as he looks deeply into the riddles of the world, being able to encompass all that lived in his own heart in his thoughts only. Looking back now to the Mysteries of Eleusis he continued:

Your image, beloved, comes before me,
And the joy of days now gone. But it soon yields
To sweeter prospects of seeing you again.
Now the longed-for ardent embrace becomes a picture
That I see before me; then the scene where questions come,
And more secretly, looking to see
What may have changed in my friend's
Demeanour, mien, way of thinking
Since we last met; delight in being sure
Of finding the old trust again, grown firmer, riper,
A union that no oath did ever seal—
To live for free and open discourse,
And never, never make a pact with statutes
That regulate opinion and the way we feel.
Now the great wish that took me to you
So easily over mountains and across rivers
Is negotiating with inert reality
But soon a sigh marks division between them
And with it, the dream sweet fantasy created soon is gone.

My eye is raised to the eternal vault of heaven,
To you, O brilliant star of night!
And from your eternal space there flows
Forgetfulness of all my wishes, all my hopes.
My mind is lost as I thus gaze,
All that I called my own has vanished.
I give myself to the immeasurable.
I am in it, am all, and am but it
Thought when it returns to me feels alien,
It fears the infinite and in a maze
It fathoms not the depths that are beheld.
Fantasy brings the eternal close to the mind,
Marrying it with form and figure. Welcome,
Sublime spirits, lofty shades
Whose brows do radiate perfection!
Be not afraid, I feel it is my heartland, too,
The glory and solemnity that shines around you.

So we have a thinker calling up the spirits who in truth did appear to the pupils at Eleusis. Then he calls up the goddess Ceres who was at the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries. For Ceres is not only the goddess of earth's fruitfulness but also the one who fructifies cultural life.

Ha! If the gates to your sanctuary were to open now,
O Ceres, once enthroned in Eleusis!
Overcome with enthusiasm I'd now feel
The shivers of your nearness,
Understand your revelations,
I'd tell the images' sublime meaning, hear
The hymning at the meal the gods would take.
The sublime words of their counsel.

Yet silence now reigns in your halls, O goddess!
The gods have gone away to Olympus,
Away from desecrated altars;
Gone away from the tomb of humanity profaned
Is the genius of innocence whose magic once brought them here.
The wisdom of your priests is silent.
Nothing from the blessed sacraments
Has survived for us, and in vain does now
The curiosity of scholars look for more than love
Of wisdom. The seekers own it now, and despise you.
To master it, they delve for words
That would express your sublime reality.
In vain! It is but dust and ashes they discover,
In which your life will not return in all eternity.
Yet those eternally dead, content in moderation
Also liked to delve in decay, with soul all gone. In vain.
No sign remained of your fastness, no trace of any image.
To the son of sacred faith, sublime things taught,
Unspoken depth of feeling, were much too sacred
To let dry signs and symbols take their place.
Thought cannot encompass the soul,
For outside time and space, immersed in its sense
Of vast infinity, it forgets itself and once again awakens
To full awareness. Wanting to speak of this to others,
E'en in angels’ tongues, you'd know the poverty of words.
He shudders, having thought so small the sacred,
Made it so small that words seem sinful now;
Trembling he keeps silent.
Thus the initiate imposed on himself a silence that a wise
Law bid lesser spirits never to proclaim
What they did see, hear, feel in the holiness of night,
Lest the clamour of their nonsense disturb the better man
In his devotions; the hollow sound of words
Make him wax angry at the sacred thing itself, that it
Should not be trodden in the mire, entrusted
Even to memory, that it should never be
The toy and merchandise of sophists,
Selling for a pittance,
Nor a mantle for wordy pretenders, nor a rod
Upon the back of cheerful lads, and be so empty
In the end, that its life roots would lie
But in the echoes of alien tongues.
Avariciously, goddess, your sons did not
Take your honour into alleyway and market, keeping it
Within the sanctum in their breast.
You therefore did not live upon their lips.
Their life did honour you. You live on in their deeds.
During this night, too, I did hear you, sacred goddess.
Often the life of your children also reveals you to me.
I often sense you to be the soul of their doings!
You are sublimity of mind, steadfast faith
Unshaken in a divine spirit, though all else may perish.

In recent times need arose to bring the power of thought to expression in an ideal way on the one hand and a more materialistic way on the other. Hegel, too, was no longer understood, being altogether one of the lost spirits of humanity. In the second half of the 19th century the spirit of materialism entered into everything, and it now prevails almost everywhere. If it were to keep the upper hand, materialism would cause human culture to turn to stone in every way.

A strange attitude came to the fore in the second half of the 19th century. In the 18th century, Lessing was still saying that a faith need not be meaningless just because it arose in the pure, innocent childhood of humanity.²² Materialists will, however, say that this faith, which is the basis of culture for all peoples, represents childish fantasies, and that only the thoughts created by means of scientific thinking reflect a mind that is both male and mature. Everyday life has become a hustle and bustle for material goods to satisfy purely physical needs, and much worse things will arise from this in future. Scientists who pride themselves on their achievements consider themselves far above anything humanity has achieved in the past to gain a relationship to the world—the priestly wisdom of ancient Chaldaea and Babylon, the teaching of Pythagoras and others. It is said of Plato, that great mind, that one cannot make head or tail of the confused ideas he has bequeathed to us. His Timaeus is said to be incomprehensible, but people do not ask for the reason why it cannot be understood.²³ Here we may think of Lichtenberg's words that when a head collides with a book and there is a hollow sound this may not be due to the book. In practice, materialism has also given rise to hypocrisy; above all people are not prepared to admit that life is governed entirely by materialistic aims. There has hardly ever been so much talk of ideals and such lack of understanding as in our time.

The mission of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky came at this time. Perhaps it may be permitted to state, without saying anything against her as a person, that her soul was given a task that was really too much for it. To solve the riddle as to why it was this woman in particular who was called upon to give to the world the message of theosophy, we find that she was the only possible means the spirits could find to make themselves understood by Western peoples. People in official positions had not the least conception of the spiritual realities humanity needed. The very idea of the spirit had been lost, and when anyone would speak of the spirit those were but empty words. This strange woman, who even as a young person had unusual psychic and spiritual gifts, was called upon to give the world a message which no academic person could give. From her earliest days her view of the world differed to some degree from that presented at schools and universities in the 19th century. She was able to perceive spiritual entities in everything around us, and they were as real to her as tangible objects are. From her young days, she felt great veneration for a sublime spirit. No human soul will even gain higher insight without such veneration. You may have a brilliant mind or a clear, rational mind, you may even have developed dim powers of clairvoyance, but you will not progress to genuine, true insight without the feeling we call ‘great veneration’. True insight can only be given to us by spirits who are well ahead of humanity in their evolution. Everyone will admit that people differ in their levels of development. Maybe people don't like to admit it so much in this day and age, but it cannot be denied that there are differences. Most people will, however, believe that the level of insight they have gained is indeed the highest, and they will not easily admit that there are more highly developed minds, greater than Goethe and Francis of Assisi. This, however, is the basic condition if true insight is to be gained. No one can gain it unless they have this great veneration, something that has been completely lost in our levelling age.

An important fact relates to this great veneration. We all come from worlds of spirit, from an original life in the spirit. The part of our soul that is divine comes from a divine source and origin. There was a time for each of us when the ability to look out from the soul world into the world perceived through the senses first awoke in us. In very early times, human beings had dim but clairvoyant perception. Images would arise from the soul that pointed to a real world around them. Conscious awareness in the senses, as we know it today, only came later. There was a particular moment in the development of each of us—shown symbolically for Eve in the paradise story²⁵—when the serpent of knowledge came to us, in an incarnation that happened a long, long time ago, and said the words: ‘Your eyes will be opened, you will know good and evil in the visible world around you.’ The serpent has always been the symbol of the great spiritual teachers. Every human being had such an advanced teacher and on one occasion was with one of them when he spoke the words: ‘One day you will know the world around you as it is perceived through the senses.’

A human being who has developed great veneration will meet such a teacher once more in life, when the senses for the spirit are opened up for him. In occult terms this is known as ‘finding the guru again’, the great teacher. Each must seek his guru and will only be able to find him if he is capable of great veneration and also knows that there is something that goes beyond run-of-the-mill humanity.

This great veneration and knowledge of the existence of the great teachers lived in Mrs Blavatsky, and it was because of this that she was called to make something about these great teachers known to humanity. The guru works in hidden ways and can only be recognized by someone who has found his way to him of his own accord. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky thus had the right inner feeling that enabled her to give present-day humanity something that is quite new.

