The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In 1913 on the hill in Dornach near Basel, Switzerland, construction had begun on the building then known as the Johannesbau and later to be called the Goetheanum, the central headquarters of the anthroposophical movement. Members of the Anthroposophical Society from all parts of the world had been called upon to work on the building, and they were joined by a growing number of others who moved to Dornach, either permanently or temporarily, on their own initiative. Thus a unique center of anthroposophical activity developed in Dornach, a center that was, understandably enough, burdened with the shortcomings and problems unavoidable in such a group.

In the summer of 1914, these difficulties escalated when World War I broke out, since people from many different nations, including those at war, had to work together and get along with each other. Isolation from the rest of the world and, last but not least, both local and more widespread opposition to the building and the people it attracted, further complicated the situation. In spite of all obstacles, however, the building continued to grow under the artistic leadership of Rudolf Steiner, who was well-loved as a teacher and felt by all to be a bulwark of constancy. But in the summer of 1915 all this changed as a result of incidents that threatened to test the Dornach group, and thus the Anthroposophical Society as a whole, to the breaking point.

Rudolf Steiner's marriage to Marie von Sivers at Christmas of 1914 had provoked not only general gossip, but also some bizarre mystical behavior on the part of a member named Alice Sprengel¹ Heinrich Goesch (see below) and his wife Gertrud seized upon her strange ideas and made use of them in personal attacks on Rudolf Steiner. Since this was done publicly in the context of the Society, Rudolf Steiner asked that the Society itself resolve the case. This resulted in weeks of debate, at the end of which all three were expelled from the Society. Rudolf and Marie Steiner did not take part either in the debates or in the decision to rescind their membership.

The documents that follow reconstruct the events of the case in the sequence in which they occurred.

Alice Sprengel (b. 1871 in Scotland, d. 1949 in Bern, Switzerland) had joined the Theosophical Society in Munich in the summer of 1902, at a time when Rudolf Steiner had not yet become General Secretary for Germany. She joined the German Section a few years later. In a notice issued by the Vorstand of the Anthroposophical Society in the fall of 1915 informing members about the case, Miss Sprengel is described as having undergone unusual suffering in her childhood. At the time of her entry into the Society, she still impressed people as being very dejected. In addition, she was unemployed at that time and outwardly in very unfortunate circumstances. For that reason, efforts were made to help her.

Marie Steiner, then Marie von Sivers, sponsored her involvement in the Munich drama festival in 1907 and arranged for her to be financially supported by members in Munich. In order to help her find a means of supporting herself in line with her artistic abilities, Rudolf Steiner advised her on making symbolic jewelry and the like for members of the Society. It was also made possible for her to make the move to Dornach in 1914. She, however, interpreted this generous assistance to mean that she had a significant mission to fulfill within the Society. Having been given the role of Theodora in Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas fed her delusions with regard to her mission, as did the fact that toward the end of the year 1911, in conjunction with the project to construct a building to house the mystery dramas, Rudolf Steiner had made an attempt to found a “Society for Theosophical Art and Style” in which she had been nominated as “keeper of the seal” because of her work as an artist. She imagined having lived through important incarnations and even believed herself to be the inspirer of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual teachings. In addition, having been asked to play Theodora gave rise to the delusion that she had received a symbolic promise of marriage from Rudolf Steiner, and she then suffered a breakdown as a result of Rudolf Steiner's marriage to Marie von Sivers at Christmas 1914. Her letters to Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner, reproduced below, clearly reveal that she was deeply upset.

Letter from Alice Sprengel to Rudolf Steiner
(undated; received December 25, 1914. Cf. p. 159.)

“Seven years now have passed,” ² Dr. Steiner, since you appeared to my inner vision and said to me, “I am the one you have spent your life waiting for; I am the one for whom the powers of destiny intended you.”

You saw the struggles and doubts this experience occasioned in me; you knew that in the end my conviction was unshakable—yes, so it is. And you waited for my soul to open and for me to speak about this. Yet I remained silent, because my heart was broken. Long before I learned of theosophy, but also much more recently, I had had many experiences that made me say, “I willingly accept whatever suffering life brings me, no matter how hard it may be. After all, I have been shown by the spirit that it cannot be different.” But this is something that seems to go beyond the original plan of destiny; I lack the strength to bear it, and so it kills something in me, destroys forces I should once have possessed. These experiences were mostly instances of people deliberately abusing my confidence, and all in the name of love. But I had the feeling that this was not only my own fault; it seemed as if the will of destiny was inflicting more on me than I could bear.

I had some vague idea of why that might be so. Once, some years ago, I heard a voice within me saying, “There are beings in the spiritual world whose work requires that human beings sustain hope, but they have no interest in seeing these hopes fulfilled—on the contrary.” At that point I was not fully aware of what we were later to hear about the mystery of premature death, of goals not achieved, and so forth.

Then, however, I bore within me a wish and a hope that seemed like a proclamation from the spiritual world. This wish and this hope had made it possible for me to bear the unbearable; they worked in me with such tremendous force that they carried me along with them. My soul was in such a condition, however, that it could neither relinquish them nor tolerate their fulfillment, or, to put it better, it could not live up to what their fulfillment would have demanded of it. Thus I could not come to clarity on what the above-mentioned experience meant for me as an earthly human being. Neither the teaching nor the teacher was enough to revive my soul; that could only be done by a human being capable of greater love than any other and thus capable of compensating for a greater lack of love.

I can no longer remain silent; it speaks in me and forces me to speak. Years ago I begged you for advice, asked for enlightenment, and your words gave me hope and comfort. I am grateful for that, but today I would no longer be able to bear it. Why did you say to me recently that I looked well, that I should persevere? Did you think I was already aware of the step you are taking now, and that I had already “gotten over it”? I was as far from that as ever.

In conclusion, I ask that you let Miss von Sivers read this letter.

Alice Sprengel

Letter from Alice Sprengel to Rudolf Steiner

Dear Dr. Steiner,

This will probably be my last letter to you; I will never turn to you again, neither in speaking nor in writing. I only want to tell you that I see no way out for myself; I am at my wits' end. As the weeks gone by have showed me, it is inconceivable that time will alleviate or wipe out anything that has happened; it will only bring to light what is hidden. Until now I have more or less managed to conceal how I feel, but I will not be able to do so indefinitely. I feel a melancholy settling in on me; being together with others and feeling their attentiveness is a torment to me, but I also cannot tolerate being alone for any length of time. I feel that everything that was to develop in me and flow into our movement through me has been buried alive.

My life stretches ahead of me, but it is devoid of any breath of air that makes life possible. And yet, in the darkest hour of my existence, I feel condemned to live—but my soul will be dead. Desolation and numbness will alternate with bouts of pain. I cannot imagine how the tragedy will end. It is likely, though, that I will show some signs of sorrow in weeks to come, and it may well be that I will say and do things that will surprise me as much as anyone else. I do not have the feeling that my words will arouse any echo in you. I feel as if I were talking to a picture. Since that time early on in those seven years when I stood bodily in front of you and you appeared to me as the embodiment of the figure that had been revealed to my inner vision, you have become unreal to me. Then, your voice sounded as sweet and comforting as my own hopes. You restored my soul with mysterious hints and promises that were so often contradicted in the course of events. And when my soul wanted to unfold under that radiant gaze of yours in which I could read that you knew what had happened to me, something looked at me out of your eyes, crying “This is a temptation.”

The most terrible thing was to have what stood before me in visible human form become unreal to me. And yet, I had the feeling that there was something real behind all this. I do not know what power makes your essential being a reality for me. You know that I have struggled for my faith and will continue to do so as long as there is a glimmer of life in me. You also know how I have pleaded with that Being whose light and teachings you must bring to those who suffer the terrible fate of being human, pleaded that whatever guilt may flow on my account may not disturb you in your mission, and I have the feeling that I have been heard. Nevertheless, the shadow of what has happened to me will fall across your path, just as it will darken my future earthly lives. That shadow will also fall across the continued existence of our movement and upon the destiny of our building. If the mystery dramas are ever performed again, you will have to have another Theodora, and since I will never be able to come to terms with what has happened, the very doors of the temple are closed to me in future. I wonder if, under these circumstances, there will ever again… I do not need to finish the sentence.

I sense that, on an occult level, this is a terrible state of affairs. Is there no way out?

Only a miracle can help in this case.

I am well aware that deliverance is possible, and if it were not to come, it would be terrible, and not only for me.

Let me tell you a story by way of conclusion, the story of the “soeur gardienne.” ³

During the preparations for the plays during the summer of 1913, I noticed that you were not satisfied with me, and when it was all over I felt like a sick person who knows the doctor has given up on her. That feeling never left me from then on, and I could tell you of many instances, especially in recent months, when I felt a deathly chill come over me although your words actually sounded encouraging. The feeling grew stronger whenever I encountered anyone who knew what lay ahead. Why do I feel as if someone had slapped me in the face? Don't they all look as if they were part of a plot? That's what came to mind on many occasions, but I was relatively cheerful then and put it out of my mind. But all this is just a digression.

Two summers ago, shortly before the rehearsals began, I read La Soeur Gardienne. I had always assumed that Miss von Sivers would play the title role. On reading it, however, I began to doubt that the role would suit her; in fact, it seemed to me that she would not even want to play that part. And then I noticed how the figure came alive within me—it spoke, it moved in me. It was my role. If only I were allowed to play it! I saw what it would mean to me, and it was too beautiful to be true. Then invisible eyes looked at me, and I heard, “They will not give you that part, so resign yourself.” In my experience, that voice had always been correct. In view of the existing situation, I said to myself, “Dr. Steiner knows as well as I do that I had this experience; he must have good reasons for arranging things this way in spite of it—and as far as Miss von Sivers is concerned, I must have been mistaken—the whole thing must simply be another one of the incomprehensible disappointments that run like a red thread through my life.”

My soul collapsed; I behaved as calmly as I could, but that did not seem to be good enough. Your behavior as well as Miss von Sivers' was totally incomprehensible to me. They were looking everywhere for someone, anyone, to take the title role, and no one seemed to think of me; anyone else seemed more desirable. And yet people were making comments about how strange it was that I had nothing to do in that play. I held back, because at one point I was really afraid I would have to play a different role. Performances have been more or less the only occasions in my life where I could breathe freely, so to speak, where I could give of myself. But that was only true when I played parts that lived in me, like Theodora and Persephone. But when a role didn't sit well with me, it increased the pressure I was living under for quite some time. That is why I was not as unconcerned about these things as others might be; for me it was a matter of life and death. In the midst of all this tension something befell me that I had already experienced countless times before in many different situations and against which I have always been defenseless. My soul crumples as soon as it happens. Once again, “it” looked at me and said, “This is a lesson for you!” (or sometimes it said “a test” or “an ordeal”).

I felt the effects in my soul of countless experiences, repeated daily, hourly, going back to my earliest childhood. I do not know why my surroundings have always been tempted to participate wrongfully in my inner life. Only here and only very recently have I been able to ward this off, but it has forced me into complete isolation. What my foster parents, teachers, playmates, friends, and even strangers used to do to see what kind of a face I would make or to guess at how I would react! And much more than that. As I said, these experiences were so frequent that I could not deal with them; they suffocated me. Mostly I took it all calmly, thinking they didn't know any better. Now, however, in the situation I described, these semi-conscious memories played a trick on me—and I was overcome by anger. And then this summer, a year later, I had to relive the whole thing. And it occurred to me that I should have told you about what went before it.

As I said, those words “This is a lesson for you” always made me stiffen and freeze. When I look back on my life, it seems as if a devilish wisdom had foreseen all the possibilities life would bring to me in these last few years, and as if this intelligence had done its utmost to make me unfit for them. I could watch it at work, and yet was powerless to do anything. Much could be said about why that happened. But nothing in my own soul or in any single soul could ever help me over this abyss. Only the spark leaping from soul to soul, the spark that is so weak now, so very weak, can make the miracle happen now…

February 5

I have just read over what I wrote, and now I wonder, is it really all right for everything to happen as I described? That is how it would have to happen if everything stays as it is now. But don't we all three feel how destiny stands between us? Can it really be that there is one among us who does not know what has to happen next? That will bring many things to light; the course of events to come depends on what had been one person's secret. This is truly a test, but not only for me. What was hidden shall be revealed.

I still have one thing to say to you, my teacher and guide: even though the tempter looks out of your eyes, there have been times when I experienced with a shudder that what was revealed to me also meant something to you, something that has not been given its due. However, this must happen and will happen—you know that well, and so does

The Keeper of the Seal

Excerpt from a letter from Alice Sprengel to Marie Steiner
(undated; received on August 21, 1915. Cf. p. 139 and p. 160.)

I know that people who have “occult experiences” are a calamity as far as the people in positions of responsibility in our movement are concerned, and understandably so, but still, that is what our movement is there for—to come to grips with things like that.

The relationship between you and Dr. Steiner is not the point right now; no, it is the relationship between you and myself. However, your civil marriage unleashed a disaster for me, one that I had feared and seen coming for years—not in its actual course of events, you understand, but in its nature and severity. That is to say, for years I had seen something developing between my teacher and me, something to which we can indeed apply what we have heard in the last few days, though not for the first time. It has a will of its own and laws of its own and cannot be exorcised with any clever magic word. As I said, I had sufficient self-knowledge to know what had to come if nothing happened to prevent it.

Three years ago, like a sick person seeking out a physician, I asked Dr. Steiner for a consultation. There was something very sad I had to say during that interview, and I have had to say it frequently since then: Although I could follow his teachings, I could not understand anything of what affected me directly or of what happened to me. I must omit what brought me to the point of saying this, since I do not know how much you know about my background and biography. I was not able to express my need, and Dr. Steiner made it clear that he did not want to hear about it. The following summer, however, we were graced with the opportunity to perform The Guardian of the Threshold; in it a conversation takes place between Strader and Theodora, a conversation that reflected in the most delicate way the very thing that was oppressing me. Perhaps Dr. Steiner did not “intend” anything of the sort; nevertheless, it is a fact. Perhaps it was meant as an attempt at healing. I do not understand…

In recent lectures given here my endeavour has been to show how in the middle of the 19th century a flood of materialism burst into the evolutionary process of humanity, and how from different sides it was felt that a flood of materialism of this kind had never previously been known, and that furthermore there was a certain significance in the way it had arisen I also tried to bring home the fact that men must arm themselves if they are to continue along the path of evolution once laid down for humanity.

Particularly in the most recent lectures¹ I described the efforts that were made from different quarters concerned with the furtherance of cultural aims akin to those of spiritual science to inculcate an element which was deemed necessary in order to demonstrate to men that something entirely new must be added to the old. Naturally, a very great deal more could be said about this subject, and as time goes on, there will be opportunities for speaking of many aspects of it—for illustrations will have to be given of what was presented in the first place more in the form of narrative. Today, however, I want to show that towards the middle of the 19th century there were evidences in the external spiritual life, too, of a feeling that a crucial point had been reached. In the external spiritual life—that is to say, in the different philosophical movements, the literary movement and so on—there are evidences that a convulsive element interpolated itself into the course of evolution. As numbers of illustrations could be given, it is obviously only possible to select one or two.

I will take as our starting-point today, two examples from European literature. These examples will show that in the hearts and minds of some men there was a feeling that significant things were taking place in the invisible worlds.

One of these examples is Gutzkow's novel “The Mahaguru”—the great Guru.² The second—remarkably enough it was written at about the same time—is the extraordinarily interesting drama which ends with the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”³ So far as my knowledge of it goes, it seems to me to represent a crowning point in Polish literature of the 19th century.

It is remarkable that in the thirties of the 19th century, the young freethinker Gutzkow—then in his twenties—should have chosen this particular material in order to point to much that was astir at that time, linking it on to a personage who subsequently became the Dalai-Lama in Tibet—the “Mahaguru,” as he called him.

A few brief words will suffice to outline this picture of conditions apparently so remote from those prevailing in Europe, yet in reality infinitely pertinent to them, “The Mahaguru” was published in the thirties of the 19th century—at the dawn, therefore, of the age of materialism.

One of the principal characters in the novel is a man who makes models of gods. What is such a man in Tibet? He is one who models figures of gods out of all kinds of substances (as we today work with clay or plasticine); he makes models of gods according to the traditions strictly laid down in the Tibetan canon. The details of these figures must be absolutely correct: the proportions laid down for the facial structure, the size and position of the hands—all must be exact. The hero, or rather one of the heroes of the novel, has descended from an ancient stock, the members of which have always been engaged in the trade of making gods, and he is an expert in his craft. His fame is widespread and his figures of gods are bought all over Tibet. In modeling one of the chief gods, a very terrible thing happens to him.—We must of course try to put ourselves into the heart and mind of a Tibetan before the whole import of the word “terrible” in this connection will be clear to us.—To the heart of a devout Tibetan it is a terrible thing that befell this maker of gods. In the figure of one of the chief gods, the length between the nostrils and the upper lip was not correct, not in accordance with the canon. This was a terrible and significant matter. The man had departed from the ancient, time-honoured canon and had made the space between the nostrils and the upper lip a little larger than was prescribed.

In Tibet this is a dreadful sin—nearly or perhaps just as dreadful as when someone in the West today states to an audience of orthodox believers that the existence of the two Jesus boys was necessary in order that Christ might descend into Jesus—or when he speaks of a faculty of knowledge higher than the ordinary faculty, so that he must be accused of inducing his followers to engage in experiments with clairvoyance and the like. Such teachings are sheer fantasy—that is what is said today. But in the days described in this novel it was an equally outrageous sin that in a figure of one of the chief gods the nostrils should lie too far above the upper lip. The only thing that is different is the actual form of punishment. Today, the most that happens is that lectures crammed with inaccuracies are delivered and other “justifiable” measures adopted. But at that time in Tibet the maker of gods was obliged to appear before the supreme tribunal of the Inquisition—the dread Council of black Inquisitors.—That is how it would be designated in terms current in Europe today.

So the maker of gods was obliged to set out for Lhassa and present himself before the tribunal—police are not necessary in Tibet, for the people obey automatically; when they are told that they must appear before the tribunal of the black Inquisition, there is no need to fetch them. So the maker of gods set out with his brothers and his enchanting daughter, a great Tibetan beauty.

With her masterly knowledge of the Tibetan canon, this daughter had been helping him devotedly and efficiently for many years and was an altogether lovable character. The brothers of the man were obliged to accompany him because they were co-responsible for what he had done. The caravan party now set out for Lhassa where the sinner must appear before the black tribunal. When they had traveled some distance from their home on the way to Lhassa, they came upon a curious troop of men, also bound for Lhassa, weeping, dancing, whistling, beating all kinds of instruments, and led by a Shaman. He was an acquaintance, a youthful playmate of the daughter of the maker of gods, and he knew the members of the caravan party, at the head of which was the man on his way to judgment in Lhassa, weighed down by the sinfulness he had incurred with his falsely-made god. The Shaman impressed upon him the danger of his position, saying that it would be a good thing if the real Dalai-Lama were still on the throne, but possibly the new Dalai-Lama had already been found and would be ruling Tibet from Lhassa. If that were so, things might be even worse, for the Vice-Regent was able in certain circumstances to be merciful in the administration of justice—but if the new Dalai-Lama were installed there was no telling whether or not the supreme penalty would have to be paid. And when the canon had been violated as seriously as the maker of gods had violated it by placing the nostrils too high above the upper lip—naturally the penalty would be death.

So the sinner learns that the Dalai-Lama, the Mahaguru, may soon be found. What does this mean in Tibet? The Tibetans are convinced that the soul of the great Bodhisattva who rules over Tibet passes from one body to another. When a Dalai-Lama dies, a new Dalai-Lama must be sought for—on an entirely democratic basis, for the Tibetans are thoroughly democratic in their attitude. No rank is hereditary, nothing transmitted from father to son by way of the body is of any account. According to Tibetan ideas this principle is utterly inconsistent with the dignity of the Dalai-Lama. Therefore when a Dalai-Lama dies the priesthood must set about finding a new Dalai-Lama, and then every young boy must be inspected—for the great soul might have incarnated in the very poorest family. The whole country must be searched and every boy in every house and on the roads scrutinised; if one of them shows signs of what is considered by the priesthood to indicate the necessary intelligence, be has the prospect of being acclaimed as the Dalai-Lama. The conviction is that in the boy who shows the most signs, the great soul of the Bodhisattva has incarnated, and then he is the Dalai-Lama. In the interval, while the search continues for the incarnation of the god in human form, a Vice-Dalai-Lama must rule the country temporarily.