Anyone who has had some insight into the places where the truth is represented also realizes that taking hold of something new like this does have its problems. The time then comes for someone who knows something about the search for the truth when he loses his critical approach to the great human spirits. He will no longer consider superficial things about them. People who have no idea of the position which such great people hold in the world will cling to such superficial aspects. Someone able to grasp the situation will be grateful for the gifts those great spirits have given. This is indeed the only possible attitude to a person such as Mrs Blavatsky. ‘Much admired and blamed as much’,²⁶ this woman called Helena came among the people. It would seem that hardly anyone else has had so much nonsense and silly things said and written about them as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, except, of course, for others of the same stature. Some academics have made the strange statement that she had written a great work, her Secret Doctrine,²⁷ which contains the Dzyan verses, which are said to be a very ancient tradition. Others who were opposing them said, however, that Mrs Blavatsky had invented the verses, pretending that they were ancient tradition. Only academics can take foolishness to such a level. Let us assume, just for the moment, that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky had really invented the verses and let us consider them in more detail. If we study them for a while, two or three years maybe, we find that all our scholarship and all discoveries, all the achievements of modern science, may still be of interest but pale into insignificance compared with the great revelations made in these verses. Don't you think that this would make us venerate Helena Petrovna Blavatsky even more? Now of course someone who uses just the short span of two or three years to enter into the profound meaning of these verses will not care if they were written thousands of years ago or by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the last third of the 19th century. On reflection one even has to say to oneself that in the latter case the miracle would be even greater. It then seems all the more foolish for critics to raise objections which merely show that they have not understood a single word of it all. So there you see some of the great obstacles that rose in the path of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. People who talk of her having had some fault or other clearly have no idea of her true importance.

Mrs Blavatsky spoke of phenomena in the occult worlds. Anyone who knows the path she followed to reach those worlds will also know the dangers connected with this. If you consider how easily our passions are roused even in the world of the senses, and the deep abysses someone had to experience who had to look into the occult worlds in the way it had to be done in order to write a book like Secret Doctrine, will no longer consider the superficial things connected with this important person and those around her. She was strong, but the resistance the world offered almost broke even her. She met so much lack of understanding and false authority, and if we consider the receptiveness and sensitivity of her occult powers, we can understand why she was more or less a broken woman when she came to the end of her life. But the things she has given to the world shall live on in humanity and have a future.

The mood I wanted to recreate for you, using the words of one of the greatest men of our time, this mood of longing must spread more and more. The longing can be satisfied with the things Mrs Blavatsky was destined to give to the world, things that need to be developed more and more. We honour her most if we see her as someone who has given the impetus. She only sought to prevail as a faithful disciple of the great spiritual powers that stood behind her, and the only people to work in harmony with the theosophical stream are those who do so in accord with those spiritual powers. The life of the spirit, which has become shadowy, will come alive again if people come to understand more and more of the things Helena Petrovna Blavatsky wanted to bring into the world with such courage, such energy and boldness. And it is possible to gain deeper insight into the nature of such a Lotus Day if we ignore all historical gossip and make every effort to consider the things that are important.

We have the right understanding for the theosophical movement if we come to realize that the living spirit of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky must continue to act through us for the salvation and progress of humanity. We'll then not merely say in an indolent, sentimental way that her immortal spirit is celebrating another birthday, but actively help it to live and work in the places where it should take effect. It surely was the only personal wish our founder had that the members of the theosophical movement would be a living means of giving expression to the spirit which she herself selflessly put wholly at the service of this spiritual movement. The more members understand this spirit of selflessness, and the more they understand that it behooves us to gain insight and understanding, the more will they do justice to the spirit of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. One always hears people say: ‘Love and compassion are the main thing.’ Of course they are, but it needs insight and understanding to make love and compassion bear fruit. It is not uncommon to be facile, even among those who believe themselves to seek the spirit. To say ‘love’ is something you learn in a second. To gain insight for the salvation and progress of humanity needs an eternity. The meaning the theosophical movement has for us must more and more be that insight is the foundation of all true spiritual activity. It is important, therefore, that we work without respite to follow in the footsteps of our founder—step by step, never giving in to the laziness of wanting to grasp it all in a day rather than learn it properly. We can study this very well in the writings and the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and all talk is in vain that is mere refusal to face up to things. What we must learn, continuing the work she herself started on the physical plane, is to seek to gain insight and knowledge in the science of the spirit.

• 18. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, née Hahn (1831–91). Born in Yekaterinoslav in the Ukraine, went to the USA in 1873. In 1875 she founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Olcott. Later she continued her work in India.
• 19. Tacitus (c. AD 55–120). Annales XV, 44.
• 20. Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, German philosopher, 1770–1831)
• 21. Hegel sent the work Eleusis to his friend the poet Hölderlin in 1796.
• 22. Lessing. Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), German writer. Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes (education of the human race) p. 78 ff. Berlin 1844.
• 23. The dialogue in this book, written late in Plato's life, shows the connection between the world of space and the cosmic soul; this has also given rise to the laws that govern the movements of heavenly bodies. Summing up, Plato wrote: ‘It has been shown how this world evolved—evolved uniquely and on its own, perfect in its nature and phenomena, visible and encompassing the great fullness of all things visible, a living organism within which all other mortal and immortal organisms have their being, the sense-perceptible image of a god who can only be conceived in thought.’ Timaios 92 C.
• 25. Genesis 3:5
• 26. Faust 2, Before Menelaus' Palace.
• 27. Published in London, New York, Madras in 1893.

Today we are going to consider something from the point of view of spiritual science that may be said to be of eminent value if it is taken the right way. We are going to talk about some aspects of nutrition and healing. More than with any other kind of subject you’ll have to remember, however, that all we can do is aphoristically take individual details from an infinitely vast field and that it is extremely difficult to speak about these things at this time in a language that everyone can understand. We can therefore only consider these things in an approximate way, for in this kind of wider group I am speaking not only to the initiate who would be in a position to sense the true value of every word that is spoken.

In occult schools whose members are already at a higher level one can agree to use a specific way of saying things, so that a particular word will express a specific feeling impulse. All such things—and today we can only touch on them lightly—often have different meanings in ordinary life. But an attempt will nevertheless be made to speak about these matters, seeing that they are also of practical value. People who do not believe that effects arising from causes that lie in the world of spirit are much more powerful than the effects you get in the outer physical world will not gain much from it, however. Many will admit, in theory, that something we must call spirit, something that has a powerful influence in the world, has powers similar to those of electricity, magnetism, and so on. The science of the spirit finds itself in all kinds of positions in modern cultural life. Above all it is misunderstood by people who conservatively want to have life continue along old-established lines and also by the many people who want to bring about reforms in all kinds of areas. All these different groups of people come to the science of the spirit and consider it only natural that the science of the spirit should come to them and not they to the science of the spirit. It will of course be easy to see that someone who is a radical protector of animals will not make his energies and experience available to the spiritual scientific movement but will get really angry if all theosophists do not immediately join the animal protection movement. This is something you’ll see in all kinds of specific areas. And it is, of course, perfectly natural. But the theosophical movement is something that is universal. It relates to the different individual movements the way an architect’s plans relate to the work of the carpenters, masons, skilled craftsmen of all kinds who are working on the house. The latter are individual workers. But the person who is in charge of the building project must ask the workers to come to him to be given their particular instructions. This is also why it is not acceptable for other movements—homoeopaths, teetotallers and others—to ask that the science of the spirit should come to them. Instead, all the specialist areas must be part of the spiritual scientific movement which must aim for basic reform in a
spheres of life, but from within.

The position of theosophy in relation to science in particular is readily misunderstood. Not only do scientists believe theosophists to be against them, not wanting to have anything to do with them. Even friends of theosophy have this opinion. Above all physicians who have had a scientific training and are working to meet official requirements will easily develop the prejudice that theosophy does not involve scientific methods and therefore does not go with science. That is not the case, however.

Today you keep hearing slogans, nothing but slogans, from people. There is some justification for having specialists. But it is not the representatives of specialist fields but mainly their followers who use such slogans. One of them is one I'd particularly like to mention. You often hear that the public practically freeze with horror if you use the term ‘poison’. It seems perfectly sensible to say that no poison should ever get into the body. And people like to talk about ‘natural medicine’ in that case. But what do we really mean by ‘natural’? and by ‘poison’? The effect which the belladonna poison has on the human organism is natural, a purely natural effect. Nature does, of course, include all actions that come under the laws of nature. And what is a poison? Water is a powerful poison if someone consumes it by the bucketful, for it will then prove most destructive. And arsenic is a very good thing if you use it in particular combinations. What we need, therefore, is a truly thorough study of the human organism and the things to be found in the natural world outside.

Paracelsus⁷² was very specific about the way particular processes in the human body relate to those in the natural world outside, for instance cholera to arsenic. He called someone with cholera an ‘arsenicus’, for he knew that the same factors played a role in arsenic and cholera and he also perceived how things harmonize. We thus have a natural process which must first be understood.

Something else that proves an obstacle in the matter of entering into dialogue with scientists is the materialistic way of thinking. This has distorted people’s views on all the matters we are concerned with here. Remember what has been said about the effects of some metals on the human organism.⁷³ Someone may say the science of the spirit is pure materialism when it is said that the powers inherent in minerals and metals have material effects on the human organism. But in the science of the spirit we also know that material things have a particular relationship to the spirit. Someone who truly speaks for a spiritual view of the world will have realized that substances like these are not just matter and that spirit and soul dwell in them just like in a creature that lives in a skin. That is the sense in which a theosophist will speak of the spirit embodied in gold, in quartz or in belladonna poison. To the occultist, the world is full of spiritual entities. The spirit embodied in lead has the relationship to the human organism you heard me speak of yesterday. For theosophists it is not a matter of looking for some kinds of peculiar spiritual entities that have nothing at all to do with our world, but rather for entities that are present in every piece of metal and indeed in everything there is in the world around us. That is how one sees the spirit in matter from the point of view taken in the science of the spirit. Spiritual analogies are something based on genuine spiritual research.