Gutzkow's story continues.—It is already being rumoured that the new Mahaguru or the new Dalai-Lama will eventually be crowned in Lhassa, brought there with all honours.—And here I must interpolate an episode narrated by Gutzkow; he interpolates it in a slightly different place in the story, but what we are trying to do is to get a picture of his “Mahaguru.”

The beautiful girl was journeying with her father, the sinner. According to the Tibetan Constitution, his brothers are also fathers because a kind of polyandry is customary there. When a man marries, his brothers also marry the same woman. So the brothers of a father are also fathers, although one is the actual chief. The caravan procession is beautifully described in the book: the fathers are in front, then the chief father (the sinner) and his beautiful daughter. While she was still a small child and was just beginning to help her father, she had a companion with whom she liked to play, who at that time had been very dear to her and whose memory she still cherished. The Shaman at the head of the shrieking, whistling band had also been one of her early playmates and he was the brother of the one who had been her dearly-loved companion.—I have had to interpolate this in order to make what comes later more intelligible.—

The whole caravan moves on towards Lhassa, and on arriving there it is learnt that the new Mahaguru, the new Dalai-Lama, has been installed with all the honours due to him. But first we are told how the great sinner who has made the nostrils too far above the upper lip in a figure of one of the chief Tibetan gods is led before the black tribunal.

During the terrible proceedings of the tribunal it is made clear that this is a sin whose only expiation is death. Meanwhile the sinner is thrown into prison together with his family, to await a further trial in which all the sins ever committed by him are to be enumerated.—It must be emphasised that until now he had committed no sin other than that of having made the distance between nostrils and upper lip barely a millimeter too long in one of his figures. But in Tibet that is a crime punishable by death.

With pomp and splendour the new Dalai-Lama has been installed in office. We are told of many Tibetan customs, also of what goes on around the Court at Lhassa. Exact and lengthy descriptions are given in the book. In this setting, with the honourable rank of a Chinese Envoy at the Court, was a man who also had a charming young sister and who had reached a certain degree among the mandarins of China. He was a mandarin of the 6th degree but was hoping soon to be raised to a higher rank. Actually the ideal to which he aspired was the Order of the Peacock's Feather. But while this Chinese Envoy is dreaming his dreams, the most daring of which is to be made a member of the high Order of the Peacock's Feather, the new Dalai-Lama has been installed in his glory. The new Dalai-Lama knows that he has made the sun, the moon, the stars, the lightning and the clouds, the plants and the stones, and he explains to those who now come to pay their respects to him how he created it all, that he is the creator of everything that is visible in the wide universe and also of what is invisible—that he is therefore the primal creator of the visible world and of the invisible worlds connected with it.

Now in Tibet—as elsewhere—there are two parties. But these two parties are still closely bound up with the spiritual evolution of mankind in very ancient times. The two parties, whose priests belong to different sects, are usually designated by their headgear: the Yellow Caps and the Red Tassels. These two parties are in perpetual conflict with one another. In our language—for in Tibet these things are closely connected with the spiritual—we should say; the Yellow Caps are connected with the Luciferic element, the Red Tassels more with the Ahrimanic. These traits come to expression not only in their doctrines but also in their deeds: the Luciferic element is predominant in the doctrines and deeds of the Yellow Caps, the Ahrimanic element in those of the Red Tassels. In consequence of this—to explain why would lead us too far afield—the Red Tassels are bent upon ensuring that the Dalai-Lama at Lhassa shall be regarded as the lawful god who has created the plants, the animals and men; it is in their interest that the new Dalai-Lama shall be found and that the whole country shall believe him to be the lawful god—whereas the Yellow Caps are always indignant when the new Dalai-Lama is found and sits on the throne. For in Tibet, as well as the Dalai-Lama there is a Teshu-Lama, whose followers are found more among the northern Tibetans and the Mongol tribes. The Teshu-Lama strives his whole life long to overthrow the Dalai-Lama and usurp the throne. The Yellow Caps, then, support the Teshu-Lama and try to put him on the throne.

The man who aspires to the Order of the Peacock's Feather is now faced with the fact that a new Dalai-Lama is there. China, his country, holds a kind of mandate over Tibet. The Teshu-Lama is out to contest the throne, so there is opportunity here for intrigue. The man now begins to intrigue by arranging a kind of warlike caravan column to go to the Teshu-Lama and reinforce his power. But in reality his aim is not that the Teshu-Lama shall come to the throne but that the Chinese regiment shall be able to tighten the reins. In the confusion caused by this action, the beautiful daughter of the sinner is able to escape from the prison, and something unheard of happens: in the garden where only the god, the Dalai-Lama, may walk, she comes across him—and lo! the Dalai-Lama was her childhood's playmate who one day had suddenly disappeared and in the intervening time had been trained to become the Dalai-Lama. He is now the Dalai-Lama and encounters this girl, the daughter of the sinner. A deeply-interesting dialogue now ensues.—You can well imagine the situation that may arise when the girl, who had loved her playmate very intensely, encounters this playmate who is convinced that he has created the sun, the moon and the stars, and she is not altogether disinclined to believe in her god. But the priests discovered the shameful thing that had happened and threw the girl back into prison. The Dalai-Lama, however, sitting on his soft silken cushions, surrounded by all his other appurtenances, continues to meditate on how he directs the lightning and the clouds, how he has created and sustains the other phenomena of the visible world.—

The further course of the story brings us once again to the black tribunal. There is a terrible scene because the sinner, who to begin with had nothing on his conscience except the fact of having made the nostrils and upper lip of the god about a millimeter too far apart, now appears as an arch-criminal. He had gone mad in prison and had made out of some kind of substance—similar to what we should now call plasticine—most curious figures of gods. Just imagine it—A Tibetan tribunal confronted with a whole number of false figures of gods made by the culprit in prison! A howl of anger arises, no matter how he tries to vindicate himself; the judges sit around and the long galleries are full of people. The judges are monks who lay down the correct measurements of each feature in the case of every single god, how much larger the stomach of a god may be than that of an ordinary man, and so on; all the sins thus committed by the man with the figures made in prison are enumerated one by one. It is a dreadful affair and the fanatical judges pour their wrath on the sinner. He and his party are again thrown into prison, together with his daughter whose particular charm consists in the fact that because her feet are not too minute they differ from the excessively small feet customary in the Far East—in other respects, too, she is a lovely creature. But the followers of the aspirant to the Order of the Peacock's Feather cause a commotion in Lhassa and in the confusion a fire breaks out, burning the very house where the girl is imprisoned. She appears at the top of the house amid the smoke and flames at the moment when the Dalai-Lama is passing by with his brother, the Shaman, who, knowing all that has happened, has helped him to escape. At the crucial moment the human heart of the god, the Dalai-Lama, is moved. Instead of sending thunder and lightning to help, he throws himself into the flames, rescues the girl and brings her to the ground. He flees with her to a lonely, mountainous region together with his brother—and the Teshu-Lama, supported by the Yellow Caps, is enthroned in his place. So the beautiful girl goes off with the Mahaguru and his brother, the Shaman, and the Mahaguru is now married to her. After a year the Shaman dies. The good Dalai-Lama lives to an advanced age and for many long years is his wife's only husband. He actually outlives her, becomes a solitary old man and has long ceased to imagine that he rules over the lightning and the thunder, that he has created the mountains, forests and rivers, that sun, moon and stars circle in their courses according to his will. In his last years he becomes a Yogi, striving to acquire the wisdom that will lead his soul into the spiritual worlds. He stands on one leg, the other coiled around it like a serpent, one hand held behind him, the other raised upwards; he stands there with only his lips moving. The poor from the valley bring him food, but he never changes his posture.—The description of this final scene is most remarkable. We are told how the man who had been made the Dalai-Lama does indeed, in old age, find his god; how his soul dissolves into the elements which he was trying to understand and of which for a certain period in his life he had believed himself to be the creator.

The novel is a very remarkable product of the thirties of the 19th century, a work in which a comparatively young man describes with profound insight, customs prevailing in the strange country of Tibet. These customs are relics, surviving in the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, of many things that existed in quite different forms in the Atlantean age, that is to say, the fourth main period of earth-evolution. The outward significance lies in the fact of such a novel having been written when it was; it shows that a human soul felt the need to portray something that in truth can be understood only by those who have at least some inkling of the evolutionary course of mankind, in its spiritual aspect too. One man in Europe at all events divines that in this strange country, in many Tibetan customs seeming to us so grotesque, there is preserved more faithfully than anywhere else—in caricature, of course—what was present in a quite different form in the Atlantean world. That is the outward significance, added to the fact that this novel was written at the time it was, and that attention is directed to a country which affords most telling evidence of how in the so-called Yellow Caps and Red Tassels there still live the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces with which the men of Atlantis, especially in the fourth Atlantean epoch, were well acquainted and with which they worked.—But something else as well is inwardly significant in this novel, “The Mahaguru.”

Inwardly significant is what is presented to us in the scene of the proceedings at the black Inquisition-tribunal. The sinner makes a remarkable speech in self-defence. As we know, he had made a great number of gods during his imprisonment; but he made them when be was in a state of madness. There is a fine description of how the first symptoms of madness already became apparent on the way to Lhassa, how the condition became more and more acute and finally broke out in the form referred to. In a state of complete madness he had made all kinds of figures which violated the canon in the most atrocious way. We learn a great deal about the Tibetan canon from Gutzkow's powerful description; but we also learn something quite remarkable.—We are told that this great sinner, as the offspring of his forbears, has become a maker of gods—as is invariably the custom in Tibet. The figures he made had always been correct in every detail: the proportions and positions of the limbs, the length between nostrils and upper lip, and the like. Never once had it happened that the measurement between nostrils and upper lip had been one iota too long—but it did happen once, and he must expect death as the penalty. But now, as a madman—that is to say, in the condition where his soul is already to some extent outside his body—he uses his body in such a way as to produce utterly heterodox figures of gods. And now, he who knows nothing about Art except what is laid down by the canon for the making of gods, makes a long speech in his own defence, a speech in which, in his madness, he talks about principles of art. For one who understands these things it is a most moving scene. As long as the connection between the man's four bodies was intact, only the negligible mistake in the measurement between nostrils and upper lip could occur. But now, after the astral body and etheric body have loosened from the physical body, the man becomes an artist, producing grotesque, but for all that, artistic figures. The Inquisition does not understand this and believes that he had allied himself with evil in order to destroy the works of the gods.—The description of the moving scene at the tribunal reminds us of many things I have said about the aberrations of the human soul towards the one abyss or the other. In the soul of the young Gutzkow, too, the thought arose that there may come a time when men will no longer be able to find their equilibrium.—And now he places such men in the setting of a Tibetan religious community, because these problems can be brought home more vividly by presenting sharply contrasting situations, and because the novelist is able to show how art suddenly comes upon the scene. Art bursts forth from a human soul who has gone astray in the abyss, a human soul who has drawn near to Lucifer in order to save himself from the Ahrimanic claws of the Red Tassels, who are there as the unlawful judges. A profound law is indicated here—the law of man's connection with the spiritual world and its abysses: the world of Lucifer and the world of Ahriman.

Before continuing this particular line of thought, I want to say something about the Polish drama by Zigmunt Krasinski, which ends with the words: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean?” A translation of parts of it, under the title “La Comedie Infernale,” was given by Mickiewicz in his lectures in Paris in the year 1842.⁴ I must emphasise that I am not in a position to form a judgment of the drama from the purely artistic point of view because I know only the idea and intention underlying it. The fine impressions of this drama given by Adam Mickiewicz in his lectures enables me to speak about its basic idea and intention, but I can say nothing about it as a work of art. This reservation must be kept in mind. It is possible, however, to speak about the drama in this way, for Mickiewicz analysed its underlying idea and intention. The passages in French are so excellent that by studying what Mickiewicz says one is immediately impressed by its grandeur and significance. This conviction is still further strengthened when one reads Mickiewicz's rendering of the beautiful preface on the spirit of poetry. This is obviously a drama that has sprung from the very depths of the human soul. It presents the secrets of the life of soul in a wonderful way.

The chief character is a Polish Count; speaking to him and bending towards him from left and right are good angels and bad angels, the former intent upon leading mankind to the good side of evolution, the latter to the bad side. The relevant scenes are translated into French and show with what wonderful simplicity the Polish poet was trying to depict the relations of the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi to the hero of the drama, the old Count. We then learn of the Count's family life which has suffered on account of his personal characteristics. He lives entirely in the Past as it plays into his personal life, in the past history and evolution of the human race; surrounded by pictures of his parents and forbears, he also lives in the past of his Polish ancestral stock. He pays very little heed to the Present and so can find no real link with his wife. But in what has come to him through heredity, in what has been implanted in him through the blood refined through many generations, there is also in him an unusual spirituality, a sense for the realities of those worlds which hover above the earthly world. The result is that he can find no inner link with his wife. He lives entirely in the spirit, and the manner of his life is such that he is regarded by those around him as a god-gifted prophet. His wife has just borne him a son. We then come to the scene of the child's baptism, but the Count himself is not there. He can find no bond with anything earthly. This baptism and the circumstances associated with it send the child's mother insane. The Count had gone away, and when he returns to the house after the baptism, he learns that his wife has been taken to a madhouse.

Strangely enough we are again confronted with a case where the members of a man's constitution have loosened. We are told of the words that had been uttered by the wife before she went mad. Before the baptism the idea came to the mother that misfortune would surround the child because her own talents and human qualities had not made her equal to living, like her husband, in the spiritual world, and that she was incapable of bearing a child who would be able to live with sufficient intensity in the spiritual worlds to win the father's love. And with all the strength of her soul she longs to penetrate into the spiritual worlds in order to bring down for her son what is to be found in yonder worlds. Her wish is to bring from the spiritual worlds everything that would imbue the child with spirituality. This drives her insane and she is put into a madhouse—or asylum, as we should say nowadays.

The old Count searches for and finds her there, and she speaks deeply moving words to him. First of all, she declares that she wants to bring out of the spiritual worlds for the child those qualities that will enable the father to love him—and then she speaks wonderful words to this effect: I can traverse all worlds; my wings carry me upwards into all the worlds; I would fain gather up everything that is there and instill it into my child; I would fain gather all that lives in the light of the spirit and in the heavenly spheres in order to make my child a poet.—One passage in particular is deeply indicative of the poet's intuitive conception of the spiritual world. It is where he lets the old Count say, on hearing that his wife has become insane: Where is her soul now? Amid the howling screams of maniacs! Darkness has enshrouded this bright spirit who was full of reverence for the great universe ... She has sent her thoughts into the wilderness, searching for me!

The father then goes to the child who had been born physically blind but who has become clairvoyant. The child speaks of his mother. Some time after this scene, remarkable words are uttered by the Count. In the meantime the mother has died. The child had told his father that his soul could always soar, as if on wings, to where the mother now dwelt—the mother he had not known. While the child is describing how he looks into the spiritual world, he relates something which he himself could not have heard but which the father had heard from the wife when she was already insane, as her last wish. The Count speaks remarkable words—remarkable for those who understand these things in the light of spiritual science. He asks: Is it then possible that one who has passed through death retains for a time the last ideas he had before death?

So we see how mother and child go to pieces physically, and are transported in a certain abnormal, atavistic way into the spiritual world. Around the Count whose spirit lives entirely in the Past, they go to pieces physically and are transported atavistically into the spiritual worlds.

We cannot fail to perceive an inner connection between this atavistic transport into the spiritual world of those around the old Polish Count and of the Tibetan maker of gods in the novel “The Mahaguru” who, after he becomes insane and has gone to pieces physically, describes principles of art and produces an entirely new world of gods. The Polish drama, perhaps even more clearly than the novel, makes us aware of the cry which goes forth from humanity: What will befall if the souls of men cannot receive teachings concerning the spiritual worlds in the right and pure form? What will become of humanity in the future? Must human beings go to pieces physically if they are to enter the spiritual worlds?—

Earnest souls were inwardly compelled to put these grave questions to destiny. And as we read the preface to “The Undivine Comedy” we feel that these questions stood in all their urgency before the soul of the Polish poet. There is perhaps no finer, no more poignant description of this tragic situation than is given in the preface to this drama.

Confronting the Count who has seen his family go to pieces around him, is a forceful personage who will have nothing to do with the Past; inwardly he is a Tartar-Mongolian character, outwardly a personality who has imbibed the socialistic doctrines of Fourier, Saint Simon and others, who will stop at nothing in order to destroy all existing conditions and to establish a new social order for mankind, who says; The world of the Past in which the Count lives must be exterminated root and branch from the earth.—A despot is presented to us, a despot who is bent upon universal destruction, who will not tolerate things as they are. A battle begins between the bearer of the Past and the bearer of the Present, a vehement battle, brilliantly described. The scenes that have been translated into French amply justify this praise.

There is also a dialogue between the despot and the old Count; a dialogue that could take place only between men in whose souls two world-destinies confront each other. A battle wages in which the old Count appears with the clairvoyant child. The child and the old Count perish and the despot is the victor. The whole of the Count's faction is exterminated. The old order is overcome, the despot has gained the mastery; the Present has triumphed over the Past.

The description of the field of battle is magnificent. And then still another scene is presented. After the battle the despot stands with a friend, looking upwards towards a high rock gleaming with the golden light of the sun that is setting behind it.—And suddenly he has a vision. The friend sees nothing unusual, he sees only the rock gleaming in the setting sun. But the despot who has burdened his soul so heavily, with whom the impression remains of the old Count whose life has been so full of experiences—the despot stands there—and sees over this mountain pinnacle the figure of Christ Jesus.—

From this moment onwards he knows: Neither the old Count, the representative of the Past, who lives in the spirit in an atavistic way and has been able only to save the Past that is breaking up around him, nor he himself who lives in the immediate Present, has won the real victory. He knows that a battle will ensue but that neither of the two will be victorious—neither the Past which can lead only to atavistic life in the spiritual world, nor the Present, of which he, the despot, is the representative. The Present, basing itself upon doctrines such as those of Fourier and Saint-Simon, mocks at angels and teachings about God. Christ Jesus Who now appears to him shows him: Victory lies neither on the one side nor the other, but in that which is above them both.—And the One—Christ Jesus—whom the despot now beholds over the pinnacle gleaming golden in the rays of the setting sun, draws from him the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”—Thereupon he falls down dead. This is the tragic consequence brought about through what is higher than the two streams which are presented in such magnificent contrast in this drama. As is clear from the single scenes, we have in this wonderful product of Polish literature a magnificent expression of Polish Messianism. We see how with the coming of the modern age it behoves men to ask weighty, far-reaching questions concerning the destiny of the human race.

• 1. “The Occult Movement in the 19th Century.” Course of 10 lectures.
• 2. “The Mahaguru” has not been translated into English.
• 3. See notes later in lecture on “The Undivine Comedy” (Krasinski).
• 4. An English translation, of the drama, with the title “The Undivine Comedy,” and Mickiewicz's analysis, was published in 1875. A later translation with a preface by G. K. Chesterton was published in 1924. (George Harrap & Co., London.)

We have traced the events in the physical and super-physical worlds which underlie what is now striving to make itself known to the world in Anthroposophy. We know, my dear friends, that in the last few decades two very important incisions have occurred,—important for the whole evolution of mankind. There is the one to which I have so often drawn attention, I mean the end of the so-called Dark Age at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. An age of light has now begun as against the preceding age of darkness. We know that the age of darkness led eventually to that condition of the human soul which closed the spiritual eyes of man completely to the super-sensible world. We know that in ancient times of human evolution it was a common condition of mankind to see into the spiritual world, albeit in a dream-like and more or less instinctive way. To doubt the reality of the spiritual world was utterly impossible in olden times of human evolution. But if that old condition had continued—if mankind had lived on in that instinctive vision of the spiritual world—there would never have arisen in human evolution what we may call the Intelligence of the individual human being, the manipulation of the intellect or reasoning faculty by the individual, personal man. And this, as we know, is connected with that which leads the human being to freedom of will. The one is unthinkable without the other. Thus in that dim, instinctive condition which once belonged to mankind, wherein they experienced the ever-present spiritual world, man could not attain to freedom, nor could he attain to that independent Thinking which we may call: the use of Intelligence by the single human individual.