We are not therefore in opposition to expert knowledge. There have to be specialist fields, and we must not ignore the outer facts. But it is impossible to gain a comprehensive point of view concerning the world on the basis of specialist knowledge. A medical practitioner is also a person and as such needs to know something of the higher worlds. He will then arrange his work in a very different way from someone who knows nothing of the great scheme of things, for he will then also rate symptoms differently. A single observation or experience may well be taken to be something quite minor if one has an overview of the whole. Just as everyone working in the sphere of culture has to meet certain preconditions, so the future will demand physicians who know the science of the spirit. An example would be Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy. The difference between Paracelsus and Hahnemann is enormous. The 16th-century physician was still clairvoyant to some extent. Hahnemann was no longer clairvoyant. He was only able to assess the actions of medicines by what his senses told him.⁷⁴

An analogy may be found for the relationship we are speaking of between the human being and the creatures and objects of the natural world. It is the relationship between the sexes, which is largely governed by sympathy. It is a mysterious attraction that brings the sexes together, a power at work in the sphere of life. It should not be taken to be something mystical in the bad sense of the word that one particular man feels drawn to one particular woman. Someone who trains himself to be an occult observer of the world has a similar relationship to all living things around him, one that may be called universal. Just as there is a specific relationship between the one man and the one woman, so there is a specific relationship between one person of the kind I am speaking of and the phenomena in the world around him. People who have developed these powers gain knowledge that lets them perceive the connection that exists between a particular thing and the human being. And this then also leads to insight into the actions of medicinal powers.

Paracelsus did not have to try things out first, no more than a magnet which attracts iron needs to try it out. He was able to say that a particular healing power lay in the red foxglove. Such knowledge will only be regained when a physician realizes that it is a matter not only of intellectual understanding but of one’s inner attitude to life; when he knows that he himself must become a completely different person. When he has transformed his temperament, his character, the whole tenor of his soul, then and only then can he develop the power of vision and understanding for the powers in the world that harmonize the human being. This will be possible in a future that it not too far off. The view of the world held in the science of the spirit must above all offer particular principles, some of which will be mentioned now, after this more general view. Anyone who is willing can gain much from this.

Four elements are involved in this. The first is that there is a connection between the process we call digestion and the process we call thinking activity, in other words, what digestion is at a lower level, thinking activity is in a higher sphere. In the human organism, as it lives on the physical plane, the two are intimately connected. Let me give you a piece of real evidence of this. It is part of thinking activity that one must be able to draw logical conclusions, seeing how one concept evolves from another. This is a quite specific part of thinking activity. You can do exercises to make this thinking activity follow a particular course. The process such exercises bring about at soul level, in your thinking activity, is brought about by a particular substance in the digestive process, and that is coffee. This is no wild assumption, it is a fact that can be proved. What you do to your stomach with coffee is the same as you do to your thinking with practical exercises in logic. If you take coffee, you encourage logical consistency in your thinking. And if it is said that taking coffee enhances the activity which is needed to strengthen one’s thinking, this may well be true. But coffee only encourages consistency in one’s thinking in a way that shows dependence; it is acting as if under compulsion. You feel a certain lack of independence in you, something like an influence coming from outside. Someone who wants to be consistent in his thinking but also to remain dependent, may drink a lot of coffee. But if he wants to be independent in his thinking, he must free himself from the very things that act on his lower nature; he must develop powers in himself that come from the soul. He will then also find that his stomach functions properly again, or continues to function properly, after the exercises in question.

Something else. The opposite of well-ordered thinking activity is the kind of thinking that cannot stay with a thought, a thinking that lacks a sound basis. This, too, has its correlate in the action which a particular substance has on the digestion, a substance contained in tea. Tea does indeed act on our lower functions as something which causes all flightiness in one’s thinking in the upper human being. You may conclude from this that some of the harmful effects of tea can be quite disastrous on occasion. But do not think that someone who takes tea all his life will finally have to be quite scatty inwardly. If tea does not have that kind of harmful effect on him this merely proves that his organism has sufficient powers of resistance.

Just as digestive functions correspond to active thinking, so do the functions of the heart and blood relate to the life of the will and of appetites; every influence brought to bear on the blood by certain substances such as certain foods will have its correspondence in an active will. This can be observed especially by considering the reverse. You often hear today that the notion of it being possible to heal someone with thoughts is something that has long since been overcome; that it is not possible, for instance, to cure someone suffering from religious mania or also persecution mania by means of correspondingly opposite thoughts. What one sees on the outside is only a symptom, and if one were able to remove this symptom the disease would shift to another organ and take a different form. Occultists have known this fact established in materialistic medicine for a long time. An occultist would never dream of trying to cure a delusion by an idea that is its opposite. But it is a different story if one intervenes much more deeply, using occult means to influence the original cause. Let us assume someone has become sick in the sphere of the will and appetites; this would be due to disorders affecting particular organs. Not only the heart comes into this, but some other things that are also connected. A materialistic physician will say: ‘I cannot cure the situation which shows itself here by teaching the patient the right ideas.’ But you have to consider that there are not just two things to be considered in the organism, not only the material basis and the life based on it; there is a third element, and the occultist knows this. Yes, an organic function lies behind immediate soul activity on the physical plane, that is, behind the things that come to expression in will impulses. But behind this organic activity lies the third element, which is that the organ has been created by the spirit, it has developed out of something that is spiritual. And it is this spiritual principle behind the organ, having created it, which we must consider. To try and give someone suffering from religious mania the right ideas will serve no purpose. But if your influence on this person is such that you address the creator of the organ function—which is the ether body—you can achieve something, not with ideas but by doing something which on the surface seems to have no connection at all with the life of ideas.

To understand this, let us consider the concept of a religious truth. You can approach the idea of the religious truth in such a way that you grasp it. This is all that is needed for the rational mind. But you can understand as many ideas as you like, this will have no effect at all in your organic life—life in the ether body as well as the physical body. It is also of no avail to try and teach a patient right ideas from conviction, for this will have no effect at all on his will activity. But if you don’t think of this truth as something that works only in terms of the rational mind, but say to the person: ‘You need to grasp this not just once, but you must let these ideas influence you again every day; they have to be repeated rhythmically day after day, and this needs to go hand in hand with quite specific feelings and images.’ To do something once has no effect. But if it happens regularly for quite some time, then it will have an effect that also reaches the organic constitution. This is what we call concentration and meditation. So you don’t influence people with just teaching them something. But if you give instructions and they follow them daily for many weeks you will influence them a little bit, for you will reach the principle that is behind the organ, its creator. Occultism does not have a different basis from the scientific approach to medicine, but there is greater knowledge. It is of course not yet possible to make these ideas publicly known.

Our breathing function is connected with the life of feeling and of the senses in the widest possible sense. You can discover many things if you get a clear picture of everything connected with the breathing function and how this can influence the life of feeling and of the senses. Breathing depends on sufficient oxygen getting into the blood and organic matter being maintained by this. People who take pleasure in things of the mind, who have a life of the spirit that puts them in a cheerful frame of mind and influences them all the time—such people influence their organs out of the spirit in a way that brings health.

Going back again to digestion and thinking activity, we shall find that this is a field where much needs to be done. It has to be understood that humanity must change more and more to a deliberate way of feeding itself. People seeking to gain knowledge in this field do, however, often fall into a particular error. They want to learn too much of what they call ‘nature’; they want to follow ‘nature’ and ‘nature’ only. Paracelsus said: 'We should not be subservient to nature. A physician has to pass nature’s examination, it is true, but he must be an artist, he must take nature further',⁷⁵ And he did not think the right medicines were things taken straight from nature but new products created in the spirit of nature. He believed a time would come in medicine when such new products would be the truly effective medicines. It is solely and entirely a matter of taking nature further in this field.

People wanting to give reasons today why a mixed diet is best in their view tend to say that herbivores are ruminants and have a special stomach and digestive tools for this. Carnivores, they’ll say, are predators with digestive tools and teeth made for meat-eating. In their view, human teeth and digestive tools are half-way between those of ruminants and predators, so that nature herself destined humanity to have a mixed diet. But everything in the world is in a state of flux, changing and growing. What matters is not the way human beings look today but how they may change. If people change to a vegetable diet, the organs more designed for meat eating will gradually disappear and the organs needed for a vegetable diet will develop. You have to consider how things were in the past and how they can be in future. We are therefore not giving human beings the right diet if we consider their present state but only if we take account of their inner development and change. Statistics and external facts will only give you the existing condition, they do not show the direction in which humanity must go. One must look at the world on a larger scale to some extent.

Take the national character of Russian country people, as they are today, and that of English people. Russian country people will put as little emphasis as possible on the I. The opposite is the case with English people. You can even see this from the way they write the word. English people use a capital I. Further investigation will show that sugar consumption is five times as high in England as it is in Russia. Once again we have mutual correspondence between digestive activity and thinking activity. The process brought about in the digestion by taking in relatively large amounts of sugar has its correlate in greater independence of thinking in the upper human being.