The time had to come for these two things: The free and personal use of Intelligence, and the freedom of the human Will. Hence for human consciousness the original, instinctive vision that penetrated to the spiritual world had to disappear. All this has now been accomplished. Though it is not quite clear to every single man, yet it has been accomplished for mankind in general. With the close of the 19th century, the dark age—the age that darkened the spiritual world, yet at the same time opened up the use of Intelligence and of Free Will to man—had run its course. We are now entering upon an age when man must once again be touched—in the ways that are possible—touched by the spiritual world in its reality.

True, we cannot say that this age has begun in a very light-filled way. It is as though the first decades of the 20th century had brought over humanity all the evil that mankind has ever experienced in the course of history. And yet in spite of this, the possibility has come into the general course of human evolution, to reach the light of spiritual life. It is only by a kind of inertia that men have persisted in the habits of the age of darkness. They have carried these habits on into the 20th century; and just because the light can now arise, illumining the truth, these habits of the age of darkness have come forth in a far more evil form than was possible in the Kali-Yuga when they were justified.

Now we also know that this direction of all humanity towards a new age of light was prepared for through the fact that at the end of the 1870's the Age of Michael began. Let us place again before our souls what it means to say that the Age of Michael began with the last third of the 19th century.

We know that as we are surrounded here by the three kingdoms of outer Nature, the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms in the physical world of sense, so we are surrounded in the spiritual world by the higher kingdoms of which we have spoken in so many connections as the kingdoms of the Hierarchies. Even as we descend into the kingdoms of Nature, beginning with man and coming down to the animal kingdom, so, as we ascend to the super-sensible, we come to the kingdom of the Angeloi. The Angels have the task of guiding and protecting the individual human being as he passes from earthly life to earthly life. Thus the tasks that fall to the spiritual world in relation to the individual human being, are allotted to the Beings of the kingdom of Angeloi.

We then go on up to the kingdom of Archangeloi, who have the most varied tasks. Now it is one of their tasks to guide and direct the fundamental tendencies of successive ages in relation to man.

Thus for about three centuries before the end of the eighteen-seventies, there was what we may call the dominion of Gabriel. For one who studies the evolution of humanity, not on the surface as is customary today, but in the depths, this dominion of Gabriel is expressed in the fact that the deepest and most important impulses in the process of humanity during that time were implanted in those forces which we may call the forces of heredity. Never were the forces of physical inheritance that work through the generations so important as in the three centuries preceding the last third of the 19th century.

Let us see, my dear friends, how this expresses itself. We know that in the 19th century the problem of heredity became the most pressing and important in the consciousness of men. Man felt how his qualities of soul and spirit are dependent on heredity. It was as though at the last moment he came to feel what had been holding sway in human evolution as a real Law of Nature in the 16th, 17th, and 18th, and in a great part of the 19th century.

During that time it was so indeed: man carried even into his spiritual development the qualities he had inherited from his parents and ancestors. During that time those qualities became especially important which are connected with physical reproduction. Again we find an outward sign of this fact in the great interest which was felt at the end of the 19th century in the question of reproduction and indeed in all sexual questions. In the centuries to which I have just referred, the most important spiritual impulses had approached humanity in this way, they had sought for realisation through physical inheritance.

Now the age in which Michael leads and guides humanity will stand in complete contrast to all this. I mean, therefore, the age that began at the end of the seventies of the last century,—the age in which we are, and the impulses of which are interwoven with what we are also learning to know as the new Age of Light beginning in the 20th century. For the streams of these two impulses work together.

Today we will dwell upon this question: What is the characteristic feature of an Age of Michael? I say, of an Age of Michael. For the spiritual guidance and leadership to which I have just referred is as follows. It is always so: one of the Beings of the kingdom of Archangeloi has the spiritual leadership in human evolution for about three centuries, in that region where civilisation is predominantly taking place.

Gabriel, as I said, had the leadership in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. His place is now taken by Michael. There are seven of these Archangels who lead humanity, and thus the several guidances of the Archangeloi recur in cyclic order. We today, who live in an Age of Michael, have every reason to call to mind the last Age of Michael which happened in the spiritual guidance of mankind.

The last Age of Michael preceded the founding of Christianity, preceded the Mystery of Golgotha. It came to an end in ancient times approximately with the deeds of Alexander and with the founding of the philosophy of Aristotle.

If we follow out all that took place in ancient Greece and the surrounding countries for about three hundred years before the time of Alexander the Great and Aristotle, we find ourselves once more in an Age of Michael. An Age of Michael is characterised by many different conditions, but especially by this, that in such an age the most spiritual interests of humanity (according to the particular disposition of the time) become predominant. In such an age especially, a cosmopolitan, international character will permeate the world. National distinctions cease.

Now it was above all in the Age of Gabriel that the national impulses within European civilisation, with its American appendage, became so firmly rooted. In our Age of Michael, in the course of the next three centuries, these national impulses will be completely overcome. This is the case in every Age of Michael: a common feature runs through all humanity—something of an all-human character, as against the special interests of single groups or nations.

In the last age of Michael's dominion on the earth, before the Mystery of Golgotha, it found the following expression. Out of the conditions that had taken shape in ancient Greece there arose that mighty historic tendency which led eventually to the campaigns of Alexander. In the campaigns of Alexander, Grecian culture and civilisation was carried, with extraordinary genius, right into Asia and Africa, and spread through many nations and peoples who until then had adhered to quite different things. This stupendous deed found its culmination in what was then founded in Alexandria. It was a great cosmopolitan movement, seeking to give to the whole of the then civilised world the spiritual forces that had gathered on the soil of ancient Greece. Such are the things that happen under the impulse of Michael, and that happened then too under his impulse.

Now those who took part in these earthly deeds, done in the service of Michael, were no longer upon the earth during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. All the beings who belonged to the realm of Michael—no matter whether they were disembodied human souls, transplanted by death into the spiritual world when the Michael Age had run its course, or whether they were souls who never incarnated upon the earth—they all were united in a common life within the super-sensible world, in the time when upon the earth the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place.

We must make fully present to our heart and mind the facts that lie before us here. If we choose the aspect of the earth, my dear friends, if this earth is our standpoint, then we say: Humanity on the earth reaches a certain point in earthly evolution. Christ, the lofty Spirit of the Sun, is arriving on the earth, incarnating in the human being Jesus of Nazareth. Those who dwell on the earth experience the fact that Christ, the great Spirit of the Sun, arrives among them. But they have little knowledge that could really cause them to understand the greatness of the stupendous and unique event.

All the more knowledge have those disembodied souls who are gathered around Michael and who are living in the realm of the Sun-existence in worlds above the earth. All the more do they know how to value what is taking place, as they witness it from their different aspect. These souls witnessed what was then taking place for the World, from the Sun. Christ who had hitherto worked within the realm of the Sun, who had only been attainable in the Mysteries when they ascended to the Sun-existence—Christ now departed from the Sun to unite Himself with earthly humanity upon the earth. This was what they witnessed.

It was a mighty and awe-inspiring event, above all for those who belonged to the communion of Michael. For, those who belong to the communion of Michael have a peculiar connection with all that represents the cosmic destinies proceeding from the Sun. They had to take their leave of Christ, who until then had had His dwelling-place in the Sun and was thenceforth to take His place on the earth. This is the other aspect.

But there was another thing connected with it, which we can only rightly understand if we take the following into account. To think—to live in thoughts that spring forth from within—as we do today, was impossible for the men of ancient times. They might be wise, indeed infinitely wiser than modern humanity, but they were not ‘clever’ in the sense of cleverness today. Today we call a man clever who is able to produce thoughts out of himself, who is able to think logically—to bring one thought into connection with another, and so forth. In olden times there was no such thing—no such thing as Thoughts independently produced. The Thoughts were sent down to the earth at one and the same time with the Revelations that came to man from the spiritual world. Man did not think and ponder, but he received the spiritual content by Revelation, and he received it in such a way that the Thoughts came with it. Today we think and ponder about things. In those ancient times the impressions which the souls received brought the Thoughts with them. The Thoughts were inspired, not self-made Thoughts. Now he who ordered the Cosmic Intelligence which thus came to man along with the spiritual Revelations—he who ordered this Cosmic Intelligence, who had, so to speak, dominion over it,—is the same spiritual Being whom we, when we make use of our Christian terminology, call the Archangel Michael. He had to administer the Cosmic Intelligence in the cosmos.

We must make clear to ourselves what this really means. It is a fact that such human beings as Alexander the Great, though in a somewhat different context of ideas, had a distinct consciousness of the fact that their thoughts came to them by way of Michael. True, the spiritual Being whom we mean, was called by a different name. We are making use of the Christian terminology, but it is not the terminology that matters. Such a man as Alexander the Great regarded himself as none other than a Missionary of Michael, an instrument of Michael. He could think in no other way than this: Michael is acting on the earth, and I am the instrument through which he acts. Such was the conception, and this gave him the strength of will in deed and action. Nor did a thinker in that time think differently than thus, that Michael was working in him and giving him the thoughts.

Now this too was connected with the descent of Christ to the earth: Michael and his hosts witnessed not only the departure of Christ from the Sun, but above all they saw how Michael himself was gradually losing his dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence. Quite distinctly they saw from the Sun that revelations would no longer come to men from the spiritual world with the content of Intelligence. They saw that the time must come when man himself must reach his own intelligence on the earth. It was a significant and incisive event to see the Intelligence pouring down, as it were, to the earth. By and by, I if may use this expression, the Intelligence was no longer to be found in the heavens; it was let down to earth.

This was fulfilled especially in the first Christian centuries. In the earliest Christian centuries we still see those human beings who were capable of it, having at least a few glimpses of what was flowing to them with the content of Intelligence as revelations from beyond the earth. This went on even into the 8th or 9th century A.D. Then came the great moment of decision. It came in such a way that Michael and those who belonged to him, no matter whether incarnate or discarnate, must say to themselves: “Men upon earth are beginning to become intelligent themselves—beginning to bring forth their own power of understanding from within them. The Cosmic Intelligence can no longer be administered by Michael.” Michael felt that the dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence was passing from him—falling from his grasp. While down below—looking down on to the earth—they saw this new age of Intelligence, beginning from the 8th or 9th century onwards. Men were beginning to form their own thoughts for themselves.

I have already described, my dear friends, how in certain special Schools—for instance in the great School of Chartres,—they handed down the traditions of what had once been revealed to men, steeped in the Cosmic Intelligence. I described to you how much was achieved in the School of Chartres, especially in the 12th century; and I tried to indicate how the administration of Intelligence on the earth literally passed over to individual members especially of the Dominican Order. We need only look into the works that arose out of Christian Scholasticism—that wonderful spiritual stream which is so entirely misunderstood today, by its supporters no less than by its opponents, because they do not observe its really important feature. We need only look into these Scholastic works and see how they wrestled to understand what is the real and deep significance of Concepts—of the content of Intelligence—for mankind and for the things of the world. The great conflict between Nominalism and Realism was developed especially in the Dominican Order. The ‘Nominalist’ sees no more than names in general concepts. The ‘Realist’ sees in them real spiritual content, made manifest in the things of the world. The whole of Scholasticism is a wrestling of mankind for a clear understanding of the Intelligence that is pouring in. No wonder that the main interest of those around Michael was directed above all to what was unfolding upon the earth in this Christian Scholasticism. In all that St. Thomas Aquinas and his pupils, and many other Schoolmen, were bringing forth, we see the earthly stamp and impress of the Michael stream of that time—the Michael stream, the administration of Intelligence, of the light-filled Spiritual Intelligence.

And now the Intelligence was here on earth. Now man had to strive for clarity as to its meaning. Looking down from the spiritual world, on to the earth, one could see how that which had belonged to the realm of Michael was now unfolding down below, outside of his dominion, for it was unfolding in the beginning of the dominion of Gabriel.

The Wisdom of Initiation—the Rosicrucian wisdom which was going forth at that time—consisted in this, that one had a certain clarity of understanding for these facts.

Especially in that time of history it is important to see how the earthly and the super-sensible are connected. Outwardly the earthly life looks as though it had been loosened, cut off from the super-sensible,—and yet it is connected. You can see how it is connected from what I described in our last lectures.

The super-sensible facts that here follow, can only be described in pictures, in Imaginations. They cannot be put into abstract concepts. They must be livingly described. Therefore I must now describe what happened in the beginning of the age when the Spiritual Soul, and with it the Intelligence, enters in and becomes a part of humanity.

Several centuries had passed since Michael, in the 9th century A.D., had seen arriving on the earth what had hitherto been the Cosmic Intelligence. He now witnessed its further course on earth. He saw it flowing onward now on earth, especially in Scholasticism. This was below. He on the other hand gathered around him those who belonged to his realm in the domain of the Sun. He gathered them all—human souls who happened to be in the life between death and a new birth, and those, also belonging to his realm, who in their own evolution never enter into human bodies yet have a certain connection with mankind. You may imagine, those human souls especially were there, whom I have mentioned as the great teachers of Chartres. Among the greatest who at that time, at the beginning of the 15th century, were in the hosts of Michael and had their deeds to do in the spiritual world,—among the greatest of them was Alanus ab Insulis. But all the others too were there, those whom I have named as belonging to the School of Chartres. United with them were the others who by now had returned to the life between death and a new birth, who had come back again from the Order of the Dominicans. Souls, therefore, belonging to the Platonic stream were intimately united with souls who belonged to the Aristotelian times. All these had experienced and undergone the several impulses of Michael. Many of them lived in such a way as to have witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha, not from the earthly aspect, but from the aspect of the Sun. And at that time, at the beginning of the 15th century, their situations in the spiritual world were fraught with peculiar significance.

Then there arose under the leadership of Michael something which we may call, as we must use earthly expressions, a super-sensible School. What had once been the Michael Mystery—what had been told to the Initiates in the ancient Mysteries of Michael, and must now become different, since the Intelligence had found its way from the cosmos to the earth—all this Michael himself now gathered up, expressing it again with untold significance to those whom he had gathered around him in this School of Michael. For it was a super-sensible School of Michael at the beginning of the 15th century. All that once lived as the Michael Mystery in the Sun Mysteries now became alive again in super-sensible worlds. It was a wonderful summing-up of the Platonism that had been continued in the Aristotelian manner, and of all that Alexander the Great had carried into Asia and down into Egypt. It was expounded how the ancient spirituality still lived in this. In this super-sensible School all the souls took part who had ever been connected with the stream of which I have now been speaking to you in many lectures. I mean the souls who are now predestined to belong to the Anthroposophical Movement,—whose karma, as it takes shape, leads them to the Anthroposophical Movement. For all that was taught in that School was taught from this point of view, that in the evolution of humanity below, the Michael principle must thenceforth be developed in a different way, namely through the Intelligence of the human soul itself.

It was pointed out how at the end of the 19th century (in the last third of this century) Michael himself would once again assume dominion upon the earth. Throughout the intervening time since the age of Alexander, the six other Archangels would have fulfilled their several dominions. Now a new Michael Age would begin. But this new Michael Age must be different from the others. For the other Ages of Michael were such that the Cosmic Intelligence had always expressed itself in the common sphere of humanity. But now,—thus said Michael in super-sensible worlds to his pupils,—now in the new Michael Age something quite different would be required. For what Michael had administered for men through many aeons, pouring it into earthly existence in living inspirations, this had now fallen away from him. But he was to find it again when at the end of the seventies of the 19th century he would begin his new earthly rule. He would find it again at a time when, to begin with, an Intelligence bereft of spirituality had taken root among men. And he would find it in a peculiar condition,—most intensely exposed to the Ahrimanic forces. For in the very time when the Intelligence was descending from the cosmos to the earth, the aspirations of the Ahrimanic powers grew ever greater, striving to wrest the Cosmic Intelligence from Michael as soon as it became earthly Intelligence, striving to make it dominant on earth alone, free of Michael.

Such was the crisis from the beginning of the 15th century until our day—the crisis in the midst of which we are, which expresses itself as the battle of Ahriman and Michael. For Ahriman is using all his power to challenge Michael's dominion over the Intelligence that has now become earthly. And Michael, with all the impulses that are his, though his dominion over the Intelligence has fallen from him, is striving to take hold of it again on earth at the beginning of his new earthly rule, from the year 1879 onwards. Human evolution stood at this decisive point in the last third of the 19th century. The Intelligence, formerly cosmic, had become earthly, and there was Ahriman, wanting to make it altogether earthly. He wants to make it continue in the way that began during the age of Gabriel, making it earthly, making it an affair only of the human communities of blood—an affair of the generations, the forces of reproduction and inheritance. All this Ahriman desires.

Michael came down towards the earth. He could alone desire to find again, on earth, what had had to take its own course in the intervening time in order that man might attain Intelligence and Freedom. He could alone desire to find it again in such a way that he might take hold of it on earth and become, within the earth once more, Lord of the Intelligence that is now working within mankind. Ahriman versus Michael: Michael finding himself obliged to defend against Ahriman what he had ruled through the aeons of time for the benefit of humankind. Mankind stands in the midst of this battle; and among other things, to be an anthroposophist is to understand this battle to a certain extent at least. It shows itself everywhere; in its true form it is there behind the scenes of the historical events, but it shows itself even in the facts that lie manifest before us.

My dear friends, those who were in that super-sensible School of Michael partook in the teachings which I have outlined so very briefly. The teachings they heard were a repetition of what had been taught in the Sun Mysteries since ancient time. They were already a prophecy of what was to be achieved when the new Age of Michael began. They were an inspired call, a solemn challenge to those who are gathered around Michael, to hurl themselves into his stream and take hold of his true impulse, to the end that Intelligence may once again be united to the being of Michael.

While these wonderful teachings were going forth to the souls in that super-sensible School directed by Michael himself, the same souls were taking part in an awe-inspiring event that could only appear within the evolution of our cosmos after long, long epochs of time. We on the earth, when we speak of the Divine, look up to the super-sensible world. When we are in the life between death and a new birth, as I have indicated once before, we really look down on to the earth, albeit not the physical earth. As we look down on to the earth, great and mighty, divine-spiritual workings reveal themselves to us. Now at the time (at the beginning of the 15th century) when that School began, of which I said that many souls within the realm of Michael took part in it, at that very time one could witness something that is repeated in cosmic evolution after only long, long centuries. As one looked down to the earth, one witnessed, as it were how Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—the members of the highest Hierarchies—were accomplishing a mighty deed. It was in the first third of the 15th century, in the time when behind the scenes of modern history the Rosicrucian School was founded. Ordinarily when one looks down to the earthly realm from the life between death and a new birth, one sees the deeds of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones taking place in a uniform and steady way. One sees the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones carrying the Spiritual from the realm of the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes down into the Physical, and by their power implanting the Spiritual into the Physical. But, ever and again after long epochs of time, one witnesses an awe-inspiring departure from what is thus seen in the ordinary course of being. It was in the Atlantean time that such a thing had last shown itself, as seen from the aspect of the Supersensible. What is taking place at such a moment in humanity shows itself thus:—As one looks down from the spiritual world, one sees the earth in all its realms flashed through by lightning flashes; one hears a mighty, rolling thunder. It was one of the cosmic thunderstorms that take their course while human beings upon earth are as though wrapt in sleep. But it revealed itself mightily to the spirits around Michael.