Now as you can imagine, it is also possible to take corrective measures in this sphere. Some people may make their diet such that they need only a short time to digest it, while others may well spend a long time on the process. This again allows us to see deeply into the human organism. For if someone eats rice and has soon finished digesting it, energies are left over that will then be available for thinking activity. Someone else who may be eating wild duck, for example, and needs a correspondingly longer time to digest it may well be intelligent; but when he produces thoughts it is in reality his stomach which is thinking. One person may not be a great thinker but may think independently, another a great thinker but dependent in his thinking. You can also learn something from this.

To mention something else. Great care must be taken to give the body neither too much nor too little protein. It is most important to find the right measure, for proteins in our digestion correspond to the generation of ideas in our thinking. The same activity which makes our thinking fruitful is evoked by proteins in the lower organism. If the body does not receive a balanced amount of protein, the proteins will cause an excess of energies in the lower bodily functions that correspond to the functions which in the upper organization create ideas. Human beings should, however, be more and more in control of their ideas. Protein intake should therefore be kept within limits; otherwise people are overcome by idea-creating activities from which they should really be free. Pythagoras was thinking of this when he told his students not to eat beans.

Now people will of course come and say: ‘Look at the rice eater. He’s a poor thinker.’ Well that person eating his rice has not yet developed. The point is not one of knowing the rules, thinking that everyone merely has to follow them. If the lower and the upper do not agree, this, too, may create havoc. Think of someone who has recently taken up vegetarianism. Activity in the lower man then is of a quite specific kind. Certain energies change from material powers into those of mind and spirit, but they can grow harmful if left unused and may even limit brain activity. If you then do not occupy yourself in any other way than a banker, for example, or with ordinary book learning, you can cause yourself a lot of damage unless you take up spiritual ideas with the powers saved by a vegetarian lifestyle. A vegetarian must therefore also take up life in mind and spirit, otherwise he’d do better to remain a meat eater, for his memory might suffer, certain parts of the brain may be damaged, and so on. It is not enough to feed on fruits to have the most sublime realms of life in the spirit open up to you.

Another correspondence in the organism is the following. The function in the upper organism which corresponds to reproductive capacities is the visionary element, as it is called, and thus in a way also inner imaginative activity. This is why some religious orders used to demand a degree of asceticism, which, however, was also a source of great dangers. These can only be avoided by purity in the inner life, trust in one’s own individual nature, and the ability to maintain composure in all life situations. If one does not give oneself up to affects and external influences, one is secure in this area and will be able to avert harmful influences.

White magic demands not only a pure life, but also one that is strong and certain, with the inner life firmly in control and the ability to maintain composure in all situations. If on the one hand you have so much self-control that nothing can take you aback, then you will also be secure inwardly, and be able to cope more easily with falls from grace.

A new era can come if people resolve to make theosophical wisdom their guide in all these things. In future it will be necessary, for instance, to see how one can transform certain powers that become available in the organism into powers that can be used to gain spiritual insight. One day a substance will be produced in laboratories that will be of greater value than milk. Even now it would be perfectly possible to establish a food laboratory and thus gain influence on the feeding of the nations. But a time will come when those who study the science of the spirit will be doing chemical work that is in harmony with evolving nature and not with nature as it has come to be. Goethe thus said:

Gaze on them as they grow, see how the plant
Burgeons by stages into flower and fruition.⁷⁶

Please accept these few aspects taken from a vast field and consider that they need to be developed. You will then see that you can gain nourishment for mind and spirit from these things and discover the practical significance they may have for you.

• 72. Paracelsus (see note 62). 'From the external put together the whole human being: thus you find in the same the evident corpora of all materia, and find in these all species of the parts, of health and sickness, and also all their essences ... It arises from this that you should not say: that is cholera, that is melancholia, but: that is an arsenicus, that is an aluminosum. And also: he is of Saturn, he of Mars: not: he is of melancholy, he is of cholera. For one part belongs to heaven, one part to earth, and are mingled as fire and wood are, where each may lose its name, then they are two things in one.' From Das Buch Paragranum, edited and introduced by Dr Franz Strunz, Leipzig 1903, S 29 f. On Paracelsus, see the lecture given in Berlin on 26 April 1906 (in GA 54): Paracelsus, Anthroposophical News Sheet 1941; 9:37-40.
• 73. See preceding lecture in this volume (21 October 1906).
• 74. 'The appropriateness of a medicine... depends not only on being the right homoeopathic choice, but also on the dose being of the right degree of magnitude, or rather smallness... Here the question arises as to what this appropriate degree of smallness may be ... Pure experiment, careful observation and experience alone will determine it.' Hahnemann, Samuel, Organon der rationalen Heilkunde, Dresden 1810, paragraphs 300 ff.
• 75. 'How can the medicine be reconciled with such things, that the physician might reasonably call himself a physician? He is therefore subordinate to nature, and God is the lord of nature.'
  'Now the physician comes from the medicine, and not from himself, and he must therefore pass nature's examination, nature being the world and all it encompasses. And what nature teaches him he must entrust to his wisdom; yet he should not seek anything in his wisdom, but solely in the light of nature, and then keep safe what he has learned in the cell of that same vessel.'
  Theophrastus Paracelsus, Volumen Paramirum und Opus Paramirum, published by Dr Franz Strunz, Jena 1904, S. 74, 85.
  'Then nature is so subtle and accurate in its things, that it cannot be used without great skill. For it will not reveal anything that is in a perfect state; man has to perfect it. This perfection is called Alchimia.'
  'Thus the physician must furthermore be skilful. One who wishes to be skilful must have experience in everything, for the foundation of your skills goes beyond the realm of the arts; it is not the foundation of teaching but of your understanding in the skills needed for medicines.'
  Das Buch Paragranum (see note 72), S. 70, 105.
• 76. Metamorphosis of Plants, 17/18 June 1798.

Initiation makes it possible for a person to gain insight into higher worlds. It is a process of development in the inmost soul. Different people take different paths, but the truth is the same for all of them. Having reached the summit of a mountain you have an open view in all directions. But it would be quite nonsensical not to take the path to the top that is nearest to the point where we actually are. And it is the same with initiation. Once we have reached our goal and truly gained an open view, the insight gained will be the same for all.

It is not good, however, for someone to take a route other than the one that suits his nature. There should really be a separate path for every individual. All of them do, however, fall into one of three types—the yoga path, gnostic and Rosicrucian Christian initiation. One of these three different routes may be taken. They differ because there are three kinds of human beings. Only few Europeans can take the Oriental yoga route. It therefore is not right, as a rule, for a European to take that route. People live in an entirely different climate in the Orient, where the light of the sun is completely different. The anatomical differences between Orientals and Europeans are not easily demonstrable, but the difference in soul and spirit is profound, and this must be taken into account, for inner development intervenes deeply in the soul and spirit nature of a person. Anatomists cannot perceive the finer structure of the Hindu brain. But if you were to ask of a European the things that can be asked of an Indian, you would destroy him. An Indian may be asked to do certain things which serve no purpose at all for a European and may even be bad for him. Above all the yoga path makes one basic demand on pupils that has to be met if the path is to be taken at all. It demands the strict authority of a teacher, who is called a guru. To take that path one must accept the guru's directions in every detail of life. Quite apart from that, the Indian yoga route can hardly be taken unless one tears oneself away from the external conditions of life. It is necessary, you see, to make all kinds of external arrangements that will support the exercises one is given. If you experience things that make a deep impression on your feeling life, this will have a profound influence on you as you are going through occult inner development. The Oriental yoga pupil must therefore ask his guru about every detail of his life. To make any change whatsoever in his life, he must first ask the guru for direction. The yoga path therefore requires absolute subjection to a guru. You have to learn to see things through the guru's eyes, and to feel the way he does. It is impossible to follow this path unless there is profound trust, perfect love, combined with utter trust and an unconditional surrender that has precedence over everything else.

For the gnostic Christian path there is only one great teacher, the central guru. What is needed is belief in Christ Jesus himself not only his teachings. A gnostic Christian pupil must be able to believe that the one and only sublime divine individual spirit was incarnated in Christ Jesus, an individual spirit that cannot be compared with any other, not even the highest. All other individuals started at a lower level on earth and then ascended, examples being Buddha, Hermes, Zoroaster and Pythagoras, and their spiritual stature is the result of many earlier incarnations. This is not the case with Christ Jesus. He cannot be compared with any other individual, with anything else on earth. It would be impossible to follow the gnostic Christian path unless one believes this.

A third path is the Rosicrucian Christian one. There the teacher is the counsellor who essentially limits his counsel to the actual measures taken for spiritual development. This spiritual development must be organized in such a way that it has a deep-reaching influence on the life of the individual. A teacher must always be present for initiation. There is no serious initiation without a teacher. Anyone who wants to say there is, would be saying something as silly as someone who thought it was possible for a child to be bom without the two sexes playing a role. Initiation is a spiritual fertilization process which would in fact be harmful if it were not brought about in such a dual relationship between teacher and pupil.