Behind all that took place historically in the soul of man at the beginning of the 15th century, there stands a tremendous process which revealed itself to the pupils of Michael at the very time when they were receiving their teachings in the super-sensible. In Atlantean time, when the Cosmic Intelligence, while remaining cosmic, had taken possession of the hearts of men, such an event had taken place; and now for the present earthly realm it once again broke forth in spiritual lightning and thunder. Yes, it was so indeed. In the age when men were conscious of the earthly historic convulsions only,—when the Rosicrucians were going forth, when all manner of remarkable events were happening of which you can read in external history,—in that age the earth appeared, to the spirits in the super-sensible worlds, surrounded by mighty lightnings and thunderclaps. The Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones were carrying over the Cosmic Intelligence into that member of man's organisation which we call the system of nerves and senses, the head-organization. Once again a great event had taken place, It does not show itself distinctly as yet, it will only do so in the course of hundreds or thousands of years; but it means, my dear friends, that man is being utterly transformed. Formerly he was a heart-man; then he became a head-man. The Intelligence becomes his own. Seen from the super-sensible, all this is of immense significance. All the power and strength that lies in the domain of the first Hierarchy, in the domain of the Seraphim and Cherubim who reveal their strength and power through the fact that they not only administer the Spiritual within the Spiritual, like the Dynamis, Exusiai and Kyriotetes, but carry the Spiritual into the Physical, making it a creator of the Physical,—all this their power the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones now had to apply in accomplishing a deed such as takes place, as I said, only after many aeons. And one might say: What Michael taught to his own during that time was heralded in the earthly worlds beneath with thunder and lightning. This should be understood, my dear friends, for these thunders and lightnings must become enthusiasm in the hearts and minds of anthroposophists. And whoever really has the impulse towards Anthroposophy—(though it be unconsciously as yet, for men do not know it yet, but they will learn it in good time)—whoever has this impulse within him, still bears in his soul the echoes, the after-echoes of the fact that in the circle of Michael he received yonder heavenly Anthroposophy. For the heavenly Anthroposophy went before the earthly. The teachings given at that time were to prepare for what is now to become Anthroposophy on the earth.

Thus we have a double super-sensible preparation for what is to become Anthroposophy on the earth. We have the preparation in the great super-sensible School from the 15th century onward, and then we have what I have described as an Imaginative cult or ritual (Cultus) that took shape in the super-sensible at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, when all that the Michael pupils had learned in the super-sensible School before, was cast into mighty pictures and Imaginations. Thus were the souls prepared, who afterwards descended into the physical world, being destined through all these preparations to feel the inner impulse to seek for what would work as Anthroposophy on earth.

Think of them all! The great teachers of Chartres took part. They, as you know from my last descriptions, have not yet come down again, but they sent out before them those who worked above all in the Dominican Order, having held a kind of conference with them at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. All these souls afterwards came together again—those who with fiery lips had declared ancient and sacred teachings in the School of Chartres, and those again who had wrestled in the cold and clear, but heart-devoted works of Scholasticism, to master the true meaning of Intelligence. All these were among the hosts of Michael, learning the lessons of the School which I have indicated.

We have this School of Michael, and we have the great Imaginative ritual at the beginning of the 19th century, of the effects of which I have also spoken. Then we have the significant fact that at the end of the eighteen-seventies the dominion of Michael began again. Michael prepares once more to receive, down here on earth, the Intelligence that fell away from him in the intervening time. Intelligence must become Michael-like again. We must understand the sense of the new Age of Michael. Those who come today with the inner urge to a spirituality that already shows such Intelligence within it, as in the Anthroposophical Movement, are souls who are already here at this day according to their karma, to pay heed to what is taking place on earth in the beginning of the Age of Michael. But they are connected with all those who have not yet come down again. They are connected above all with those of the Platonic stream who still remain above, in super-sensible existence, under the leadership of Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and the others.

Those who are able to receive Anthroposophy today with true and deep devotion in their hearts—those who are able to unite themselves with Anthroposophy—have within them the impulse, as a result of all they experienced in the super-sensible at the beginning of the 15th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, to appear again on earth at the end of the 20th century together with the others who have not yet returned. By that time anthroposophical spirituality will have prepared for what must then be realised, through the community of them all, namely, for the fuller revelation of all that has been supersensibly prepared through the different streams that I have named.

My dear friends, the anthroposophist should receive these things into his consciousness. He should understand that he is called to prepare already now that spirituality which must expand ever more and more, till the culmination is reached at the end of the 20th century, when true anthroposophists will be able to be here again, united with the others. Conscious the true anthroposophist must be that the need today is to look with active participation and to co-operate in the battle between Ahriman and Michael. Only when a spirituality, such as is seeking to flow through the Anthroposophical Movement on earth, unites with other spiritual streams, will Michael find the impulses which will unite him once more with the Intelligence that has grown earthly but that in truth belongs to him.

It will yet be my task to show you by what refined and clever means Ahriman is seeking to hinder this, so that you will see how sharp is the conflict that rages in our 20th century. Through all these things we can become aware of the earnestness of the time and of the courage that is needed if we are to take our right place in these spiritual streams. Yet at the same time the man who truly receives these things may say to himself: “Thou human soul, if only thou understand, mayest be called to help in making sure the dominion of Michael.” Then there can arise in the human soul an inner joy of devotion, a song of gladness that it is given to him to be so filled with strength. But this feeling of strong courage and courageous strength must first be found. For it stands written above us in spiritual letters: “Be conscious that you will have to return before the end and at the end of the 20th century, which you yourselves have prepared. Be conscious how it will then be able to take shape, even as you prepared it.”

To know oneself in the very midst of this battle, this decisive conflict between Michael and Ahriman, is one thing, my dear friends, that lies inherent in true anthroposophical enthusiasm and inspiration.

[* Metallität is a coined word not in usage. The Romanic suffix—ität (Latin:—itatem; French:—ite) is common to abstract nouns. The approximate meaning is metallic quality, metal-ness. (Note by translator.)]

Yesterday I attempted to give some idea of the inner experiences of the soul when, through spiritual training and meditation, man develops higher levels of consciousness. At the same time I indicated that the chaotic, uncoordinated experiences of dream life during sleep, typical of normal consciousness, can be transformed into the fully conscious, concrete experiences of waking life. We can thus attain a level of consciousness which, to some extent, is sequential to normal consciousness. We then perceive, for example, the animal kingdom in its totality which is in touch with a higher world of soul, the astral plane. Then I tried to show how the plant-cover appears in its totality when, in full waking consciousness that is divested of sensory impressions, we attain to the world of stars with this second level of consciousness and there for the first time learn the truth about the plant-cover of the Earth. We then realize that the plants we see growing out of the Earth are a reflected image of that majesty and grandeur which sparkle out amongst the world of stars like the dewdrops upon the plants. Indeed, the firmament and all that therein is, takes on substantial reality, form, colour and even resonance when we apprehend it with this higher consciousness that is divested of sensory impressions. Then we can look back upon the Earth and perceive that the world of plants in reality is a reflected image of cosmic beings, of cosmic deeds.

I should like to draw your attention to a peculiar phenomenon when we observe the world of stars on the one hand and the world of plants on the other. I should like to describe these things entirely from the point of view of inner experience, exactly as they occur, as they are revealed to direct spiritual experience and investigation. My description will not be supported by any tradition, literary or otherwise. But first of all I should like to point out a peculiarity that is familiar to anyone who explores the spiritual in the way I have described.

Let us visualize the following picture: above us is the world of stars, below is the Earth. The point from which we start our enquiry we call our point of observation. At the second level of consciousness, a consciousness that sees the world of the stars and of plants in the manner already described, we are able to confirm that the archetypal forms are present in the Cosmos, that they are mirrored in the Earth, not as reflected images but in the form of living plants. These plants do not appear as lifeless, unreal, nebulous images, but as concrete reflections created by the Earth. One feels that the Earth must be there to act as a mirror, so that the plant-beings in the Cosmos can spring up out of this terrestrial mirror.

Without the solid Earth there could be no plants. And just as a mirror intercepts the light and acts as resistance—for otherwise it could not reflect—so the Earth must act as a reflecting medium in order that the plants may come into being.

We can now pursue the matter further. Having developed this second level of consciousness, a waking consciousness independent of sensory impressions, we can take the next step towards the development of an inner strength of soul, of the spirit of love towards all created things and all living beings. The acquisition of these new powers is seldom recognized as a positive force for knowledge. If, after entering into this realm that is so differently constituted, where the Cosmos no longer appears bright with stars but is the abode of spiritual beings, this power of love fills our heart and soul, if, after embarking, so to speak, on the spiritual ocean of the universe, we can preserve our spiritual, psychic and physical identity and extend the infinite power of love and devotion to all beings, then we progressively perfect our insight and understanding. We then develop the capacity to perceive clairvoyantly not only the animal and plant kingdoms, but also the mineral kingdom and especially that part of the mineral kingdom which is crystalline in structure. For those who wish to investigate the higher worlds, mineral crystals offer an excellent field for observation and study.

When we are fully acquainted with the animal and plant kingdoms we are then in a position to investigate the mineral-crystal world. As on the previous occasion, we feel impelled to turn our attention from the mineral kingdom on Earth to the contemplation of the Cosmos. And again we find there a living reality, the archetypes akin to those of the plant kingdom. But the picture now presented to us is totally different. We become aware of a living reality in the Cosmos; the mineral-crystal world that we see on Earth is the creation of an active, spiritual principle in the Cosmos. In its progressive descent to the Earth, it is not reflected in the Earth or by means of the Earth. That is the crucial point. When we raise our consciousness from contemplation of the mineral-crystal kingdom to the Cosmos and look back to Earth again, the Earth no longer acts as a mirror; one has the impression that the Earth has vanished from our sight. We cannot, however, say, as we said of the plants, that the Earth below us reflects the higher beings. On the contrary, the Earth does not act as a reflecting medium; it has seemingly vanished. When we have meditated upon the spiritual vista evoked by the mineral-crystal kingdom, when we direct our spiritual eye from cosmic space to the Earth, we appear to be suspended over a terrifying abyss, over a void. We must remain in a waiting attitude. We must keep a firm hand on ourselves, we must preserve our presence of mind. The period of waiting should not be too prolonged, otherwise our fear is magnified; we are terrified because there is no ground under our feet. This sensation, which is wholly foreign to us, reduces us to a state of panic if we do not preserve our self-control, the necessary presence of mind which enables us to take active steps to see beyond this void. For this reason we must look beyond the Earth which is no longer present to our spiritual vision. Then we are obliged to contemplate, not only that aspect of the mineral kingdom which is associated with the Cosmos, but also its relationship to the total environment. The Earth ceases to exist for us. We must see the mineral kingdom as a total whole.

We then experience a current of cosmic energy from below, in contrast to the cosmic energy of the plants which streams down from above. We see everywhere currents and counter-currents, converging currents of cosmic energy from all directions. In the case of the plants this stream of cosmic energy flows down from above, the Earth offers resistance and the plants grow up out of the Earth. In the case of the mineral kingdom we are aware that through the free interplay of these currents from the cosmic All, the mineral kingdom is created. In the case of the mineral-crystal kingdom nothing is reflected back from the Earth. Everything is mirrored in its own element.

If you discover a quartz crystal in the mountains, it is usually found in a vertical position. Its base is embedded in the rock. This is accounted for by the intervention of terrestrial, Ahrimanic forces which act as a disruptive factor. In reality, the quartz is formed by the pressure of a spiritual element from all sides; there is an interplay of reflecting facets and you see the crystal free in cosmic space. Each single crystal whose every facet is perfectly fashioned, is a little world unto itself.

Now there are many types of crystal formation—cubes, octahedrons, tetrahedrons, rhomboids, dodekahedrons, monoklinics, triklinics, every conceivable kind of structure in fact. When we examine them, we note how the currents of cosmic energy converge and interact to form the quartz crystal, a hexagonal prism terminating in a hexagonal pyramid, or a salt crystal possibly in the shape of a cube, or a pyrites crystal in the shape of a dodekahedron. Each of these crystals is formed in the way I have described. And there are as many different cosmic forces, indeed, as many worlds in cosmic space as there are crystals in the Earth. We begin to have insight into an infinitude of worlds.

As we look at the salt crystal, we realize that a spiritual principle is active in the universe. The salt crystal is a manifestation of that spiritual reality which permeates the whole universe; it is a world unto itself. Then, from an examination of the dodekahedron, we discover that there exists in the universe something that permeates the world of space; the crystal is the impress, the manifestation of a whole world. We are gazing on countless beings, each of which is a world unto itself. As human beings here on Earth, we conclude that the Earth-sphere is the focal point of the activities of many worlds. In all that we think and do here on Earth are reflected the thoughts and deeds of a wide diversity of beings. The infinite variety of crystal forms reveals the multitude of beings whose activities find consummation in the mathematical-spatial forms of the crystals. In the crystals we recognize the presence of the Gods. As an expression of reverence, of adoration even towards the universe, it is far more important to allow the sublime secrets of this universe to possess our souls than to gather theoretical knowledge on a purely intellectual basis.

Anthroposophy should lead to this feeling of at-one-ment with the universe. Through Anthroposophy man shall be able to perceive in every crystal the weaving and working of a divine Being. Then cosmic knowledge and understanding begins to flood man's whole soul. The task of Anthroposophy is not to appeal to the intellectual faculty alone, but to enlighten the whole man and show his total involvement in the universe and to inspire him with reverence and devotion towards it. Every object and every event in the world shall be invested with a spirit of selfless service proceeding from the heart and soul of man. And this selfless service will be rewarded by knowledge and understanding.

When we are in contact with the cosmic All and see the emergence of the crystals out of the manifestations of the crystal-mineral kingdom, we feel a sense of satisfaction. But very soon that state of anxiety and fear which I have already mentioned, returns again. Before discovering the divinely ordered world of crystals, we had been filled with fear. When we are aware of that divinely inspired world, this feeling of uncertainty vanishes; but after a time a strange sensation overtakes us and the fear returns, the feeling that the whole process of crystal formation is unsubstantial and provides only partial support.

Let us take the example of the two kinds of crystal already mentioned, a salt crystal and a pyrite, a metal crystal. The pyrites gives the impression that it can provide us with solid support, that it is firm and durable. The salt crystal, on the other hand, appears to offer no support; it seems unsubstantial and we feel as if we might fall through it.

In brief then: in relation to certain forms, the fear that once possessed us, the fear that we are suspended over an abyss because the Earth has become a void, has not finally been overcome. This sensation of fear has definite moral implications. When we feel a recurrence of this fear, then, at that moment, we become aware, not only of all our past sins, but of those of which we are potentially capable.

All this acts upon us like a leaden weight that drags us down and threatens to plunge us into the abyss which the mineral crystals open up before us and which is ready to engulf us. At this point we must be prepared for an additional experience. We realize that the sum of our experiences demands of us courage and we confidently proclaim: I am firmly anchored, I cannot drift from my moorings; the centre of gravity of my own being now lies within myself.

Never in the whole course of life do we need more confidence, more moral courage than at the moment when, confronted with the crystal world, the leaden weight of egotism—and egotism is always a sin—weighs upon the soul. That transparent void over which we are suspended now holds a terrible warning for us. If we stand firm and remain self-reliant, we can say: a spark of the divine is within me; I cannot perish, for I partake of the divine essence. If this becomes a concrete experience and not mere theoretical belief, then we have the courage to be self-sufficient, to stand on our own feet. We are now ready and determined to press on further.

We now learn something further about the mineral kingdom. Hitherto we have heard about the crystal being of the minerals. We have already discussed their external form; now we become aware of their composition and structure, their substantiality and metallity. And we discover how certain basic metals in their different ways act as a stabilizing factor. For the first time we begin to understand how man is related to the Cosmos. We learn of the different characteristics of the metals, of the substantiality of the mineral being and we really begin to feel in ourselves that centre of gravity which I have just mentioned.

In what I am about to say I must perforce use a terminology that describes the material world; it should not be accepted in its literal meaning only. When we speak of the heart or head, the commonsense view conjures up a picture of a physical heart or head. But they are, of course, spiritual in origin. And so when we look at man in his totality, as an entity consisting of body, soul and spirit, we have the clear impression that his centre of gravity lies in the heart. This centre guards him against extremes, prevents him from being the plaything of external circumstances and lends him stability. If we retain that courageous spirit which I have just mentioned, we shall ultimately find ourselves firmly anchored in the universe.

When a person loses consciousness he is not firmly anchored. If he suffers a psychic shock—for under these conditions he is more susceptible to pain than normally and after all, pain is an intensification of inner feeling—then he is not in a normal state of consciousness. Under conditions of pain normal consciousness is expelled. Between birth and death man lives in a kind of intermediate state of consciousness. This may well serve for the normal purposes of daily life. But if this consciousness becomes too weak, too tenuous, he loses consciousness. If it becomes too dense, too concentrated, pain ensues. The loss of consciousness in a state of swoon, and the state of tension under the influence of pain, are polarities which illustrate the aberrations of consciousness. This describes exactly our reactions to the world of mineral crystals before we become aware of their substantiality—on the one hand, the feeling that in a state of swoon we might at any moment be dissolved in the universe, and on the other hand that under the influence of pain we might collapse.

Then we feel that everything that provides stability is centred in the cardiac region. And if we have developed our consciousness to the level already indicated, we then perceive that everything that sustains our ordinary waking consciousness, all that keeps it ‘normal,’ if I may use this somewhat crude expression, is gold, aurum, which is finely distributed over the Earth and works with greater immediacy upon the heart than upon any other organ.

Previously we became acquainted with the formation, the crystallization of minerals. We now become aware of their substantiality, of their metallity. We realize in what manner this metallic nature works upon man himself.

Outwardly we see the crystal formations of the metals in the mineral world. But we know inwardly that the forces of gold which are finely distributed over the Earth sustain our heart and maintain the normal consciousness of our daily life. And so we can say, gold works upon the heart centre of man. On the basis of this information we are now in a position to start our investigations. If, taking the metal gold as we know it, we concentrate upon its colour, its hardness and all aspects of its composition and structure and then transform the experience into inner reality, we find that gold is related to the heart. By concentrating on other metals, on iron and its properties, for example, we discover what effect iron has upon us. Gold has a harmonizing influence, it resolves tension and conflict and man is thereby restored to a state of inner equilibrium. If, after becoming familiar with all its aspects, we concentrate intently on iron, forgetting the entire universe and concentrating solely upon the metal itself, so that we become, as it were, inwardly merged with iron, become identified with iron, then we feel as if our consciousness were rising up from the regions of the heart. We are still fully conscious as we follow this consciousness as it ascends from the heart to the larynx. If we have carried out our spiritual exercises adequately, no harm can result; otherwise a slight feeling of faintness overtakes us. As our consciousness ascends we recognize this condition from the fact that we have developed an intense inner activity, a heightened consciousness. Then we gradually transpose ourselves into this ascending consciousness and contact the world where we see the group-soul of the animals. By concentrating on the metallity of iron we have now entered the astral world.

When we become acquainted with the form of the metals we reach the realm of the higher spiritual beings; when we become acquainted with their substantiality and metallity we enter the astral world, the world of souls. We feel our consciousness rising upward to the larynx and we emerge into a new sphere. We owe this shift of consciousness to our concentration upon iron and we feel that we are no longer the same person as before. If we attain this state in full, clear consciousness, we are sensible of having transcended our former self; we have entered into the etheric world. The Earth has vanished, it no longer holds any interest for us. We have ascended into the planetary spheres which, as it were, have become our abode. Thus we gradually withdraw from the body and become integrated into the universe. The path from gold to iron is the path leading into the universe.

After gold and iron we next concentrate upon tin, upon its metallity, its colour and substantiality, with the result that our consciousness becomes wholly identified with tin. We feel that our consciousness is now rising to still higher levels. But if we undertake this step without adequate preparation, we suffer a near total swoon, scarcely any sign of consciousness remains. If we have prepared ourselves in advance, we can hold ourselves in this state of diminished consciousness; but we feel that our consciousness is withdrawing still further from the body and ultimately reaches the region between the eyes. Though the vast expanse of the universe encompasses us, we are still within the realm of stars. The Earth, however, begins to appear as a distant star. And we conclude that we have left our body on Earth, that we have ascended into the Cosmos and share the life of the stars.

All this is by no means as simple as it sounds. What I have described to you, what we experience when we follow the path of Initiation, namely, that consciousness is situated in the larynx, the base of the skull or the forehead, is an indication that all these various states of consciousness are permanently present in man. All of you sitting here have within you these states of consciousness, but you are not aware of it. Why is this so? Now man is a complex being. If, at the moment when you were conscious of the whole laryngeal organization, you could dispense with your brain and sense organs, you would never be free of this slight subconscious feeling of faintness. And in effect this is so; it is simply overlaid by the ordinary heart consciousness, the gold consciousness. It is common to all of you, it is part of your human make-up. A part of you that shares this consciousness is situated in the stars and does not exist on Earth at all.

The tin consciousness lies further out in the Cosmos. It would be untrue to state that the Earth is your sole habitat. It is the heart that anchors your consciousness to the Earth. That which has its centre in the larynx is out in the Cosmos and, situated still further out, is that which has its centre in the forehead (tin). The iron consciousness embraces the Mars sphere, tin the Jupiter sphere. Only in the gold consciousness do you belong to the Earth. You are always interwoven with the universe, but the heart consciousness conceals this from you.