The Indian yoga path is in seven stages. The sequence is not always the same, however. Different stages may be combined, in a way. It is not necessary to go through stages 1 to 7 in that order. It may happen that one is asked to take something from somewhere in the sequence earlier on, and an exercise may be given that relates to another stage. It depends on the individual concerned. A pupil may do this in a few years, or even a few months. Asked how long initiation takes, Subba Row¹⁴⁸ said it may be 70 incarnations or 7, some need 7 years, others may need 7 months, or 7 days, or indeed 7 hours. It depends entirely on the spiritual maturity of the person. Spiritual maturity shows itself sooner in some and needs longer in others. This is a matter of karma. We may well ask why someone may not be outstanding in this respect though he may have reached a very high level of spirituality in an earlier existence. There may be obstacles in his physical or soul nature. The teacher's task is above all to remove such obstacles. The physiognomy of a person in ordinary life has nothing to do with it. An earlier incarnation may lie hidden deep down in the soul and be unable to emerge because of some kind of obstacle or other.

Yama is the first stage of Indian yoga training. It signifies ‘restraint’; or ‘forbearance’. To an Indian this means not to lie, not to kill, not to steal, no dissoluteness, no desires. To enter more deeply into what this means to an Indian, we must consider it in its whole context. Thus we may be vegetarians, but we still have not got out of the habit of killing things. Our life is in fact impossible without this. We actually kill as we breathe, for we exhale carbon dioxide. If the earth's green plant cover did not continually take up the carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, humans and animals would be unable to live. It is part of the yoga exercises to get out of the killing habit. Indians take this very seriously. Many of the connections we have in our life would also come under the heading of stealing for them. Each of us must accept money in some way. Many conditions are involved in our getting this money. When we buy a coat we have no way of knowing if human blood has not been shed for it. People do not give much thought to the fact that they are in a social context and partly responsible for what they do. If we take these things seriously, we must feel responsible for the things that happen because of us.

You help other people most by having few wants. Someone who reduces his wants helps others more than a philanthropist does. Thus if we do not write unnecessary letters this may save some people the effort of having to climb stairs. It is quite wrong to think that you help people by making more demands, thus providing more work. You do not in the least add to the things people need by making work for them. In Europe the situation is so complex nowadays that it is getting more and more difficult to meet the requirements of the Eastern yoga path. This can of course be followed in the proper, strict way in a country where there are no banks and where the cultural situation is clearly apparent.

The 2nd stage is niyana, observance of ritual. The Indian yoga way certainly demands ritual, so that the teachings may be linked with religious rites. It is strictly required that everyone taking the yoga way observes a ritual. Things should be enacted before their eyes. Just as in the case of art it matters that it comes to real expression in objects, so in the case of initiation it is important to have things presented in rituals.

The 3rd stage is asana, body positions assumed to be in accord with specific currents in the cosmos. When people still had a feeling for such things, they would always put the main altar at the eastern end of their religious buildings. Indians are so subtly organized that it matters in which direction they face. The current that goes from north to south is indeed different from the one that goes from east to west. Body positions are important for yoga initiation because the Oriental body is much softer, and taking a particular position leaves much more of an imprint. A European wanting to take the Oriental yoga way would have to do all these things as well.

The 4th is pranayama, bringing rhythm into the breathing process. We can best understand this if we consider that under present-day conditions, the human breath kills things. The teacher instructs the pupil to regulate his breathing according to certain rules he gives him, at least for a time. If we were to examine the breath we would find that the air exhaled by a yoga pupil has quite a different composition, quite a different carbon dioxide content, than the breath of ordinary people. It is therefore true that by regulating the breath the pupil influences the future evolution of the earth. Constant dropping wears the stone. You don't see results from one day to the next. But it all adds up and will have definite significance over long periods of time.

At a particular time, Rosicrucian teachers also get their pupils to bring rhythm into their breathing. What does the breathing process bring about? The physical human being cannot be thought of without the plants. We inhale oxygen which combines with carbon in the lung, and we exhale carbon dioxide. The plant does exactly the opposite. There is a continuous cycle between human beings on the one hand and plants on the other. In far distant times human beings will develop an organ of their own which will take care of the function plants perform today. They will be able to process the carbon dioxide in themselves. Human beings will have an organ able to separate the carbon from the oxygen and make it part of themselves. The principles we take in with our food today to build up our bodies will then be something we consciously do within ourselves. We'll thus change carbon dioxide into oxygen again. This process is indeed helped by making the breathing process rhythmical. This was taught extensively in 14th century Rosicrucian schools. Some of these secrets were betrayed, so that they appeared in the popular literature. In an 18th century work reference is made to the philosopher's stone.¹⁴⁹ The statement is literally true. The author himself probably did not know what this was really about. The whole human being must change if he is to achieve what the plant does for him now. His physical body will then be carbon, but not black coal, nor hard diamond, which after all is only a symbol for the philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone is meant to be a body which is transparent, with the other organs integrated within it. It will consist of a mass of gel-like carbon, rather like the white of an egg. Man is following a course where he will one day develop into this marvellous glory. The rhythmic breathing which leads to this is called ‘alchemy’. The philosopher's stone is the lapis philosophorum. The man who wrote this did not actually know what it was he was writing.

The 5th stage on the yoga path is pratyahara. It consists in being able to suppress external sensory impressions. We have to know the things that are truly our soul world and leave aside everything that has come to us from outside. Most of the things people think have come to them from outside. When someone is able to give himself up consciously to his inner thoughts and make himself blind and deaf to the world around him, though he is inwardly awake; if he is able to have a thought without reflecting on external things, his sleep will be filled with dreams and he'll be practising pratyahara.

At the 6th stage one needs not only to blot out completely anything the eyes see and the ears hear but also suppress inner ideas rising from the soul itself. Having removed everything from the soul that has come to it from life, one then holds one idea, which the guru has given, in one's inner soul. These may be ideas like those given in the first four rules in Light on the Path. The best soul contents are those a special teacher is able to give us.

Such a soul content is allowed to act for some time before one lets go of it, without losing conscious awareness. One then has the function of the life in mind and spirit, without the thinking content. When this 7th stage has been reached the world of the spirit enters into us. This condition is called samadhi.

The path of Christian gnosis is also in seven stages. This method is designed for a somewhat less subtle body and above all for the world of sentience and feeling. The Christian teacher has to guide the pupil's world of sentience and feeling. The seven stages of Christian initiation are 1) the washing of the feet, 2) the scourging, 3) the crown of thorns, 4) the crucifixion, 5) the mystic death on the cross, 6) the entombment, 7) the ascension to heaven.

It is best to consider these 7 stages by describing the way the teacher works with the pupil. The teacher will say, for instance: ‘Look at the plant. It roots and grows in the world of minerals. Addressing itself to the mineral world it would have to say: “It is to you that I owe my existence, and I am only able to live because of you. Thank you!”’ In the same way the animal should say to the plant world: ‘I owe my existence to you and am only able to live thanks to you.’ Looking at the natural world around him and at the human beings who are at a lower level, a similar feeling should live in his soul. It is never possible to develop and reach a higher level unless there are also lower levels. Because of this, people who are socially at a higher level must also go down to those who are below them and give thanks to them. Christ Jesus suggested this when at the washing of the feet he bent down to his disciples and washed their feet. Someone who is at the first stage of Christian initiation must fill his heart and mind with such a feeling of gratitude to all that is below him. Two symptoms will indicate what he has achieved. He will have an astral vision where he sees himself in the washing of the feet situation. This happens to everyone who goes through this in the right way. Secondly he will have a feeling as if water were washing around his feet.

At the 2nd stage the pupil must learn to bear all the pain and suffering that life brings and which is always present all around him. He must stand up straight, even when he has to suffer the greatest pain. The symptoms will be an astral vision where he sees himself being scourged and he will feel something like needle pricks in different places on his body.

At the 3rd stage the pupil gains the ability to bear it when scorn and derision are poured on things that are most sacred to us. The teacher says to the pupil: ‘If you are able to bear mockery and derision of what is most sacred to you and stand up for it nevertheless, you will be able to wear the crown of thorns.’ The pupil will experience a particular kind of headache when he has reached this level.

At the 4th stage he must learn to consider the body as something wholly external to himself carrying it around the way we carry around an instrument, a hammer or some other tool. In some schools the pupils learn to speak of their body like this: ‘My body goes through the door’—and the like. In his astral vision the pupil then sees himself nailed to the cross. He has Christ's stigmata on his hands and feet and on the right side of the body. Red stigmata appear at the moment of meditation and concentration.

The 5th stage is the mystic death. Here the individual feels as if a veil was placed between him and the rest of the world, like a black curtain. He then comes to know inwardly all the badness there can be in the world. Descent into hell—that is the mystic death. A vision will then show the curtain being torn apart.

At the 6th stage one has a feeling as if everything else were one's own body. You are united with the earth. That is the entombment.

The 7th stage, resurrection, cannot be put into words. Someone who goes through those feelings in his soul gains insight into the world of the spirit.

The third kind of initiation is the Rosicrucian way. It has been known in Europe from the 14th century. It is above all concerned to strengthen and empower the inner will. Where the Oriental school puts the emphasis on thinking, and the Christian school on feeling, the Rosicrucian way aims to develop the will. The stages of this way are 1) study, 2) Imagination, 3) learning the occult script, 4) bringing rhythm into life, 5) coming to understand the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, 6) contemplation of or entering into the macrocosm, 7) godliness.

For study, the pupil must have the patience to gain certain ideas concerning the world. He must first of all accept the teaching he is given. Thus he must, for example, devotedly study the teachings of elementary theosophy. He must try and enter as deeply into these as he can. Patient acquisition of ideas is essential for anyone who wants to reach higher levels. This calls for a specific way of training one's thinking, getting used to living and being active in the pure thinking element. Books such as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Truth and Knowledge¹⁵⁰ have been written for those who want to achieve Rosicrucian initiation and train their minds. It is a matter of overcoming the difficulties, which many find insurmountable, of following one's thoughts and perceiving how one thought of necessity arises from another. Oriental training required strict submission to the guru. For gnostic Christian training the pupil must put the Christ at the centre of all endeavour. In Rosicrucian Christian training the teacher is by his side, his friend and counsellor.

We are more apt to take a tumble when we come to the higher regions. It is therefore important to gain inner certainty. In everyday situations life itself puts us right. It will sometimes correct our errors in terrible ways. Such correction is not given when we ascend to the higher worlds. This is why in Oriental training one must see with one's guru's eyes and feel through him. The European teacher is a counsellor. One needs the guidance of another when ascending into the higher worlds. In the astral world, perceptions are entirely different from those we have in the physical world; and in the devachanic world, too, a new world of perceptions opens up for us. The three worlds differ completely in the impressions to be gained. But one thing is the same for all of them, and that is logical thinking. This can be a reliable guide on the astral and devachanic planes. When study has taught us to think logically, we can also manage on the astral and devachanic planes. The logic of the physical plan no longer applies on the buddhi plan, however.

The 2nd stage of Rosicrucian training is Imagination. European pupils should take their time over this, for it is easy to take a tumble. Man must learn to develop a moral relationship to things. All that is transient should be seen as a simile for something that is eternal. If we look at the natural world in this way, the autumn crocus, for instance, becomes the image for us of a solitary spirit seeking to rise upwards in a melancholy way. The violet will be a symbol of something that has its existence in undemanding, calm beauty. Every stone makes us think—it is a simile for something that lies behind it. Our world thus grows richer. Things tells us of their inmost nature. One flower will then be the tear through which the earth gives expression to its pain, another the expression of joy. Looking at a grain of rice, for example, we may observe a small flame arising from it. The small flame becomes an image of what will later be the haulm growing from the grain.

At the 3rd stage a whole world of the spirit arises from all that is. The spiritual reality, the spiritual content of all things floats above them. The whole astral world becomes visible. You then find yourself as if in the waves of the ocean, feeling as if you were floating in the sea. You see the colour of a tulip lifted out of it, as it were, and realize that this is the garment of a spiritual entity. At this third stage the pupil learns the occult script. We must learn this if we truly want to live in the astral world. Thus many things are based on a spiral in this world (Fig. 4).

We see such a spiral in the Orion nebula and in the configuration of life forms. Human and animal embryos are spiral in form at an early stage. One part is an image of the physical aspect, the other part, which winds into it, of the astral. The beginning of a new stage in human history is also symbolized by a double spiral. It is the sign of Cancer in the zodiac. When ancient Atlantis had perished and the post-Atlantean period began, with the ancient Indian race, the sun rose in the sign of Cancer at the beginning of spring. Learning the occult script we gain our orientation in the astral world.

The 4th stage consists in learning the rhythm of life. The pupil is instructed to regulate his breathing in a particular way. In nature, everything goes in rhythms. Every plant will rhythmically flower at the same time. Rhythm may also be seen in the animal world. Thus an animal is only fertile at certain times of the year. In man, however, rhythm becomes chaos. Man must create a new rhythm for his life. Many people only have rhythms that are imposed on them. Generally speaking, people do not have rhythms chosen of their own free will. The Rosicrucian must see to it that his life becomes rhythmical. Rhythm is given to the breathing process according to special instructions given by the teacher.

The 5th stage is getting to know the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. A bond exists between human beings and all things around them in this world. Ordinarily this only shows itself as love between the two sexes, the feeling that the one person finds in the other exactly what is familiar and related to him, what belongs to him. Many things are due to this mysterious relationship between world and man. An example is Paracelsus' discovery of the relationships that exist between certain plants and man. Having this ability he also came to know how other substances relate to man.¹⁵¹ He called someone suffering from cholera an Arsenicus, because arsenic will evoke exactly the symptoms in a healthy person which one also sees in a case of cholera.¹⁵² One can have a personal relationship, a loving relationship with all things, one that is wholly of the spirit. This must be practised. You achieve it by following specific directions. If you think of the point that lies between the eyebrows and above the root of the nose in relation to a particular word, insight into a quite specific process in the world will come to you after some time. Thinking of the inner eye you gain knowledge of the sun's nature, of the processes that occurred when sun and earth were still one heavenly body. Another exercise makes it possible to know the moon in its spiritual aspect, or the condition of the earth 18 million years ago.

You then enter deeply into the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. Concentration on the point between the eyebrows and above the root of the nose you are able to penetrate into the time when the I entered into the human being. The human being then grows into the macrocosm in his conscious mind. He has to practise this for some time, growing into all things, be they far or near.

The 7th stage is that of godliness, when one grows beyond the limited bodily shell and is able to live with the macrocosm.

Pupils are instructed according to their occult status. When a pupil has gone through these stages as a real experience, he has reached the summit of insight into higher worlds.

• 148. Subba Row (Rao) (1856–1890), Indian scholar. Esoteric Writings, 2nd edition, Adyar 1931.
• 149. Karl Arnold Kortüm (1745–1828) published a treatise on the philosopher's stone in a paper called the Reichsanzeiger on 8 October 1976. Those able to read German may also see Kleeberg L. Wege und Worte 2. Aufl., Fussnote auf Seite 131. Stuttgart 1961.
• 150. Steiner R. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4). Tr. R. Stebbing. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989. Steiner R. Truth and Knowledge (GA 3). Tr. R. Stebbing. West Nyack NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1963.
• 151. Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493–1541), son of a Swiss physician. Studied alchemy and chemistry at Basel, the properties of metals and minerals in mines. Later town physician at Basel, moving to Salzburg in 1541. Revolutionized old medical methods, basing himself on empiricism.
• 152. ‘It arises from this that you shall not say “that is cholera”, “that is melancholia”, but “that is Arsenicus, that is Aluminosum”; and thus also "he is of Saturn, he is of Mars”, not “he is of melancholia, he is of cholera”. Then one part is of the heavens, one part of the earth, mingled together like fire and wood, so that each may lose its name; then they are two things in one.’ From Paragranum, collected medical works in German, edited by K. Sudhoff vol. 8 p. 74. Munich 1922–23.

We really ought to acquaint ourselves, somewhat, with the fundamental problem and fundamental currents of Christianity, if we wish to throw light upon the two ideals of the Christian world-conception in all their profundity. You already know, through previous lectures, that the teachings of Christianity, as generally proclaimed, are based upon a so-called esoteric Christianity. You know, moreover, that even in the Gospels we find intimations concerning this esoteric Christianity, clearly expressed in the words: When the Lord stood before the people He spoke in parables, but when he was alone with His disciples He explained these parables unto them. Thus, it is clear that He gave one form of his Teaching to those who had less understanding—to whom it was necessary to speak in parables, for it was not yet possible to go into things any deeper with them; and He proclaimed another Teaching which was destined for the initiated.

In the same way, also, Paul—the great expander of Christianity—taught, before the people, an external form of that Teaching, which we know through his Epistles. On the other hand, in addition to this Teaching of Paul—which was an external Teaching, meant for the people—he expounded an esoteric Teaching, as well. External history knows nothing about the fact that Paul founded the esoteric School at Athens, which was under the leadership of Dionysius. In this School of esoteric Christianity, the same Mystery-Teaching, or Occultism, was taught, which you also—at the present time—are learning to know anew, through Spiritual Science. Scientific learning does not know very much concerning those Teachings which were proclaimed at that time, at Athens, by the esoteric companions of St. Paul, to their more intimate disciples. One even speaks about a false Dionysius, because—it is said—it is not possible to prove that any of these Teachings were ever recorded in writing.

Pseudo-Dionysius is the name given to the man who taught this form of esotericism during the 6th century. Yet only those persons can call him by that name who do not know what was customary, in earlier times, in connection with Initiate-teachings of this sort. Only in our days has it become customary for people to record everything, as quickly as possible, in writing. Whatever was contained in the holiest Truth was preserved from publicity, in those days. One to whom such a Truth was to be entrusted was first scrutinised carefully. Only within the esoteric Schools was this Truth passed on from mouth to mouth—and only to such persons as could really value it aright. Thus it was that these particular teachings of esoteric Christianity were likewise handed down from man to man—till, finally, some of them were written down during the sixth century. Since it was customary for the leaders of such a School to always bear the name of Dionysius, the leader of this School at Athens, during the sixth century, therefore also bore this name—the same name which had been borne by his great predecessor at Athens, the friend of Paul.