If you meditate on lead or some similar metal and again concentrate on its substantiality and metallity, you relinquish the body completely. You are left in no doubt that your physical body and etheric body are left behind on Earth. They appear strange and remote. They concern you as little as the stone concerns the rock on which it rests. Consciousness has left the body through the crown (the sagittal suture) of the head. Wherever we turn, a minute quantity, a tincture of lead is always to be found in the universe. This form of consciousness reaches far out into space; with the consciousness that is centred in the cranium man always remains in a state of complete insensibility.

Picture to yourselves the state of illusion in which man habitually lives. When he is sitting at his desk making up his accounts or writing articles he fondly imagines that he is thinking with his head. That is not the reality. It is not the head as such, but its physical aspect, that belongs to the Earth. The head consciousness extends from the larynx upwards far out into the universe. The universe reveals itself solely in the head centre. What determines your human condition between birth and death is the heart centre. Whether you write good or bad articles, whether your accounts may or may not be to your neighbour's disadvantage—this is determined by the heart centre. It is pure illusion to imagine that man's head consciousness is confined to the Earth alone, for, in effect, it is in a permanent state of insensibility. And that is why it is also peculiarly subject to pain from which other organs are free. Let me take this point a little further. When, in our present state, we try to find the reasons for this situation we are continually threatened from the spirit with the annihilation of our intellectual consciousness, with a breakdown of the whole consciousness and a collapse into total insensibility.

Our picture of man is then as follows: in the larynx (iron) man develops the consciousness that reaches to the archetypes of the animal kingdom. It is the consciousness that belongs to the stars, but we are unaware of it in ordinary life. Higher still, in the region of the eyes (tin) is the consciousness of the archetypes of the plant kingdom and below are their reflected images. Crowning all is the centre of the lead consciousness which reaches to the Saturn sphere; our head centre is oblivious of the articles we write, they are the product of the heart centre. But the head is fully aware of the happenings in cosmic space. Our description of terrestrial events and activities proceeds from the heart; the head, meanwhile, can concentrate on the manner in which a divine being manifests himself in a pyrites, in a crystal of salt or of quartz.

When Initiate consciousness surveys the audience present here, it is evident that you are listening to what I am saying with your hearts, whilst your three higher levels of consciousness are out in the Cosmos. The Cosmos is the scene of activities of an order wholly different from those known to ordinary earthly consciousness. In the Cosmos, especially in what is enacted there and radiates far and wide, is woven for all of us the web of our destiny, our karma.

Thus we have gradually come to understand man through his relationship with the universe—how fundamentally he is associated with the external world, is continually under the threat of annihilation from without, of reduction to insensibility and is ultimately sustained by the heart.

When we meditate on other kinds of metals our spiritual approach is different. We can follow the same procedure with copper as we have done with iron, tin and lead. When we meditate on the metallic nature of copper, we become, as it were, merged with, one with copper; our whole soul is permeated with copper, with its colour and consistency, its curiously ribbed surface. In brief, we become wholly identified with our psychic response to the metallity of copper. Then we do not experience a gradual transition towards insensibility, but rather the reverse. We have the sensation that something floods our whole inner being; our response grows more sensitive. We have a definite impression that when we meditate on copper it pervades our whole being. It radiates from the centre below the heart and is diffused over the whole body.

It is as though we had a second body, a second man within us. We have a sensation of inner pressure. This sets up a slight pain that gradually increases. Everything seems to be in a state of inner tension.

When we invest this condition with Initiate consciousness we feel the presence of a second man within us. And this experience has important implications, for we can say to ourselves: the normal self, the legacy of birth and education the instrument through which we apprehend the world, accompanies us through life; but, through training and meditation, we awaken m this second man who now takes over his potentiality for perception. This second man is indeed a remarkable being. He does not possess separate eyes and ears, but is at one and the same time eyes and ears together. He resembles a sense organ with delicate powers of perception; he perceives things that we do not normally perceive. Our world becomes suddenly enriched.

Just as a snake can slough its skin, so it is possible for a short time—and much can be experienced in the course of a few seconds—for this second man, the “copper” man, to withdraw from the body and move about freely in the spiritual world. He can be separated from the body, though at the cost of increasing pain. When we are dissociated from the body we have a wider range of experiences. When we have reached the point when we can relinquish the body, we are then able to follow a person who has passed through the gate of death.

In that case all our terrestrial associations with the deceased are now ended. He has been buried or cremated, he has severed his connection with the Earth. When we relinquish the body with the second man, that is with clairvoyant perception, we are able to follow the journey of the soul after death. And then we learn that the soul in the first years or decades after death relives in reverse order its life on Earth. This is a fact that can be observed since we accompany the soul through the gate of death. The time taken to recapitulate our life experiences is a third of our life span. A man who dies at sixty will recapitulate his life experiences over twenty years approximately. We can follow his soul throughout this period. We can now learn much about man's experiences after death. In recapitulating his life the experiences are of a different order. Forgive me if I give a somewhat crude example. Let us assume that three years before your death you gave someone a box on the ear. You were annoyed with him and you exploded with anger; you caused him physical and moral pain. You derived a certain satisfaction from punishing him for having offended you. Now, when you recapitulate your life in reverse order and come upon this episode after a year, you do not experience your original outburst of anger, but the physical and moral pain of your victim. You live right into his feelings and experience psychically the box on the ear; you re-experience the pain you have inflicted. And the same applies to all actions. You experience them exactly as others who were involved experienced them. It is possible to follow man's soul after death through all such experiences.

The ancient Chaldeans who owed their cultural impulses to the Mystery teachings had deeper insight into these matters than the men of today. The remarkable fact is that in those days these ancient Chaldeans actually lived in the larynx consciousness, whereas we today live in the heart consciousness. The consciousness natural to them was a kind of iron consciousness; their experience was associated with the universe; for them the Earth did not have the solid consistency it holds for us. When, under particularly favourable conditions they lived, for example, in communion with the beings of Mars, there came a moment of time when beings came over from the Moon and brought with them other beings such as those we perceive with the consciousness of the second man. And thus indirectly the Chaldeans learned of sublime truths relating to life after death. They received their instruction in these truths from the universe without.

This is no longer necessary for us today when we can follow the dead without intermediary help. We can follow them as they live through their experiences in reverse sequence and each experience in reverse. And the strange thing is that when we are identified with this second man we find ourselves in a world that is infinitely more real than the phenomenal world. This present world and the sum of our experiences there appear unsubstantial in comparison with the solid, exacting world ~of reality which we have now entered.

In accompanying the dead in the way described we experience everything on a magnified scale; everything appears to be more intensely real. By comparison, the phenomenal world leaves a nebulous impression. To anyone who is associated with the world of the dead through Initiate consciousness, the physical world appears like a painted masquerade and an Initiate who, through meditation, has been closely associated with the dead in this way would say: You are all painted masks. There is no reality about you; you are simply painted masks sitting on your chairs.

True reality is only found beyond the realm of physical existence and this reality can be experienced here and now. Perhaps some of you can recall the figure of Strader in my Mystery Plays. This character is drawn from life. Strader is a poetic, non-realistic portrait of a personality who lived in the last third of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth century. In real life he was a man who interested me deeply. He began life as a Capuchin novice, abandoned his vocation in favour of philosophy and stayed for a time in the monastery at Dornach. I recast him as Strader in the Mystery Plays. It was not a faithful portrait, but bore a certain likeness to him. In the fourth Mystery Play, you will remember, Strader dies. I had to let him die as I had exhausted all possibilities of developing his character further. Had I attempted to do so I could not have put pen to paper. He could not possibly have appeared again in the fifth Mystery Play. What is the reason for this?

In the meantime the real person who had changed his rôle from monk to philosopher had died. And because I was deeply interested in him I was able to follow his journey through the spiritual world. There the impression created by his personality was far more real. His life and activities on Earth ceased to evoke the same interest now that one could share his experiences in the life after death.

Then a strange thing happened. A few anthroposophists tumbled to the state of affairs. They discovered—the ingenuity of man knows no bounds—that Strader was to some extent a portrait of the historical person. In the course of their investigations they discovered his unpublished manuscripts and all sorts of interesting documents which he had left behind. They brought them to me expecting that I would be overjoyed at the discovery. I had not the slightest interest in them. What did interest me, on the other hand, was what he was doing after his death. This was far more real. In comparison with this, everything related to the external world which he had left behind, was of no significance.

People were surprised that I showed so little interest after they had been at such pains to gather information. I had no use for it then, nor do I need it now. The fact is that the reality of this world is illusory in comparison with that sublime reality which is revealed to us when we follow a soul beyond the gate of death. There the soul endures in a world that we can experience ourselves when we are identified with the second man who can relinquish the physical body, if only for a short time. But in that short space of time much can be experienced.

The existence of this world whose frontiers border directly on those of the phenomenal world is never in doubt. It is a world in which the deceased are living more abundantly. We apprehend them through this second man who relinquishes the physical body. We have suffered no loss of consciousness, rather is our consciousness more deeply interfused.

If we rise above the heart centre, our consciousness becomes more dimmed, we are near to a state of unconsciousness. If we descend below the heart centre our consciousness is intensified. We enter a world of reality, but we must learn to bear the pain and suffering this entails. But if we breach the walls surrounding this world with courage and determination our entry is assured.

We have now arrived at an understanding of the ordinary day consciousness, of a second consciousness in the larynx, a third in the region of the eyes, a fourth, that reaches out into the universe, at the crown of the head, and a fifth that is unrelated to the worlds of space and leads us back into the world of time. We travel through time; when we attain this fifth level of consciousness we share the same time-scale in reverse as the deceased. We have stepped out of space into time.

Everything therefore depends upon our ability to transpose ourselves into different states of consciousness which open up to us new worlds. On Earth man is the prisoner of a single, insulated world because he knows only one state of consciousness; in all other states of consciousness he is asleep. If we awaken them and develop them, we can experience the other worlds.

The secret of spiritual investigation is that through transmutation of his consciousness man transforms himself. We cannot penetrate into other worlds by adopting the orthodox methods of research and investigation; we must undergo metamorphosis, transform our consciousness into new and different forms.

My dear friends! Included in esoteric development, and in true insight, is all that may be found along the way of a person’s attempting to attain an understanding of what it means to live and actually exist in a world in which the senses and the entire corporeal organization are not mediators, and so therefore to live in one’s spiritual-soul nature, which really is a person’s natural state as a member of the spiritual-soul world.

Now to this end, and in general to attain this, to live in the world in a spiritual-soul manner, to this end the multifaceted, more or less meditative soul-life exercises have come, exercises for our souls that are to be pursued vigorously and tenaciously. And a picture of this should be developed, of what a person’s soul can undergo along the way from an experience of the world of physical sensation, the world known through the senses, to an experience of the spiritual world. A picture should initially be developed in these class-sessions, by means of the various deliberations and individual verses appended to the deliberations, a certain picture that includes the possibilities and the prerequisites, from one to the next, of how they are enabled into becoming objects of meditation.

When, after the elapse of a certain time, these Class lessons, which really are impartations from the spiritual world, as I have very often already spoken about, these Class lessons will come together, so that what can be described in the lessons and accomplished through meditation, and it is a karmic fulfillment for those who can accomplish it, what can be accomplished through these meditations will come together as a clear picture and will become for you a first step in esoteric development.

And now it proceeds, from the very different considerations cultivated here in previous lessons, already put forth, how the person in this way can gradually lift himself out of his earth existence-awareness into an experience of being with the cosmos, the feeling, the development of an inner sense that can carry him to the ends of the world, to where the spiritual may be confronted. As long as a person shrinks from this, only entering into a relationship merely through reasoning and understanding with the things around him that are sense-perceptible, persisting in this manner it is impossible, taking the soul-spiritual so lightly, it is impossible for him to truly connect to spirit-soulfulness, the content of which most certainly is the human approach to truth.

You see, my dear friends, as I have very often stressed, healthy human understanding can grasp it all. If one just exerts oneself with sufficient strength, free of preconceptions, one can grasp all that Anthroposophy will present. But straightaway in the pursuit of this apprehension by healthy human understanding, the question immediately comes to mind of whether any particular individual is in reality karmically called today to take part in Anthroposophy, or whether not.

You see, there are two possibilities. It may happen that a person hearkens unto the content of anthroposophical truth, and such a person may allow the content of anthroposophical truth to work effectively on himself, so as to find himself illuminated. It is of course self-understood, my friends, that all here present belong to this group of men and women. For those who do not belong to this group of men and women, but nonetheless somehow take part in the class as members, these people would certainly not be taking part honorably. And all, all initially rests on honor in esoteric life, on a person’s soul and spirit manner of being completely saturated with honor. There is another group of men and women however, that finds what is offered by Anthroposophy to be fantasy, belonging more or less to the visionary realm. People in this group show, through their attitudes, that their karma does not align them with the others, with those who with healthy human understanding far removed from corporeality and the senses can grasp truth free of the senses, who can grasp inner knowing free of the senses.

Being bound together, either in having the sense in common of being bound to corporeality, or of having the sense of not being so bound, this certainly constitutes a great differentiation today between human beings. For if and when you honestly identify, innately within yourself, the sort of common sense grasped in Anthroposophy, then this common sense of Anthroposophy is grasped in its immediacy, regardless of one’s general liking for it. And this common sense, grasped honorably in Anthroposophy, is actually the beginning of esoteric pursuit. And one should really appreciate that attaining this common understanding is the beginning of esoteric pursuit. One should not overlook this point. When, by means of this attainment, one goes out and acts in accordance with this initiatory common understanding, which is given in this school, convened for this purpose, then one will be following the esoteric path ever more and more closely. As the case may be, someone may find this or that meditative verse given here personally suitable and applicable, and may utilize it. In doing this, however, one must do it in accordance with the given explanations and clarifications, which fully delineate and characterize the utilization of these meditative verses for inner human life.

It is about really perceiving quite a bit more deeply and good-heartedly. Although this can also happen merely in thoughts, it is about perceiving and taking note of the mineral environment around us, and of the plant environment, and of whatever else is in our immediate earth environment. It is about making ourselves directly aware of how this earthly environment is close to us. In relationship to us it is very close. It is about how we as people of earth, bearing our physical embodiment, are closely, very closely, related to everything around us, with everything that has mineral qualities, plant-like qualities, animal qualities, and so on. And so we might say, with inner honesty, we might ask ourselves the question, what is this all about? Why do I take on the physical substance of the earth after I have been born? Why do I keep dragging myself through earth existence from birth to death until my organism is no longer capable of struggling with its earth-bound material nature, until my physical life on earth comes to an end with death? In order to comprehend this personal human conundrum, we must seek out and perceive in depth our closely associated physical surroundings. In doing this we will also come to know more and more what sort of departure point that esoteric life can be, for we will feel, in doing things in physical life upon the earth, we will feel that in reality we ourselves are blind, as if groping about in the dark.

And please consider carefully, my dear brothers and sisters, please consider carefully the people nurtured into adulthood today in the customary way. They are born, then they become situated in earthly life, and then they become known purely through the external relationships associated with this or that sort of work. They don’t really grasp the inter-relationships of their work with the whole of human existence. It probably doesn’t cross their minds at all, except in knowing that they work in order to eat. It doesn’t cross their minds, truth be told, that the plants they eat contain cosmic forces from the depths of space, forces that wend their way through the human organism, and in a certain sense, by eating they bring into being a cosmic inner development and progression. Most people today cannot identify at all with this first glance leading away from the materialism of the times. They stand firm, at least initially, in the simple observation of earth relationships, and in life they remain spiritually blind to what lives in the darkness, to what is the starting point of a true esoteric development.

And then one may then turn one’s glance away, turning from what lives all around about on the earth, whether engaged merely in thoughts or in the reality of it, one may then turn one’s glance up and out into the heavens, the heavens beset with stars. One gazes at the wandering stars, one gazes at the fixed stars, one is filled with and dwells in the unending grandeur out there confronting a person while gazing out at the world-all, at the universe. One says inwardly that as a human being, I am innately related to and interconnected with what is there resplendent in outer space, just as I am innately related to and interconnected with what surrounds me in the material world.

In reality, in this outward glance at the heavens beset with stars, we have the feeling of not just living in the darkness, but rather also of ourselves becoming free in living in the darkness, of our vaulting up with our spiritual-soul nature into and among the stars, vaulting ourselves out and up to what is in place there, to the stars in their grouped images. And please note, if a person can really and enthusiastically take up this viewing of the starry heavens, then the starry heavens will become an overabundance of imaginations. You have probably seen various old paintings, in which not merely starry groups are portrayed, but in which the star-groups are formed up together in animal symbols. Someone has drawn the group of stars standing in Aries or in Taurus not just as star-groupings, but rather as symbolic arrangements picturing a ram, a bull, and so forth.

Today people think that of course this was present as a free-form unfolding of the will of the ancient inhabitants of the earth, and due to the constellations having been called by these names, then the pictures were made accordingly. This was certainly not the case, but rather just the opposite, for in ancient times, the shepherds on the moors were not simply gazing out upon the star-beset heavens with physical eyes, but rather, they were also deeply immersed in dream-awareness or in sleep-awareness while out there with their herds, and they were wandering eyes-closed in soul out in the depths of space. And what they saw there was not just the star-groupings of visible observation. They took in the actuality, which was somewhat later differently portrayed in pictures. They took in the actuality of the imaginations, the actuality of the depths of space filled with truth.

Today, we can no longer return, creeping back to the instinctive clairvoyance just described in such a manner, to the actual experiences of simple shepherds of long ago. But we can do something else. With a great deal of concerted effort, we can place ourselves, whether in thoughts or in reality, into the starry heavens themselves. We can perceive the depths, and at the same time the enormity of majesty shining down upon us, presenting itself there before us as illumination. And we can come gradually to revere what spreads out there before us in the depths of space. And the reverence itself, the fervor of reverence, is what can call forth out of our souls an experience, an experience of the external sensory image of the stars being swept away and the starry heaven becoming an imagination for us. And then, when the starry heaven becomes an imagination for us, then we feel ourselves being taken up, up and along by our soul-gazing.

You see, up to the time of Plato, when gazing about, one still also felt something quite different in regard to the physical eyes. Plato himself described seeing in such a way, so that when looking out upon a man and seeing in the sense described by Plato, something flowed out from the eyes, a tracing of the man spread out, in ancient times, forming a spread-out connection. Something streamed forth from the eyes and encompassed the other person. The etheric streamed out. As when I stretch out my physical hand and grasp something, and I know in the grasping that with my physical hand I am connected, just so in the times of ancient instinctive clairvoyance, a person knew that etheric substance went out of the eyes and fastened upon what was being looked upon. Today a person merely believes that the eyes are here, and that what is seen is over there. Over there the seen object sends light-waves out through the intervening space, waves that impinge on the eyes, impinging in some way or another so as to be taken in by the soul. Please note that materialists most definitely speak of the soul, but it is placed way down within, and not at the forefront, and they speak of this impingement as somehow being taken in by the soul as truth. But this is not really the case. It is not simply a working into the person from what is present around him. It is also, quite definitely, an outward streaming of a human being’s inner etheric nature.

And we should take our etheric body as the truth in its connectedness to the great world around us, when the star-beset heaven becomes the great folio of the world, the tome on which the imaginative mysteries of world existence have been inscribed, if and when we have the ability to behold it.

The perception may come to us, however, that when present here upon the earth, present in this robust sensory reality, that in reality it is a sort of blindness. It is living in darkness. When your heart and mind soar aloft, you live within what otherwise just shines upon you from the great world all around. You live within the shining of the great surrounding world. But you take your own etheric existence-awareness out there into the broad flowing streaming of this shining of the world. You yourself go along with your etheric existence-awareness.

And the shining ceases to be a shining. It can no longer remain nothingness, when we ourselves sink completely into it. We extend our inner experience of reality out into this shining. And this experience (about which I have written) becomes an enmeshment, a weaving into the shining of the cosmos. Previously we lived blind in the darkness of earth existence. Now we live out there, our etheric existence-awareness having been woven into the shining of the cosmos.

So, we can have this experience, that we weave into the shining of the cosmos. Initially I will draw this as a picture: [It was drawn on the board.] the life of blindness in the darkness of existence-awareness on earth [as a white arch], living out and beyond in the far reaches of the world [gold rays], then the shining of stars at the end, in which world-imaginations can be perceived by us in reverence [red waves].

But having woven ourselves out and beyond, we are certainly out there now in our etheric nature within this imaginative fabric of the world. When we actually get to being within the imaginative fabric of the world, we are certainly no longer in our physical bodies. We have struggled through the empty ether into the experience of world-imaginations.

It happens straightforwardly, you see, as when someone here in the physical world writes something down, and having learned to read, then just reads it. Through our weaving out and beyond into the cosmos, since the gods have inscribed for us world-imaginations in the cosmos, we arrive there and we see these world-imaginations from the other side [drawn as arrows in the first drawing]. We live first here upon the earth [second drawing, in the inner circle], then we soar aloft up to world-imaginations [second drawing, outside the wavy circle], but there we read from the outside.

Yes, my dear friends, brothers and sisters, the zodiac speaks a meaningful speech, if and when looked upon from the other side and not from the earth. It speaks as Ares the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, Cancer the Crab, and Leo the Lion, if and when one encompasses it from the outside. And for our understanding, it is a deed, this encompassing of it from the outside. And we begin to read the mysteries of the world. And what we read are the deeds of high spiritual beings. In a novel we read about the deeds of men and women. When looking and seeing things from the other side of the zodiac, things are seen otherwise than as seen from the earth outward, as seen by Moses, who always looked upon God merely from behind, from the earth outward. Initiation consists of seeing from the other side. It is not merely a sort of outward gazing. It becomes a reading. And what one reads are the spiritual deeds of the high spiritual beings, who have brought it all into its present state.

And when we read in this silence sufficiently long, when we nourish and broaden our souls inwardly in this reading, then we may begin to hear in a spiritual manner. Then the gods speak to us. Then we dwell within the spiritual world, when the gods speak to us.

Now look, my dear brothers and sisters, it can be done, as the adept can tell you; the soul can broaden itself out and beyond, can be enmeshed in the depths of the cosmos, can come to world-imaginations, can gaze from the other side upon the deeds of gods. It is so; it is possible to hearken in a spiritual manner unto the gods’ speech. But perhaps someone really gets to the state the adept has described, really deepening, deepening oneself in understanding, deepening oneself in full-blooded courage, deepening in the heart, not simply approaching it stubbornly, not merely saying, well, if I could do it, well, then it would also please me, it would interest me, but I can’t worry about it now. When someone quite differently really takes this description up, takes it up as something that is actually possible, when one begins to take it up as something not just to be considered, but to be revered and loved, then one can take it up as a meditation. Ever and again it then becomes one’s way, finally, to actually come into the esoteric life.

And you will find this way, if and when in meditating you deepen yourself in the words. [The first lines were written on the board.]

1. I live in the dark domain of earth,
2. I move ¹ in the shine of the stars,
3. I read in the spirit’s deeds,
4. I hear in the god’s speech.

With the necessary feeling this inner meditative way is lived, experienced, works wonders in, and transforms the human soul. It must flow rhythmically again and again through the soul, for it actually leads a person through to his own world-being, contained within himself.

But it is necessary that it should come to light within properly, so that after one has spoken it quite a while in one’s head, it should also be taken up by, should start coursing within one’s heart, for it is there that one makes the journey out into the etheric world-all, and then into the spiritual world-all on the other side of the etheric world-all. It is necessary, in coursing along such a pathway, to take one’s heart along in one’s experiencing, and to allow it to rule, to allow one’s heart to rule in the perceiving, so that it can join according to its nature in the translation of oneself out and beyond. But in coming into ruling our perceptions properly in this way, it is good initially, in traveling along this whole meditative pathway, it is good thoroughly and inwardly to observe what lies in these words.

I live in the dark domain of earth,
I move in the shine of the stars,
I read in the spirit’s deeds,
I hear in the god’s speech.

You should try to imagine this as if someone were speaking to you from a great spiritual distance, as if you were not thinking it, but rather as if you were listening to and hearing another being speaking to you. One should imagine, really imagine, that another being is speaking to you out of unknown depths. Then the right feeling may be developed for what one hears here. This proper feeling lives in the second part of the verse. [The second part of the verse was written on the board.]

5. Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,
6. Comforting me is the stars’ shine,

In that I am aware, that most certainly I am living upon the earth in the darkness as if blind, then I yearn to get out. Out there, the shining of the stars is my consolation, broadening my very existence.

Comforting me is the stars’ shine,

Now from the other side,

7. Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,

And when I read them,

8. Making me² is the gods’ speech.

Now you know how to utilize this correctly. Call this inner meditation up with vigor into your heart and mind as you are employing it. As if out of depths of spirit, as if someone were speaking to you, in this manner listen to and hear the lines of the upper verse, bringing to bear on each line the corresponding feeling, so that you experience in the meditation the following: first listen carefully to it, then bring it vigorously to the forefront of your heart and mind as a perception, then again listen carefully, and again bring it vigorously into your heart and mind, … and so forth. [During the speaking of the following lines, connecting lines consisting of long curves were drawn on the board connecting lines 1 and 5, 2 and 6, 3 and 7, and 4 and 8.]

I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,
I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the stars’ shine,

I read in the spirit’s deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,

I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.

This meditation is at first a dialogue, a meditation in which the first line is always taken objectively, while the second streams out as a feeling from the heart.

Then, while trying once again to bring them to the forefront, enmeshed and working in each other, try to experience with moderate force of will the experience contained within the dialogue. [The third part of the verse was now developed and written as lines 9, 10, 11, and 12.]

From depths of spirit sounds forth:

I live in the dark domain of earth,

The heart answers:

Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,

And the will perceives the impulse in the dialogue between lines 1 and 5:

9. The earth’s darkness would put me out, ³

Then one remembers back, after having progressed through this dialogue, to the interchange between lines 2 and 6, and to the experience contained within:

I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the stars’ shine,
10. The stars’ shine would wake me. ⁴

Then one remembers back, while carrying all this, to what sounds forth from spirit depths, and the answer of heart-felt courage:

I read in the spirit’s deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,

And the resultant experience by means of the will:

11. The spirits’ deeds would summon me, ⁵

distantly from the spiritual world. And now the most sublime, wherein one feels in dialogue with the gods themselves, wherein the gods not merely allow a reading, but rather actually speak:

I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.
12. The gods’ speech would deliver me. ⁶

It not only witnesses me, it begets, it brings forth, engenders, delivers me.

Now let us envision the entire meditation. The meditation in its entirety progresses as a dialogue, line for line, with one in dark spiritual depths under the dominion of spiritual beings, standing there in the lines at the top of the verses, speaking to us. The heart always gives answer:

I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness,

I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the shine of stars,

I read in the spirit’s deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,

I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.

Now I remember each individually and connect the outflow of the will to it, as a memory of what has already happened.

I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness.
The earth’s darkness would put me out.

I move in the shine of the stars,
Comforting me is the stars’ shine.
The stars’ shine would wake me.

I read in the spirits’ deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,
The spirits’ deeds would summon me.

I hear in the gods’ speech,
Making me is the gods’ speech.
The gods’ speech would deliver me.

This is the correct way to proceed, to come to the stage of the dialogue in the meditation, the dialogue in memory, and then by means of the will to a reinforcement of this memory.

When one actually starts with an inward demeanor of devotion, doubly so, with one’s entire soul inwardly constituted and brought into conformity with what I have just written, when one inwardly envisions it and begins to experience it, when one takes it up not as a mechanical meditation, but rather as a true experience of the soul, then setting things up in this way specifically awakens a relationship of the soul with the spiritual world.

One must really appreciate, however, even in the last set of verses, the specific manner I have just described. It should be experienced as discourse and answer, the discourse of the spirit and the answering discourse of the heart. But one must properly appreciate that initially one’s awareness, which will certainly be attained, is extinguished through the darkness of earth. One must feel as if awareness is overcome, in an instant of extinguishing sleep, and as if there in the second line there is an awakening, as if after the awakening, the calling of the gods to return to them is heard by us, as if one feels, henceforth, that the gods are calling out to us. They are summoning us, out of their own being’s word emerging from the word of worlds, in order to place us as beings of soul and spirit in the spiritual world, there to bear us, there to bring us forth, there to engender us.

When these nuances of inner experience are played out in soul, attention centered on the spiritual beings who speak to us, our heart’s vitality brought forth in devotion to the spiritual beings, then yes, then our souls are in motion, and gradually our souls are in fact brought onto the esoteric path. And we must be clear, as we experience the three stanzas in our souls, as well as we are able, in the manner described, we must be clear that something subliminal, yet powerful, is coming into being in our souls. If we would only live faithfully in these three stanzas, as I have described, our soul would thereby be fashioned, unbeknownst to us, so that when the first line is intoned, we would be just at the point of origin of life on earth, where the etheric body has just been constituted.

Were we to picture this with quick inner vitality, then it would sound forth from the spirit.

I live in the dark domain of earth,

Then more or less unconsciously we hearken unto and approach in spirit the moment our etheric body was constituted. And out of pre-earthly existence, out of the existence between death and a new birth, a force is working in our hearts, which we bring to bear in simple purity.

Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness.

And yearning after the spiritual is without doubt a legacy of ours from pre-earthly existence. And it is always the same, when placed at the beginning of earth existence, what is felt within the heart and works outwardly, that is what flames up in us from pre-earthly existence.

I move in the shine of the stars,

Here we again align with the beginning of our life on earth. The proper consolation, perceived by us, can be given to us by the shining of the stars. Through it, we will be placed back into our hearts’ answer.

Comforting me is the stars’ shine.

Again, there is a return to one’s beginnings on earth:

I read in the spirits’ deeds,

The heart remembers being instructed by high spiritual beings in pre-earthly existence.

Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds,

under whose care and among whom I lived and moved, before I descended down upon the earth.

I hear in the gods’ speech.

We hearkened unto the gods between death and a new birth. We perceive now that what is spoken by the gods is not to be imparted as that which is spoken by men and women. We bear witness, we recognize⁷ that the gods’ speech is fashioning, creating, quickening, making:⁸

Making me is the gods’ speech.

Finally, if and when we can appreciate it, then the right sense also comes into lines 9,10,11, and 12.

I live in the dark domain of earth,
Yearning fills me in earth’s darkness.

[Line 9 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 1 and 5 together.]

The earth’s darkness would put me out,

it puts out, extinguishes my present earth-life, as I am transported back past the time between death and being reborn, back into my earlier incarnation. Then I understand, this is why my awareness has been extinguished, for until now my awareness was that of the present incarnation. The moment I fall asleep I will be transported back again, so that I can divine and sense myself moving within my earlier earth-incarnation.

I move in the shine of the stars, Comforting me is the stars’ shine,

[Line 10 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 2 and 6 together.]

The stars’ shine would wake me,

I will be placed back as I was then, as I was in the preceding incarnation, if it were to wake me. For me, it depends on karma, it depends on what is appropriate for my destiny, for me it depends on the other side.

I read in the spirits’ deeds,
Teaching me are the spirits’ deeds.

[Line 11 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 3 and 7 together.]

The spirits’ deeds would summon me,

summon me to the fulfillment of my karma, with the forces that stem from my prior life on earth.

I hear in the gods’ speech.
Making me is the gods’ speech.

[Line 12 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 4 and 8 together.]

The gods’ speech would deliver me.

All that I am becomes clear to me, when into my present existence, my earlier earth existence floods in, gleams, moves, rumbles, becomes enmeshed. Then there I am. At first, I am present merely as a future becoming, germinative, only to achieve full apparency when eventually passing through the portal of death. Then from the previous earth existence into the present something gleams, interpenetrates, works effectively, making me into the human being I really am, summoning me to be the human being I really am.

Thoroughly infused with this, with its reality, so that really, while we seem to be in the customary world of physical earth existence, our soul takes the journey back, back until it arrives at the former earth life, then we will come to know the importance of what we experience in such a thing. And in the awareness of this importance, that as a gleaming-stream washes through the whole of our thinking, feeling, and willing, in this awareness we will then be infused in our meditation with the feeling of enchantment. This enchantment is essential, for in this way the meditation works effectively in the right way. One may name it an inner feeling of enchantment, a magical feeling, on the grounds that nowhere else on the earth do we find such a comparable feeling, for this feeling is totally disconnected from all corporeality. Even if we cannot yet come out of the physical body with our thinking, with our imagination, this feeling of enchantment, this magical feeling that we experience, coming out of the importance of all that we are doing soulfully, this stands there in the pure spiritual world. In this feeling of enchantment, in this magical feeling we experience the pure spiritual-soulful element. There we stand, drawn into the spiritual-soulful world.

In such manner, as we experience it, esoteric striving is fulfilled for us. And that, for the time being, that is what I have attempted to lay before your souls today, my dear brothers and sisters.

• 1. webe: Luther translated Acts 17:28, Denn in ihm leben, weben und sind wir, but Tyndale at the same time translated it, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Weave in this sense is somewhat archaic in English except for the idiom “to weave a web of lies”.
• 2. Schaffend ist mir: making me is not only English-derived, but carries the emotional theme of this line better than the Latin-derived fashioning me (with which it is cognate), creating me (which is too conceptual), or quickening me (which is archaic).
• 3. The verbs in lines 9-12 are all in the autocausative or subjunctive tense, emphasizing willful intentionality and possibilities. Using would as the auxiliary verb correctly emphasizes the willful nature of these lines.
• 4. erwecket mich is transitive “the stars’ shine would wake me”, again showing intentionality, and is not the intransitive erwachen “I awaken in the shine of the stars”.
• 5. Rufen mich means to call me or to summon me; in a trial a judge says to call or to summon the next witness.
• 6. zeuget is cognate with segue, a transition from one state to another, so “beget, sire, produce, engender, and bring forth” could all be used, but “deliver” has the same double meaning as the German, as in a judge saying “deliver the witness,” and as in a midwife “delivering a child.” Zeugen means both “to testify” and “to procreate.”
• 7. vernehmen
• 8. schaffend

Today we want to undertake a consideration that may seem out of place in the series of considerations we have been pursuing here, but which will nevertheless be useful for understanding the whole.

It is an ancient question as to how man can bring that which is really in the world outside into his knowledge, into his world of ideas. For us, the question is not as urgent as it must be for people outside our spiritual-scientific stream, because we know that it is possible to live one's way up into the spiritual worlds and to gain certainty about a true being, about a true reality behind the external reality that is present on the physical plane, by penetrating into the spiritual worlds. But only from the present into the future will humanity in general be able to rise to such a point of view of extra-bodily knowledge, as it were, and for a long time to come the question will have an infinitely great significance, how one can get into the knowledge, into the world of ideas of existence, of reality.

It is important for us to have some knowledge of this question because we must try to pave the way for an understanding with those who are still somewhat outside or even very much outside our spiritual movement. We must be able to provide information about the riddles and questions that those who have not yet come closer to this spiritual movement feel when they hear one or the other of the results of spiritual research. The question I have in mind is truly the most profound, the most tragic question that humanity has ever asked itself. For however much philosophical and other scientific investigation has been carried out, the question I have indicated arises from a state of mind and has an effect on the whole state of mind and mood of the person.

Man, let us approach the matter from this point of view, wakes up in the morning from a world that must remain unknown and mysterious to him if he does not penetrate into spiritual science, and he makes his thoughts about the world into which he enters when he wakes up. In these thoughts, he then wants to obtain what can be called a world view. The person who truly approaches these things with all their soul senses something of the weakness of the life of thought, of the life of ideas. He senses, one could say, this: that he is condemned in his inner being to live in ideas about the nature of the processes of the outer world, to make such ideas for himself; and he finds, again, that these ideas are, so to speak, only ideas after all, that they are not strong enough to absorb real being into themselves.

We feel this weakness of the imaginative life particularly when we reflect on the memory images. We bring up from past epochs of life what facts and experiences we have gone through. We bring them up by imagining them afterwards, perhaps after a long time. We must keep saying to ourselves: Yes, we have the experience only in our imagination, and the imagination does not have the power to conjure up reality anew.

This is one way in which we can truly feel how powerless the human being is, so to speak, in the face of the full-bodied, full-bodied reality of his imaginative life. The other is when we enter the world of the creative imagination. In this world of the creative imagination, we can conjure up beautiful and satisfying images in our minds, and we can feel how we are unable to somehow penetrate into real existence with what we conjure up in our imagination. The more materialistically minded people assume that the feelings that one can have towards this world of fantasy images. They say: When you form ideas about a higher spiritual world, about God and the spiritual world, what guarantees do you have that these ideas you form are anything other than figments of the imagination? What guarantees do you have that with these ideas, even if they give you the deepest bliss, you are penetrating into a world of genuine reality? What underlies the feelings in the face of this powerlessness of imagining, of forming ideas, has led to the, one might say, millennia-old philosophical struggle with regard to the question: How can man, with his concepts, his ideas, penetrate into a reality?

There are enough schools of philosophy, even if we disregard the most extreme skepticism, which believe that a satisfactory answer to this question, a satisfactory solution to this mystery of the human mind, has not yet been found. Certainly, people can pass over these world mysteries, these questions, with a certain mental complacency. But even those who pass by with their consciousness and live their lives in this way will still feel that this dissatisfaction with the riddles of the world makes waves in their astral body and evokes certain moods towards the world, melancholic moods; moods that one might try to overcome with cynicism can arise. But such a passing by of the world's riddles can certainly not lead to real satisfaction in the inner soul life, to the harmony of the soul.

For us, it is necessary to approach these riddles of the world in the same way that we have to approach many things; it is necessary for us to look into the essence of human nature and ask where this riddle comes from, why it exists. That it can be experienced as infinitely tragic has been shown by certain philosophers who have almost despaired in the solution of this riddle and have spoken of a deity that, as it were, misleads humanity in the chaos of world phenomena and has created human nature in such a way that it cannot arrive at a satisfactory world view.

Now let us recall something that has been discussed often in this or that context, but which can be useful to us precisely in the face of these world riddles. We have often spoken about what our life of thoughts, senses and ideas actually is. I have said that basically it is a kind of reflection. It is indeed the case - I have dealt with this particularly clearly here - that in the case of human beings we are dealing with what I will schematically indicate here: This is the physical body. Outside of this physical body, there lives, as it were, in the infinite universe, that which is the actual soul-spiritual essence of the human being. In the waking life of the day, this spiritual-soul essence extends into the bodily-soul essence. This creates a reflection, and this reflection is actually what we perceive as the content of our waking life. Truly, our body is like a mirror, and just as we do not see the mirror, but rather what is reflected in the mirror, so when a person is awake, we do not see what is actually happening in the body, but we see the reflection, what is reflected in it from the external physical world.

But to the extent that we are in the waking consciousness of the day, our I, that which we are as spiritual beings, is also in this world of mirror images. For the world around us is Maja, it is a sum of mirror images. Our waking self is in this sum of mirror images, and basically, as beings on the physical plane, we are nothing more than a mirror image among mirror images.

Let us just realize that for a moment. What remains of our entire imaginative life, in so far as we are on the physical plane, when we extinguish our day-consciousness? Then the I is also extinguished. When it is not mirrored, as is the case in deep, dreamless sleep, then the I is also extinguished. And when we wake up and have the world of mirror images before us, then our I is also in this world of mirror images; so that, insofar as we live on the physical plane, we can have nothing of ourselves but a mirror image.

We go through the world as beings of the physical plane and never have anything of ourselves but a mirror image. We live in the world; but insofar as we are conscious, we have before us, not the living fact, but the reflection of this living fact. We live as mirror images among mirror images; and what we learn to recognize through spiritual science – that we live as mirror images among mirror images, as Maja among the components of the great Maja – is what man feels when he feels the powerlessness of all spiritual experience in the face of the fully-fledged reality. In everyday life, a person does not say to himself, “I am a reflection among reflections,” but he does feel it, and he feels it most keenly when he asks himself, “How can I, with this reflection, attain the real, fully-substantial existence?”

Let us try to understand what is going on here. Imagine you have a reflective wall in front of you; it reflects what is spread out in the room, for example a table. However, you do not see the table, but you see the reflection. Imagine you wanted to go into the reflection, take the table out and place something on it. You would not be able to do that because you cannot place plates or soup bowls on the mirrored table. Just as it is impossible to place plates and soup bowls on the mirrored table, it is equally impossible to derive the essence of the soul's immortality from what a person experiences on the physical plane and has around him between birth and death in a waking state. For the real soul is immortal, not its reflection, which we experience on the physical plane. Just consider that very clearly.