Let us now consider in the spirit of this esoteric School, and actually in the way in which it was taught there, the concept of Sin, or, we might say, of slander against the Holy Ghost—and the Christian concept of Grace.

If we wish to grasp the fundamental meaning of Christianity, we must return, in thought, to a very remote past in the history of human evolution; and we must realise that, through the appearance of Christ-Jesus, something entirely new has actually been impressed upon the history of the spiritual evolution of humanity. What it is that has thus been impressed finds its fervent expression in the initiation of Paul himself.

The fact that a man like Saul, through so sudden an illumination, could attain to complete conviction of the Truth of Christianity, would not have been possible before the appearance of Christ-Jesus. We have already often spoken about the form of initiation which preceded the appearance of Christ-Jesus upon earth. Let us now do this, once again, in order to understand what the Spirit of Truth really signifies, in the Christian sense. If we wish to grasp what is was that took place, in the ancient sites of initiation, we must briefly recall to our minds the nature and being of man.

We know that man consists of a seven-fold being. His physical body is built up out of the same substances as those contained in the lifeless materials of the physical world. His etheric body calls these forces into life, and works—at every moment of life—against the decay of the physical body; only at death does the etheric or life-body go out of the physical body. The crystal is able to hold its substances together, through its own forces; the living body, on the other hand, decays as soon as it is abandoned and left to itself. It is indeed a fact that, at every moment, there is a fighter battling within this body against death; if this fighter ceases to battle, death ensues.

Man's third member is the astral body, or the consciousness-body. His fourth member is the Ego; by means of this member he is the crown of creation.

All Mystery-Teachings have thought of man as being built up of these four members. In the Pythagorean School, each disciple had to be introduced, first of all, to this Teaching of the fourfold man. Only when this Teaching had become his innermost conviction, could he be advanced to higher knowledge. Hence he had to take this vow: "I vow allegiance, by virtue of what is deeply engraved in our hearts: to the holy fourfold Being, to the sublime spiritual symbol—the primal fount of all natural and spiritual Creation."

Even the most undeveloped human being has these four members. Man evolves, throughout the course of his various incarnations, to an ever greater degree o perfection, through the fact that the Ego works upon these three members of his being.

It begins, first of all, within the astral body, to work upon everything that constitutes the progress of civilisation and logical scientific learning—upon everything, that is to say, which serves to bring about a freedom from the animal stage. This is the work of the Ego upon the astral body. In the case of every moderately-developed human being, whose Ego has already worked upon the astral body, we find that the astral body divides into two parts: into the originally existing part, and that part produced by the Ego. This latter part which expands more and more—the more the human being progresses—is designated by the name of Manas or Spirit-Self.

Christian esotericism designates this part as the Holy Ghost—the Holy Spirit, in contrast to the unpurified, unholy part of the astral body.

Thus, we have learned to know the fifth member. But the Ego can also work upon the more dense, etheric body. In a certain sense, this already takes place in the ordinary human being—that is to say, unconsciously. It has often been stated that we should learn to distinguish between the work upon the astral and the etheric bodies. The ratio of speed, in the progress of the first of these, in relation to the latter, may be compared with the movement of the minute-hand of the clock, in relation to the hour-hand. If a human being surrenders himself to the impression made upon him by some lofty work of art, this has a transforming effect upon his life-body and his consciousness-body. Every great artistic impulse has this effect. Strongest of all is the effect of those religious impulses which were brought into the world by the founders of religions, and which direct the Ego toward the Eternal. The clairvoyant eye can see how the etheric body becomes more and more beautiful and pure.

That part of the human etheric body which is spiritualised by the Ego, is called Budhi or Life-Spirit; it is the transformed life-body. Christian esotericism designates this part, which is transformed by the Ego, the Christos. The fifth member of the human being is the Holy Ghost—the sixth member is the Christ, the inner Christos.

Our attention has already been called to the fact that so-called Mystery-schoolings, or preparations, have always existed for man—enabling him to become an Initiate, and to look into the spiritual world. Such a training is based upon the transformation, on a higher plane, of the etheric or life-body. For this reason, we must be quite clear in our realisation that every higher form of schooling is more than a mere acquisition of concepts and material for study. The occult training consists, rather, in the transformation of the qualities of our etheric body. Anyone who has transformed a temperament has thereby achieved far more than if he had acquired an infinite amount of scientific learning.

Now, there is a still higher form of metamorphosis, which takes place only through secret or occult schooling. Through this, the human being purifies his physical body. How much, indeed, does man know concerning his physical body! Through the fact that he examines it by dissection in an "anatomical museum" he does not by any means acquire any real knowledge concerning the laws which rule it, nor any inner control of these laws. Yet there is a possibility for him to look into himself, so that the movements of the nerve-currents, of the pulse-beat, and of the breath-streams, will become clear to him, and he can then be consciously active within these. When the human being, accordingly—through so-called occult training—is able to transform his physical body also, this now transformed body is designated as Atman, because the work upon it begins with the regulation of the breathing processes. (In German "Atmen" means: to breathe.) The seventh member of the human being is Atman—in Christian esotericism: the Father.

Thus we first attain to the Holy Ghost, to the transformed astral body; through the Holy Ghost we come to the Christ—to the consciousness of the etheric body; and through the Christ, to the Father, or the consciousness of the physical body.

If you have understood how these seven members of human nature are inter-related, you will also understand how Initiation took place in ancient times, before Christ, and how this Initia-tion took place, after Christ-Jesus had appeared on the earth.

When the human being is asleep, only his physical and etheric bodies lie in bed—his astral body is outside. When he dies, he leaves his physical body behind: only that part of the physical body which he has already transformed goes with him: forces, that is to say, not substances. What the human being thus takes with him, is very little indeed. Nevertheless, it is just this part which, in a new incarnation, serves to build up a new physical body. Materialism designates this part as the "permanent atom". And this part of the physical body, which the human being himself has transformed, is the first to leave the physical body; then the etheric body leaves it; then the consciousness-body, and then the Ego. After a short time, that part of the etheric body which the human being has not yet worked upon separates itself.

Thus it is that the human being enters Kamaloca, the Place of Purification. After another period of time, that part of the astral body which the Ego has not yet worked upon, severs itself likewise… And then there comes the time when the human being has left to him, from his three bodies, only those parts which the Ego has worked upon and transformed, through its own forces; and this is what passes through Devachan—this is the eternal kernel of man's being. It increases more and more, the more the Ego has worked upon it.

The Holy Ghost is the eternal Spirit in man. The Christ is the eternal part of the life-body; the Father, the eternal part of the physical body. These Three accompany the human being throughout all time, as that part of him which is eternal.

Before the Christian era, Initiation took place in such a way that the disciple was first prepared for everything which Mystery Teaching was able to give, until he reached the point where he was familiar with all the concepts and ideas, all the habits and feelings which are needed for living and perceiving in the higher worlds. This was followed by what was designated as the Awakening, which lasted for three and a half days and three nights. This consisted of a process whereby, through the skill of the Temple-Priest, the human being was artificially placed in a condition resembling death, for three and a half days. Whereas, normally the physical and etheric bodies remain connected during sleep, the initiating priest now drew out, during this space of time, the etheric body of the disciple about to be initiated, so that only a very loose connection existed between the etheric and physical body, on the one hand, and the remaining two bodies, on the other hand. It was a deep, trance-like sleep. The Ego of the man lived in the higher worlds, during this period of time. As the disciple had been given a knowledge of the higher worlds, he now felt at home there. The Priest was his guide. First of all, the Priest had to free the etheric body from the lethargic physical body, in order to lead it out of the physical body; in a fully-conscious state, the human being would never have been able to rise to these higher worlds ; it was necessary for him to be lifted out of such a state. Although the experiences which a human being passed through in such a process, were sublime and overpowering, he was nevertheless entirely in the hands of the Priest; he was under the power of another, and only under these conditions was he able to enter the higher worlds.

What the human being was like, after having passed through this experience, may be imagined if we bear in mind that it gave him the opportunity of experiencing his own eternal being: he was then emancipated from the part which was not eternal—his physical body—which he could not use, if he wished to move about in the higher worlds. Such a human being returned as one endowed with knowledge—as one who could bear witness, through his own vision, to the victory of life over death. Those who could bear witness, in this way, were Initiates. Their etheric body had to be lifted out of the physical body, in order that they might experience the Christos in man. These Initiates were able to say to themselves: "I have learned through my own experience that there is a part in man, which is eternal, which outlasts all incarnations. I know it, for I myself have experienced this eternal kernel of man's being". In order to attain to this, they were obliged to dwell for three days in a state of profound, dream-like sleep.

But there was something else that was connected with this—this kind of Initiation was dependent upon still another factor. And, the further we go back in time, the more we realise the truth of this. I have already characterised this to you, when I once explained that, in ancient times, there existed what we might call "close marriage", in contrast to distant marriage. In all nations, we find small communities which were inter-related; people married within these communities, and it was considered immoral to abandon them by marrying outside. The same blood always streamed through these marriages. Only very gradually was this close marriage substituted by the principle of distant marriage. Indeed, in the case of initiation, very special measures had to be observed, it was necessary to choose most carefully, from preceding incarnations, in order to produce the best possible mixture o blood. Such a genealogy then produced the one who was capable of passing through the higher grades of Initiation. In the case of persons related by blood, it is especially easy to draw the etheric body out of the physical body. In the case of distant marriages, this is by no means so easy. Throughout long generations of priests, it was their duty to see that the blood was maintained in a specially determined way. Human life is complicated; it does not always follow a straight road; and it is necessary to penetrate more and more deeply into the riddles of existence.