Man longs to recognize that which continually eludes him and which, while he lives on the physical plane, only continually presents him with a mirror image. The philosophies of all times have endeavored to deduce reality from the mirror images, to prove immortality from the mirror images. They have undertaken the task, symbolically speaking, of taking the table out of the mirror image, putting it in the room and placing plates and bowls on it.

If you go through the philosophies that are not fertilized by spiritual science, they appear to you as such a futile endeavor. Basically, if you try to go through my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, you will find in it the story of how, since the beginning of mankind's philosophical struggle, philosophy has, as it were, tried to get the table out of the mirror and put plates and bowls on it. Therefore, now that we do have such a spiritual-scientific movement, a final chapter had to be added to the book, which shows that what was there before must be supplemented by spiritual science, which is not concerned with mirror images but with realities. Now you might say: Then the book is certainly one that we do not need to read, because why should we concern ourselves with the futile struggle of humanity? Why should we take philosophy into consideration at all, since it is only concerned with the futile efforts of humanity? Yes, it is not like that at all, it really is not! What we do when we immerse ourselves in this struggle, which is indeed futile from a certain point of view, is nevertheless something infinitely meaningful, something that cannot be replaced by anything else. Philosophy will certainly always remain fruitless for the knowledge of the immortal soul nature, for the knowledge of the spiritual world and also of the divine being, but it will not remain fruitless for the development of certain human powers, for the development of certain human abilities. Precisely because philosophy as such proves unsuitable for attaining the things mentioned, because it remains, as it were, insensitive to them, it strengthens all the more the powers of the human soul. And even if it cannot convey knowledge, it does, by being a concentrated life of thought, prepare the soul to make itself suitable for penetrating into the spiritual world. What we gain by working out philosophy lifts us into the spiritual world more than anything else. Precisely because no forces are lost in acquiring real knowledge, therefore all forces are applied to the elevation of human abilities. But we must accept precisely from this consideration that experiencing on the physical plane, because it is an experience in images, has something unreal, something unreal, and that basically, by immersing ourselves in the philosophical world, we are experiencing something unreal in soul and spirit. But does it have a meaning, does it have a significance, that we experience soul and spirit on the physical plane as something unreal? Can we find a wisdom of the world order in this? We have to ask ourselves such a question, and to answer it, we have to bring some insights of spiritual science to mind.

When a person has progressed a little through meditation, through concentration, in short, through intensifying his spiritual-soul experience, he enters into an experience that is, as it were, an alert sleep, a living in the spiritual world. And the first experience that a person has when he is, as it were, at the starting point of the initiation, is such that the person experiences moments when the spiritual world enters his consciousness in a dream-like, shimmering, flickering way. He only realizes this afterwards, when he says to himself: Now you have experienced something of the spiritual world. Usually, disciples of initiation pay too little attention to this experience, otherwise they would progress more easily.

If man did not lose consciousness during sleep, he would live in this spiritual world during the whole time, from falling asleep to waking up. He is really in it the whole time in a world of objective weaving of thoughts. Those who carefully follow the instructions in “How to Know Higher Worlds” will find that, when they wake up, they know: you emerge as if you had been swimming under the sea and now you are emerging into the air; you emerge as if you had been weaving with your soul experiences in a world of thoughts. It is as if you were to catch the last shreds of this experience when you wake up.

This can make a great impression, although it is immediately lost and usually very difficult to hold onto in the memory. But it is important for those who want to move forward to catch just such moments of awakening, because that is when consciousness arises: Before you woke up, you were in a weaving objective world of thought with your astral body, and by immersing yourself in your physical body, you encounter your physical body, which reflects back to you what you have lived through all night, at first in such a way that it glitters in the soul. This awareness can arise and should be noted, and it is extremely important that it arises. When one has such an awareness, one begins to know why it is difficult to really get the thoughts one experiences during sleep and also during initiation into the physical world, into physical thinking; for one lives with one's thoughts quite differently out of the body than in the body.

To make this clear, let us consider the moment of waking up and being awake. When you wake up, you and your spiritual being dive into your physical body. It is not surprising that you continue to live in the weaving of thoughts, because you have been living in the weaving of thoughts throughout the whole night while you were asleep. What happens is as follows. Imagine – I will draw it schematically – you enter your physical body from the outside. While you are not yet inside, but still outside, you are in a wonderful world of weaving thoughts, in which the spirits of the next higher hierarchies develop their activity. Before you wake up, you are in the world of the angeloi, the archangeloi, the archai and so on with your soul-spiritual experiences. Just as you are in the physical world among animals, plants and minerals, you are in the world of the higher hierarchies during sleep. And this being-in, this working of the higher hierarchies on your soul being, that happens precisely with the powers of thought that prevail there. And now you dive into your physical body. By diving into the physical body, you concentrate your thoughts by being captivated by the small part of the body that your head encloses. There you have to concentrate and draw together what is spread out outside. What happens is that the life of thought moves in and submerges into the nervous system. The life of thought actually moves through the senses into the nervous system. And what happens then? It actually happens that the physical substance is continually seized by the thought experience, first the substance of the etheric body, then also the physical substance. And indeed, when you stuff a thought into the physical, it has a kind of killing effect; by grasping a thought in your physical body, you actually kill something in your nervous system. “Killing” is actually the right word for it.

We now think something – and after some time we reflect on what is inside us. So many nerve corpses as we have cherished thoughts are now in us. What remains when we have thought something is really nothing but corpses, so that when we fall asleep at night, we have to leave our physical body to itself so that it can dispose of the thought corpses that we have created during the day through our thinking.

Do these thought corpses have to be there? Yes, they have to be there, because these thought corpses are actually the imprints of thinking; and if we could not form these thought corpses, we would be just as unable to consciously grasp a thought during the day as we are at night. During the night we are involved in the weaving of thoughts in the spiritual world. We do not have a physical body at our disposal into which we could press the thought corpses. During the night, the thought passes away and dissolves in the universal life of thought. The difference is that during the day we can hold on to thoughts by turning them into corpses that we can bury in the physical body. There the life of thought hardens, and this hardening has the effect that we can have the life of thought consciously.

This is the more exact process. Here we have another example of how materialism fails to explain everything. The materialist believes that he must look for the cause of thinking in what goes on inside, in the process of putting corpses into the ground. But what actually takes place are processes of secretion of thought, processes of the dead body. And the nervous system is there so that the process of secretion can be produced through the activity of thought. What thought leaves over, what it cannot use, what it expels, is examined by physical physiology. But during the waking hours of the day something takes shape that can be called the dying away of thinking in the physical body. The powers of thought that one develops are used to produce, as it were, casts or imprints of oneself. The forces go into these casts. During the night they do not go into such casts, for then we live, as it were, in the general ocean of spiritual existence. But because we cannot form such impressions in normal life without initiation, our thoughts also dissolve in this general sea. When we want to grasp them in the morning, they have simply dissolved; not even memory can hold on to them.

So if we grasp the process very precisely, we can say: some thought process develops. As it enters our body, it produces those secretions in the nerves. But before it produces these secretions, it reflects itself. Before it passes into the body and the bodily activity, it first reflects itself; the evocation of this activity is a reflection.

Imagine looking at an object with your eyes or hearing a sound with your ears or tones resonating. The sound resonance is outside. This sound enters the ear. A process begins in the auditory nerves, namely this cadaverization and secretion. And what you hear is therefore the reflected sound, actually an inner echo.

In this way, in our everyday experience, we are completely in a world of mirror images, and our own being is interwoven into this world of mirror images. For we would grasp our true being if we felt ourselves floating outside our body in the spiritual realm, if we felt: Now one of the angeloi seizes you; now you are weaving in the angeloi, you merge into the realm of the archangels, into the realm of the primal forces and so on. - Then we would feel carried into the realms of the higher beings. We would feel the immortality of the soul and know: just as these beings carry the happenings in the world from world age to world age, so they carry us with them from world age to world age. But in ordinary life, man does not perceive this. He is immersed in the physical body, and the experience of one's own self in true being dies during life in the physical body, and only the world of mirror images remains.

We can therefore shine a deep light into the process of knowledge, and one would wish that an awareness of the nature of this process of knowledge would truly take hold of the age. For this recognition of the world as a sum of mirror images, and the recognition that the actual being lies behind it, that is already an ascent to what humanity is really meant to be led to through spiritual science. We can therefore say no more and no less than: Man enters the physical plane, and by entering the physical plane, he is actually transferred from the world of reality into a world of unreality, into a mere world of images. And we must feel the full gravity of this realization, that we stand within a world of images when we think on the physical plane, when we perceive and imagine.

Thus we can say that the spiritual entities, by handing us down to the physical plane, have taken us out of the world of real reality and placed us in a world of unreality. And we recognize this at first as a fact of the spiritual world, even if it is not yet the world plan. We only recognize it as a fact of the world plan when we raise the question: Why are we, insofar as we are beings of the real physical world, placed in a world of unreal images? Why? - Suppose we were not, suppose we were placed on the physical plane in such a way that we had not images but realities. What does that actually mean? It would mean that we perceive the physical world; for example, we hear a sequence of sounds. The effect of this sequence of sounds goes into our ear, into our auditory nerves, and causes a change there. If we were only able to enjoy what is going on in the auditory nerves and were unable to project it up into our imaginations, then we would be in reality; we would have realities, not images. But that is not the case. We are really thrown out of the world of realities and placed in a world of images, in a world of unrealities. If we were really in the world of realities, in a world of reality, then we could never have the opportunity to give reality to a world ourselves, because we cannot give reality to what we experience as reality. An object that I take in my hand from the outside is something. It is not just an image, the object is something. Just as I cannot push the table that I see in the mirror, I cannot do anything real with the world that is only given to me in images. But if it is a matter of us creating realities ourselves, then it is just right that we live in a world of images, because then the images have no reality, but we can give them reality. Do we do that?

Yes, my dear friends, we do, in one area of our lives we do that. We do that when we act morally. In the moment when moral impulses flash through our mental life, in that moment we create something in the world that would not be there without us. When we imagine the world, we have only images; when we act morally, we place realities into the world. We would never be able to live with our morality in a world that would already appear to us as real. For then we would encounter the world everywhere with what we want to do morally.

Take animals, for example. They experience the world quite differently from human beings. They do not experience it as a world of images, but as a world of real realities. This is why animals cannot develop morality. Human beings can develop morality because they can place moral impulses into the world themselves, which is otherwise only a world of mirror images. What man lets flow into the world as moral impulses flows into the world as a reality that comes from him. The gods have placed us on the physical plane and made our spiritual experience a world of unreality, so that we may be in a position to place moral impulses as reality into this unreality. There you have creation out of nothing, creation into nothing through images that are only pictures, only unrealities.

If we look again at the sleeping person, we can say: insofar as this sleeping person is outside of his physical body and his etheric body, he experiences the world of weaving thoughts, into which the beings of the higher hierarchies are interwoven. But something else also permeates and flows through this world. What is it? The beings of the higher hierarchies are not merely thought beings; they are real beings, they have substance, and what they have as substance we do not experience in our thoughts, but in our will, namely in the will that is permeated by love. In our will, by placing the moral impulses into the world, which is otherwise only a world of images for us, we bring down the substance of the higher beings into our world. What we really do out of moral impulses is nothing other than bringing down the substance of the beings of the higher hierarchies into our world.

Our thoughts, when we live with our spiritual and soul being in our physical body after waking up, are mirrored in a part of our body: so to speak, the products of the deposit of our waking thought life are formed in the nervous system. The nature of moral impulses, which basically come from the nature of the higher hierarchies, goes into our whole body, permeating our whole being, our whole organism, not just the nervous system; so that the human being can be seen as twofold: as a nervous human being, and alongside that, the whole of the rest of the physical human being, into which everything that is experienced in the person's moral impulses flows. But we come out of the world of spiritual realities by immersing ourselves in our physical body. As we immerse ourselves in our physical body, emerging from the worlds of thought, they flicker and glitter, reflecting back, forming the corpses of thoughts in the nervous system. We just do not perceive this flickering and glittering in our ordinary lives. Thoughts live in us, but they are not living beings in us; they are reflected, and what we perceive is a kind of reading of the dead thoughts. But these thoughts that reflect themselves are a living thing, and that has great significance in the order of the world. When a person stands before you and you look at this person and are aware: he perceives, he thinks, what is in his mind as a web of thoughts goes into his nervous system, is reflected in everything perceptible, in sounds and colors - what happens to the spiritual light that goes into him, that makes impressions on his nervous system? What happens to the impressions that arise? You see, the cherubim come, collect this light and use it for the further world order, and we are all the candlesticks that are set up in the world order. By thinking, perceiving and imagining, we are the candlesticks of the cherubim in the world order. Just as this light here in the physical world illuminates space, so we are the candlesticks in the spiritual world for the cherubim. When we think, light arises in us; the light of thought radiates out from us and illuminates the world in which the cherubim live.

When we carry into our body from the world of hierarchies those substances from which moral impulses are born and these penetrate our entire organization, our volitional impulses, our actions, take place. Everything we do is the result of these volitional impulses being active in us. It is not just what happens externally in the world through us, but, insofar as it is moral action, this moral action is gathered by the seraphim, and this moral action is the source of warmth for the whole cosmic order. Under the influence of people who act immorally, the seraphim freeze, that is, they receive no warmth with which they can heat the whole cosmic world. Under the influence of moral action, the seraphim acquire the powers by which the cosmic world order is maintained, just as physical warmth maintains the physical world order.

You see, the worldview that spiritual science gives us becomes very real. It brings us to the realization: When you think, when you imagine, you are the kindled light of the cherubim. When you act, when you do something, when you unfold the will, then you are the source of warmth, the source of fire of the seraphim. We stride through the world, conscious that we are not useless good-for-nothings in it, but stand in the world order for the benefit of the whole world order, and conscious that it is also in our power to be a source of darkness in the world. For if we want to be dull and stupid and not think, then we increase the darkness, and the consequence of this is that the cherubim have no light. If we are bad and immoral, we increase the coldness in the whole world order, and the seraphim have no warmth.

Spiritual science does not give us mere theories, as external science can do if it is not a practical science and leads to technical application. Spiritual science gives us something through which we first learn to know what we as human beings are in the whole order of the world. What follows from spiritual science, the essential, is what is important. It is a heightened sense of responsibility towards our humanity. One feels what tasks one has towards the cosmos by being human. One feels that one can be human in the right sense and can be human in the wrong sense, that one can give one's all to darkness and cold or to light and warmth in the world order.

With this practical goal in mind, one would like to bring spiritual science into the world so that it can take hold of hearts. For one can be sure that spiritual science will then really be able to create a new human soul condition and thus a completely new form of human experience on earth and further in the universe, that it is not just a matter of passing on knowledge, but a source of true, genuine life forces. It is so ardently desired that this be grasped, be grasped so very deeply by those who today feel the urge for this spiritual science! For this spiritual science is still too much taken as something external, still too much so that it, like other knowledge, is to satisfy curiosity or, let us say, the thirst for knowledge. But the seriousness with which spiritual science is placed in life must grow. That is what our time so urgently needs: not just belief in the spiritual world, but the possibility of relating to the spiritual world in such a way that the human soul truly draws near to the spiritual world. And as the child draws nourishment from its mother's breast, so does the human soul draw the substance of life for a new form of earthly experience, of earthly activity, of knowing itself in the spiritual order of the world, from what spiritual science is able to reveal to it.

Only when the relationship of people to spiritual science is imbued with this magical breath of feeling and perception will spiritual science be understood in its true, innermost core. But it will be necessary for it to take root in particular among those who participate in a common work of spiritual scientific endeavors.

What else should our building be if not something in which we all participate – especially those who are working on it – participate as a community, in a confluence of attitudes that spiritual science awakens! That is the tremendously important and significant thing. If the building is erected in this spirit, then it will not only be this dry building with its forms, but will be something that radiates far out into the world; it will be what those who worked on it have created in loving, genuine collaboration. Whatever they have poured into the structure, whatever they have left behind in it, no matter how loosely it may be connected with the structure, if it is directed in love towards what the structure should be, then it may be the smallest activity. And if it flows from the human attitude that seeks to merge with the cosmic order, then this structure will be something that is not just dead, but alive, truly alive.

That is the secret of our thought corpses, that we can always revive them again for a certain time. And the other side, that of remembrance, I discussed last time: that which thoughts have produced in us as thought corpses and which remains in its form, just as human corpses remain on earth, can be revived by later soul forces. And when a memory emerges, that which is only a thought corpse will shine again in us for a while in a living way.

Let us work to ensure that our building is similar in the human order, so that those who come to see it are unconsciously transported into the sphere of love with which it is built! For then it will not be merely a collection of dead forms, but something that comes to life when you look at it, like the thought-corpses of memory. And then, for all future time, the way we work on it will determine whether this structure will be something that can be revitalized again and again by those who encounter it.

By allowing these thoughts to work on our soul, we gain a living relationship to this building of ours, the living relationship that humanity really needs by living from the present into the future. For much will not be allowed to remain dead, but will have to live, but will only be able to live through the emergence of that new attitude that must be a result of spiritual science and spiritual knowledge.

[ 1 ] Max Dessoir's book Beyond the Soul (Vom Jenseits der Seele) contains a brief section in which the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science advocated by me is portrayed as scientifically invalid. Now it might seem to many that a discussion with people who take Dessoir's point of view about science must prove altogether unfruitful to anyone advocating spiritual-scientific anthroposophy. For, such an advocate asserts the existence of a purely spiritual region of experience that a Dessoir fundamentally rejects and consigns to the realm of fantasy. Discussion of the findings of spiritual-scientific knowledge, therefore, might only seem possible with someone who already has reason to believe that such a spiritual-scientific region exists.

This view would be correct if the advocate of anthroposophy presented nothing more than his own inner personal experiences and simply placed them beside the results of the science based on sensory observation and the scientific processing of such observations. Then one could say: the adherent of natural science refuses in fact to regard the experiences of the spiritual researcher as realities; the researcher in the spiritual realm can only make an impression with his findings on those who have already adopted his own point of view.

[ 2 ] This opinion, however, rests upon a misunderstanding of what I mean by anthroposophy. It is true that this anthroposophy is founded upon soul experiences that are attained independently of sense impressions and independently of scientific judgments based only upon sense impressions. Therefore the two kinds of experiences, sensory and extrasensory, seem at first to be separated by an unbridgeable chasm.

But this is not so. There is a common ground where both approaches must meet, and where discussion is possible. This common ground can be described in the following way.

[ 3 ] Out of experiences that are not just personal to him, the advocate of anthroposophy believes himself justified in stating that human activity in knowledge can be developed further from the point at which those researchers stop who want to base themselves only upon sensory observation and intellectual judgment of such observation.

To avoid continuous, long-winded paraphrases, I would like to use the word “anthropology” from now on to designate that approach in science which bases itself on sensory observation and the intellectual processing of such observation, asking the reader to permit me this uncommon usage. In what follows, "anthropology" means only what I have just described. In this sense, anthroposophy believes itself able to begin its research where anthropology leaves off.¹

[ 4 ] The advocate of anthropology limits himself to relating his intellectual concepts—experienced in the soul—to his sense perceptions. The advocate of anthroposophy observes that these concepts—apart from the fact that we relate them to sense impressions—are able in addition to unfold a life of their own within the soul. And that, by unfolding this life within the soul, these concepts effect a development of the soul itself. The advocate of anthroposophy sees how the soul, if it is sufficiently attentive to this development, discovers spiritual organs within its own being. (In using this expression "spiritual organs," I am adopting and extending the linguistic usage of Goethe when he speaks in his world view of “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears.”) ² Such spiritual organs, therefore, are for the soul what sense organs are for the body. These spiritual organs must of course be understood as being entirely of a soul nature. Any attempt to connect them with one or another bodily configuration must be strictly rejected by anthroposophy. Anthroposophy must not picture these spiritual organs as extending in any way beyond the soul realm or encroaching upon the structure of the body. It would regard any such encroachment as a pathological configuration, to be strictly excluded from its domain. The way anthroposophy portrays the development of our spiritual organs should be strong enough proof—to anyone who really informs himself about it—that the researcher in the real spiritual realm arrives at the same conclusions as anthropologists about abnormal soul experiences like illusions, visions, and hallucinations. ³ Any confusion of anthroposophical findings with abnormal, so-called soul experiences rests entirely upon misunderstanding or insufficient knowledge of what anthroposophy actually maintains. And anyone who studies and understands anthroposophy's description of the path to development of our spiritual organs will certainly not fall prey to the notion that this path could lead to pathological configurations or states. The insightful person, in fact, will recognize that every stage of soul experience that a human being passes through on the anthroposophical path to spiritual perception lies in a realm that is entirely of a soul nature; alongside this realm, our sensory experience and normal intellectual activity will continue, unaltered, as they were before this soul realm opened up for us. The great number of misunderstandings holding sway in precisely this area of anthroposophical knowledge stems from the fact that it is difficult for many to bring something of a purely soul nature into the sphere of their attention. The power to picture mentally ⁴ fails such people the moment this ability is not supported by the sight of something sense-perceptible. Their power to picture mentally is then dampened down, even below the level of dreams, into dreamless sleep, where it is no longer conscious. One could say that such people, in their consciousness, are filled with the aftereffects or the direct effects of sense impressions, and that, alongside this fullness, a sleep is occurring that blocks out what would be recognized as being of a soul nature if it could be grasped. One could even say that the essential nature of soul phenomena is subject to such profound misunderstanding by many people just because they cannot wake up to the soul element as they can to the sense-perceptible content of consciousness.