In ever increasing measure, this principle of close marriage was broken; the tribe extended more and more to the folk or nation. In the case of the Israelites, we see how the tribal principle rose completely to the idea of the national community. Christ extends this perspective into the far distant future: "He that forsaketh not his father, mother, brother or sister for my sake, cannot be my disciple."—In a stern, yet in a most deeply true way, do these words indicate the direction followed by Christianity. Within the national community, one would say: This is my brother, for he was born in the same nation. in the human brotherhood, which must encompass the whole human race, one should say: Because you are a human being, you are my brother. This is the most profound of all Christian principles. All narrow-mindedness contained in the other form of relationship must be torn asunder, and a common tie must unite human beings. At the same time, this implies also that the old principle of Initiation has been torn asunder; for it was based upon relationship of the blood.

The new principle of Initiation—which is not connected, since the coming of Christ, with any physical quality—is clearly indicated to us, in the case of Paul: He is initiated in the Light, not in the darkness of the Temple. This could not have taken place, earlier. When we bear this in mind, we shall be able to realise the tremendous turning-point brought about by Christ Jesus. The way to this was prepared by Moses, Zarathustra Buddha, Pythagoras;—but it was brought to fulfilment by Christ-Jesus.

Thus we see also that in the Christian Schools of Initiation this new principle is carried through, for the first time—the principle of not drawing the human being out of the physical body, in order to lead him into the higher worlds, but of leading him into the higher worlds while completely conscious in his physical body. This is what took place, accordingly, in the Christian esoteric Schools. In contrast to this, there is the old way—and this still includes a great part of humanity, even at the present time—in which there is the initiating Temple-priest, to whose stern authority the neophyte surrenders himself. Only by subjecting oneself entirely to the power of such an Initiating priest, was it possible to ascend to higher worlds.

The principle of enforced authority came to expression also in social life. The Priests were rulers. Every law of government, the whole structure of the state, was in the power of the Initiates. From the blood-community of the tribe, up to the community of the nation, this was possible. But, through the fact that the old principle of initiation was eliminated, the way was opened for an entirely new form of authority: a free authority, based solely upon trust and confidence. "Believe only in the one whom you trust"—this is the most sublime Christian idea to which we can rise, by virtue of which we all face one another as brothers, and the one who, stands higher will be recognised as the one who deserves our trust.

"Watch and pray": this is a fundamental Christian principle. The new Initiation takes place in a state of full consciousness. "You will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free”: these are profoundly Christian words, for they signify a perspective into the farthest future of Christianity. Christianity is at the beginning of its evolution.

Let us consider the intensely close tie that existed between the initiating Teacher and the disciple, during the ancient Temple-Sleep, which lasted three and a half days—when the neophyte was being initiated into the highest Mysteries. This relation was of a kind which we cannot even imagine, to-day. The relation between the hypnotiser and the one who is hypnotised may give a faint idea of the way in which the initiating Temple-priest first called to life the Holy Ghost, and then the Christos. The disciple reflected the Holy Ghost and the Christos of the Teacher: the personalities of the Teacher and the disciple streamed into each other, and the clairvoyant could observe the process. During the three days, the Teacher and disciple were one. The Ego of the Guru thus lived on, in all of his disciples, and was deeply merged with them, during the three and a half days.

Let us observe the pyramidal structure of social life: the folk below; above the folk, the Initiates; and, above these, the Teachers of the Initiates. One and the same Spirit streamed down through all these stages. Many things, consequently, passed over into, and lived on, in those who were initiated in this way—even things that were alien to them.

As a result of the Christian principle, the individuality appeared in its full value. This explains the fundamental principle of Christian initiation. Never should the disciple become merged with the Teacher in the old way. They must not become one person, during Initiation. The Holy Ghost must arise, and awaken within the Ego of each single human being: this has become the principle of Christian Initiation. And this is also expressed symbolically, in the miracle of Pentecost. The possibility of Initiation, in that case, was given through the fact that all who were present began to speak in different tongues.

The Teacher respects the individuality of the other person; he enters into the heart of his disciple—he does not draw this out of the physical body.

We should bear in mind that, for the modern human being, everything depends upon the free and independent development, within each one, of the Holy Ghost and the Christos. We shall then realise that it is through this principle of Christianity that—for the first time, indeed—this human personality can be looked upon as free and independent. Only through Christianity has the human individuality become really free; and, for this reason, through Christianity, an entirely new relation to Truth and Wisdom has become necessary.

In olden times, the spirit of Wisdom ruled over all things, because it was centralised. Through the cleavage that followed, it became de-centralised; but Egoism arose. The more the principle of distant marriage begins to hold sway, the greater must become the power of that element which brings together human beings, now become free. And what is this element? If we consider what we may learn to-day, in the elementary parts of spiritual science, and then go back to ancient times, we shall find that this knowledge was in the possession of small communities only—and, indeed, even then, only in the possession of the highest authority. For this reason, the ruling principle was based upon compulsion. We are now approaching the time when Wisdom will become m.re and more popular. This will be the means whereby the great Brotherhood of humanity will be established.

Two occultists will never be of a different opinion. Where-ever this is the case, one of the two opinions is wrong. Wisdom is something unified—a oneness—which cannot contain differences. The more individualised human beings become, the more they will need this wisdom; for, through it, they will be drawn together. To-day, we are living in an age of transition. The principle of different viewpoints ceases entirely, through the progressive development of Wisdom. The more individualised men become, the wiser they must grow; for knowledge will lead them together. This is the Spirit of Wisdom which Christ-Jesus his promised to His followers. The Sun of Wisdom draws into itself all differing standpoints—just as the sun attracts the plants. The Spirit which will make men free, is the Holy Ghost. Against this Spirit, no Christian may ever sin. For he who sins against it, sins against Christianity itself—against that promised Spirit which is able to draw together all separate human individualities.

There is a passage which tells us that Christ-Jesus cast out demons. Demons exist only as long as the human being is not free—as long as he has not yet received into himself the Spirit of Wisdom. The human being is absolutely filled with all kinds of beings, which stream in and out of his lower members. (Perhaps we may use the trivial comparison of a piece of cheese, with maggots creeping in and out of it). We call these beings shadows, spectres, ghosts, or demons. In making Himself known as the Spirit who casts out demons, Christ-Jesus has shown that He is the Spirit of Freedom. For demons can be cast out only by calling forth the one Spirit against the others—the Spirit of Freedom against all the other spirits.

Let us now consider once more the ancient communities—extending from the tribal community to the nation. How may these human beings, who are not yet individually free, be drawn together? Imagine to yourselves that everyone who is sitting here has become truly free—that the Spirit of Truth lives in each one! Would we, in that case, ever quarrel, ever fall into dissension? No—for where the Spirit unites us, there can be no divergence of opinions. In ancient times, external law had to hold sway, in order to hold human beings together. Where two human beings know the Spirit of Truth, they will, because of this, feel themselves drawn to each other.

At the beginning of human evolution was the Law: at the end of evolution, there will be peaceful, harmonious cooperation from within. Esoteric Christianity calls this, in contrast to the Law—Grace. To be able to share, in complete harmony, the feelings of one's fellow-man: this is the profoundest concept of Christianity.

The astral body that has been filled with the Holy Ghost, is the same in all men—the Spirit of Truth, in each one, is the same. Imagine to yourselves this Spirit within a human individuality in which also the Christos has been awakened—that is to say, that principle which is active as Life-Spirit within the Life-Body. If each one of us were to permeate his etheric body with this feeling, we should then have, in every heart, the feeling for the One, unified Spirit. Human individualities are brought together by the Wisdom which is common to all; and what each one feels within himself, is Caritas—Grace.

The One who brought Grace to earth was He Who, at the beginning of our Era, contained within His own individuality the whole Christos—the One Who fulfilled, for the first time, the principle of humanity, as a whole. Christ-Jesus developed in Himself what should live in every single human being. Whatever exists through freedom and peaceful cooperation, has come into the world through Him.

"Become alive again in Christ and kill the Spirit of discord", says Paul.

A human being may sin against everything which is not contained in this Spirit. But, if he were to sin against this Spirit of a common humanity, if he were to deny this Spirit—he would no longer be a Christian.

The human being must reach the stage of being conscious of the Spirit. If he develops himself, ever more and more, his consciousness-body becomes transformed into the Holy Ghost. It is for this reason that the Sin against the Holy Ghost cannot be forgiven. In the case of an uninitiated person, the transformation of the etheric body takes place unconsciously. As long as the human being is not initiated, the unforgivable sin can be committed only within his astral body. The Initiate may not sin, even against the physical or etheric body: to the one who is not initiated, these sins may be forgiven. All of this takes place with the help of those who are the Leaders of humanity.