The fact that there are people in this situation whose degree of attention is only at the level produced by ordinary external life need not surprise anyone who can grasp the point, for example, of a reproach which Franz Brentano made to William James on this subject.

Brentano writes that one must “differentiate between our activity of perceiving and its object, i.e., between perceiving and what is perceived” (“and these two differ from each other as certainly as my present memory differs from the past event I am remembering; or, to make an even more drastic comparison: they differ as much as my hatred of an enemy differs from the object of this hatred”), and Brentano adds that one sees this error cropping up here and there. He continues:

William James, among others, embraced this error and went to some length to validate it at the International Congress on Psychology (Rome, 1905). Because, according to James, when I look out into a room, my vision appears along with the room; and, furthermore, because my mental images of sense-perceptible objects differ only in strength from the visual images directly stimulated by these objects; and, finally, because we call some objects beautiful, yet the difference between beautiful and ugly is connected to differences in emotions: therefore, soul and physical phenomena should no longer be regarded as two different classes of phenomena!

I find it hard to understand how the speaker himself could not feel the weakness of these arguments. To appear at the same time does not mean to appear as the same thing; just as existing at the same time does not mean existing as the same thing. Descartes could therefore recommend without self-contradiction that one deny—at least initially—the existence of the room I see, and regard as indubitable only the existence of my vision of the room. But if James' first argument is invalid, then obviously the second is also; for, what does it matter whether imagining differs from seeing only in degree of intensity, since, according to James, even if the degree of intensity were the same in both, the total congruency of imagining with seeing would still only represent congruency with a soul phenomenon? In his third argument, James speaks of beauty.... It is certainly a strange logic that could conclude—from the fact that pleasure in the beautiful is of a soul nature— that the object with whose appearance the pleasure is connected must also be of a soul nature. If that were so, then every dislike would be identical with what one dislikes, and one would have to be careful not to regret a past mistake, since, along with this remorse, the mistake, being identical with the remorse, would repeat itself.

With arguments like these, however, we need not fear that his authority—to which, among German psychologists, there is unfortunately added that of Mach—will cause many to fail to recognize the most obvious differences.⁵

Actually, this “failure to recognize the most obvious differences” is no rare occurrence. It is based on the fact that our power of mental picturing can unfold the necessary attentiveness only for sense impressions, whereas the actual soul activity that is also occurring is present to consciousness as little as what is experienced in a state of sleep. We are dealing here with two streams of experience; one of these is apprehended in a waking state; the other—the soul stream—is grasped simultaneously, but only with an attentiveness as weak as the mental perception we have in sleep, i.e., it is hardly grasped at all. We must by no means ignore the fact that during our ordinary waking state, the soul disposition of sleep does not simply cease, but continues to exist alongside our waking experience, and that the actual soul element enters the realm of perception only when the human being awakens not only to the sense world—as this occurs in ordinary consciousness—but awakens also to a soul existence, as is the case in seeing consciousness. It hardly matters now whether this soul element is denied—in a crudely materialistic sense—by the condition of sleep (to the soul element) that accompanies our waking state, or whether, because unseen, the soul element is confused with the physical, as in James' case; the results are nearly the same: both lead to fatal nearsightedness. But it is not surprising that the soul element so often remains unperceivable, if even a philosopher like William James is unable to differentiate it correctly from the physical.⁶

[ 5 ] With people as little able as William James to distinguish between the actual soul element and the content of what the soul experiences through the senses, it is difficult to discuss that region of our soul's being in which the development of spiritual organs is to be observed. For, this development occurs precisely where his attention is unable to direct itself. This development leads from an intellectual knowing to a knowing that sees.⁷

[ 6 ] But now, through the ability to perceive the actual soul element, we have as yet fulfilled only the very first precondition, which makes it possible to direct our spiritual gaze to where anthroposophy seeks the development of soul organs. For, what meets this gaze at first compares to anthroposophy's description of a soul-being equipped with spiritual organs the way an undifferentiated living cell compares to an organism endowed with sense organs. The soul becomes conscious of possessing the individual spiritual organs themselves, however, only to the extent that it is able to use these organs. For, these organs are not something at rest; they are in continuous movement. And when they are not in use, one also cannot be conscious of their presence. For them, therefore, perceiving and being used are synonymous. In my anthroposophical writings, I describe how the development—and along with it the perceptibility—of these organs comes to light. I will indicate here only a little of what can be said in this regard.

[ 7 ] Anyone who devotes himself to reflection on the experiences caused by sense-perceptible phenomena encounters questions everywhere that this reflection seems unable to answer at first. The pursuit of such reflections leads the adherents of anthropology to set certain limits to knowledge. One need only remember how Du Bois-Reymond, in his discourse on the limits of natural science, states that one cannot know the essential nature of matter or of the simplest phenomenon of consciousness. Now one can stop short at such points in one's reflections and surrender to the opinion: there human knowledge is in fact confronted by insurmountable barriers. And one can resign oneself to the fact that knowledge is attainable only on this side of the barrier, and that beyond this only inklings, feelings, hopes, and wishes are possible, with which “science” could have nothing to do.

Or else one can start at such points to form hypotheses about a region transcending the sense-perceptible world. In this case one employs the intellect, believing that it is justified in extending its judgments out over a region of which the senses perceive nothing. In such an undertaking, one runs the risk that nonbelievers will declare that the intellect has no right to judge a reality for which it lacks the foundations of sense perceptions. For only sense perceptions could provide a content for the intellect's judgment. Without such content, its concepts must remain empty.

[ 8 ] Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not relate to “limits of knowledge” in either of these two ways. It does not form hypotheses about the supersensible world because it must agree with those who feel that any basis for reflection is lost if mental pictures are left in the same form as when taken from sense perceptions, and yet are to be applied in a realm transcending the sense world.

Anthroposophy does not relate to “limits of knowledge” in the first way either, because it realizes that in our encounter with these so-called limits of knowledge, something can be experienced by the soul that has nothing to do with the content of mental pictures gained from sense perception. If the soul focuses only upon this latter content, then, if its self-examination is honest, it must admit that this content can reveal nothing directly to our activity of knowing except a copy of what we experience through the senses. The situation changes if the soul goes further and asks itself: What can be experienced within the soul itself when it fills itself with those mental pictures to which it is led when confronted by our usual limits of knowledge? After sufficient self-examination, the soul can then say to itself: Through such mental pictures I cannot, in the ordinary sense of the word, know anything; but in the event that I really make this powerlessness of my knowing activity inwardly visible to myself, then I become aware how these mental pictures work within my own self. As ordinary cognitive pictures, these mental pictures remain mute; but the more their muteness communicates itself to our consciousness, the more these mental pictures take on an inner life of their own that unites with the life of the soul. And the soul then notices how, with this experience, it is in a situation comparable to that of a blind being who has also not experienced much development of its sense of touch. Such a being would at first keep bumping into things. It would feel the resistance of outer reality. And from this generalized sensation, it could develop an inner life for itself, filled with a primitive consciousness that no longer has merely the general sensation of bumping into things, but that differentiates this sensation and distinguishes between hardness and softness, smoothness and roughness, etc.

[ 9 ] In the same way, the soul can hold and differentiate its experience of the mental pictures it forms in its encounter with the limits of knowledge. The soul learns to experience that these limits represent nothing more than what arises when the soul is touched by the spiritual world in a soul way. The dawning awareness of such limits becomes an experience for the soul that can be compared with the experience of touch in the sense world.⁸ What the soul formerly regarded as limits to knowledge it now sees as a soul-spiritual touching by a spiritual world. And out of the soul's attentiveness to its experiences with the various pictures it makes for itself at this borderland, the general sensing of a spiritual world differentiates for the soul into diverse perceptions of a spiritual world. In this way, the spiritual world's lowest form of perceptibility, so to speak, becomes an experience. This characterizes merely the very first opening of the soul to the spiritual world. But it also shows that the spiritual experiences striven for in what I mean by anthroposophy do not point in the direction of general, nebulous, emotional experiences that the soul has of itself, but rather in the direction of something that can be developed in a lawful way into a true inner experience. This is not the place to show how this first primitive spiritual perception can be intensified by further soul practices in such a way that one can speak of other, in a certain way, higher kinds of perception besides this soul-spiritual blind groping. For a description of such soul practices I must refer the reader to my anthroposophical books and essays. Here only the basic principle of spiritual perception was to be indicated of which anthroposophy speaks.

[ 10 ] I would like, through a comparison, to clarify still further how the whole attitude of soul in anthroposophical spiritual investigation differs from that of anthropology. Picture to yourself a number of wheat kernels. These can be used as food. But one can also plant them in the earth so that other wheat plants can grow from them. Likewise, one can hold mental pictures—gained through sense impressions—within one's consciousness in such a way as to experience them as copies of sense-perceptible reality. Or, one can experience these mental pictures in such a way as to let work in the soul the power these pictures exercise through what they are, irrespective of the fact that they reproduce sense perceptions. The first way that mental pictures were described as working in the soul can be compared with what becomes of wheat kernels when they are taken up as food by a living being; the second way, with the production of a new wheat plant from each kernel.

This comparison, to be sure, is only meant to focus on the fact that from the seed there arises a plant similar to its progenitors; and that from a mental picture working in the soul there arises within the soul a power that is effective in developing spiritual organs. And one must also consider the fact that our first awareness of such inner powers can only be kindled by mental pictures that work as forcefully as those mental pictures we described as occurring at the borderland of knowledge; once awakened, however, this awareness of such powers can find other mental pictures that can also be effective—to a lesser degree, it is true—in helping one progress upon this path.

[ 11 ] At the same time, this comparison points to a result of anthroposophical investigation into the essential nature of our life in mental pictures. Just as a seed, when it is processed into food, is lifted out of the course of development that lies within its own primal being and that leads to the formation of a new plant, so a mental picture too is diverted from its own essential course of development when it is used by the picturing soul to reproduce a sense perception. The development particular to a mental picture through its own essential nature is to work as a power in the development of the soul. Just as little as one discovers the plant's laws of development when one investigates the nutritive value of its seeds, can one discover the essential nature of mental pictures when one investigates the way mental picturing brings forth a cognitive reproduction of the sense-perceptible reality it communicates. This does not mean to say that such an investigation cannot be undertaken. This is just as possible as investigating the nutritive value of seeds. But just as a study of the nutritive value of seeds addresses something different than the developmental laws of plant growth, so an epistemology that investigates how the cognitive power of mental pictures reproduces reality informs us about something different than the essential nature of our life of mental picturing. Just as little as it lies prefigured in the essential nature of a seed to become food, does it lie in the essential nature of mental picturing to provide cognitive reproductions of reality. Yes, we can even say that it is as completely external to the seed's own nature to use it as food as it is to the actual nature of mental pictures to use them to reproduce reality in cognition. The truth is that in its mental pictures the soul grasps its own evolving being. And only through the soul's own activity does it occur that mental pictures become the mediators of any knowledge of reality.⁹

[ 12 ] Now, as to how mental pictures become mediators of such knowledge, anthroposophical observation, which employs spiritual organs, arrives at different conclusions than those epistemologists do who reject this observation. Anthroposophical observation reveals the following.

[ 13 ] Mental pictures, as they are in their own primal nature, do in fact form a part of the life of the soul; but they cannot become conscious in the soul as long as the soul does not consciously employ its spiritual organs. As long as these mental pictures are active in a way corresponding to their own essential nature, they remain unconscious in the soul. The soul lives by virtue of them, but can know nothing of them. These mental pictures must dampen down their own life in order to become conscious soul experiences for ordinary consciousness. This dampening down occurs with every sense perception. Thus, when the soul receives a sense impression, there occurs a laming of our life in mental pictures; and the soul experiences this lamed mental picturing consciously as the mediator of our knowledge of external reality.¹⁰ All mental pictures that the soul relates to an outer sense-perceptible reality are inner spiritual experiences whose life has been dampened down. Everything that one thinks regarding the outer sense world consists of deadened mental pictures. Now it is not as though the life of mental pictures were lost, however; it leads its existence, separated from the realm of consciousness, in the unconscious spheres of the soul. And there it is to be found again by our spiritual organs. Now, just as the deadened mental pictures can be related by the soul to the sense world, so the living mental pictures grasped by our spiritual organs can be related to the spiritual world.

The mental pictures described above as occurring to us at the borderland of knowledge are those that, by their very nature, do not let themselves be lamed; therefore, they resist any relation to sense-perceptible reality. Precisely through this fact, they become the points of departure for spiritual perception.

[ 14 ] In my anthroposophical books, I have called the mental pictures that are grasped as living ones by the soul “Imaginative mental pictures.” One misunderstands what is meant here by “Imaginative,” if one confuses it with the pictorial form of expression that must be used to point to such mental pictures in a suitable way. What is actually meant by "Imaginative" can be clarified in the following way. When someone has a sense perception, while the outer object is making an impression on him, the perception has a certain inner strength for him. When he turns away from the object, he can then only represent it to himself in an inner picture. But this mental picture has little inner strength. It is shadowy, so to speak, when compared with the mental picture that occurs while the outer object is present. If a person wants to enliven the mental pictures that are present in his soul in the shadowy form characteristic of ordinary consciousness, he saturates them with the aftereffects of sense perception. He makes the mental picture into an image he can observe [inwardly]. Such images are certainly nothing other than the results of interaction between mental picturing and sense perception. The “Imaginative” mental pictures of anthroposophy do not arise at all in this way. In order to bring them forth, the soul must know this inner process of uniting the life of mental pictures with sense impressions so exactly that it can prevent any sense impressions—or their aftereffects, as the case may be—from flowing into its life of mental picturing. One can achieve this exclusion of perception's aftereffects only if one has learned to know how mental picturing is gripped by these aftereffects. Only then is one in a position to unite the spiritual organs in a living way with the essential being of mental picturing and thereby receive impressions from spiritual reality. Through this, the life of mental pictures is permeated from an entirely different quarter than in sense perception. One's experiences are essentially different from those to be had from sense perceptions. And yet it is possible to describe these experiences. This can be done in the following way.

When the human being perceives the color yellow he does not merely have a visual experience in his soul; a nuance of feeling accompanies what the soul experiences. This feeling may vary in strength from person to person, but it will never be totally absent. In the beautiful chapter of his Color Theory on the sensory-ethical effects of colors, Goethe describes in a quite vivid manner the participation of our feeling in red, yellow, green, etc. Now when the soul perceives something in a particular region of the spirit, it can happen that this spiritual perception is accompanied in the soul by the same nuance of feeling as occurs in the sense perception of yellow. One knows then that one is having a particular spiritual experience. In this mental picture, of course, one does not confront what one confronts in a sense perception of a yellow color. Yet, as a nuance of feeling, one has the same inner experience as when the eye is confronted by a yellow color. One says then: I perceive the spiritual experience as “yellow.” In order to express oneself even more exactly, one could perhaps say: I perceive something that is like “yellow” for my soul. But this description is unnecessary for anyone who has learned from anthroposophical literature how the process leading to spiritual perception occurs. This literature points clearly enough to the fact that the reality accessible to spiritual perception does not confront the spiritual organs like a rarefied sense-perceptible object or process, or in such a way that it could be reproduced through mental pictures that are perceptible in the ordinary way.¹¹

[ 15 ] Just as the soul, through its spiritual organs, learns to know the spiritual world lying outside of the human being, so it also learns to know the spiritual being of man himself. Anthroposophy regards this spiritual being as a member of the spiritual world. Anthroposophy proceeds from observation of one part of the spiritual world to mental pictures about the human being of what reveals itself in the human body as a spiritual human being. Working from the opposite direction, anthropology also arrives at mental pictures about the human being. When anthroposophy develops the kinds of observations described in this essay, it arrives at views about the spiritual being of man that manifests in the sense world through its body. The flower of this manifestation is human consciousness, which allows sense impressions to live on in the form of mental pictures. By proceeding from experiences of the spiritual world outside man to man himself, anthroposophy ultimately finds the human being living in a sense-perceptible body and, in this body, elaborating his consciousness of sense-perceptible reality. The last thing anthroposophy, on its path, discovers about the human being is the soul's living activity in mental pictures, which anthroposophy is able to express in coherent imaginative pictures. Then, at the end of its path of spiritual investigation, so to speak, anthroposophy can employ its vision further and see how the real life of mental pictures is lamed by the perceiving senses. With the light it sheds from the spiritual quarter, anthroposophy shows this lamed life of mental pictures to be characteristic of man's life in the sense world, insofar as he forms mental pictures. In this way, as one of the last results of its investigations, anthroposophy arrives at a philosophy of the human being. What lies on its path down to this point is to be found purely in a spiritual realm. With the results of what it has found on its spiritual path, anthroposophy arrives at a characterization of the human being who lives in the sense world.

[ 16 ] Anthropology investigates the realms of the sense world. Proceeding on its way, it also arrives at the human being. He presents himself to anthropology as drawing together the facts of the sense world in his bodily organization in such a way that from this drawing together a consciousness arises through which outer reality is presented in mental pictures. The anthropologist sees mental pictures arising from the human organism. In observing this, he must come to a halt in a certain sense. With mere anthropology, he cannot apprehend the inner, lawful connectedness of mental pictures. Just as anthroposophy, at the end of its path through spiritual experiences, still looks at the spiritual being of man—insofar as this manifests through the perceptions of the senses—so anthropology, at the end of its path through the sense world, must look at the way the sense perceptible human being is active in mental picturing in its encounter with sense perceptions. And when it observes this, anthropology finds that this activity is not sustained by the organic laws of the body, but by the thought-laws of logic. But logic is not a region that can be entered in the same way as the other regions of anthropology. In thinking that is governed by logic, laws hold sway that can no longer be regarded as those of the bodily organization. As the human being works with these laws, the same logical activity reveals itself in him that anthroposophy encounters at the end of its path. It is just that the anthropologist sees this logical activity in the light shed from the sense-perceptible realm. He sees the lamed mental pictures and, by acknowledging the existence of logic, he also concedes that in these mental pictures laws are operative from a world that is indeed united with the sense world, but does not coincide with it. In man's life of mental pictures, which is carried by a logical activity, there manifests to the anthropologist the sense-perceptible human being who extends into the spiritual world. In this way, as the final results of its investigations, anthropology arrives at a philosophy about the human being. What lies on its path up to this point lies purely in the sense world.¹²

[ 17 ] If these two paths—the anthroposophical and the anthropological—are followed in the right way, they meet at the same point. Anthroposophy brings with it to this meeting a picture of the living spiritual human being and shows how he develops, in sense-perceptible existence, the consciousness that is present between birth and death while the life of supersensible consciousness is lamed. Anthropology, at this meeting point, shows a picture of the sense-perceptible human being who apprehends himself in consciousness, but who extends up into spiritual existence and lives in that essential beingness which reaches beyond birth and death. At this meeting point, a really fruitful understanding is possible between anthroposophy and anthropology. This understanding will occur if both progress to a philosophy of the human being. The philosophy of the human being that emerges from anthroposophy will in fact produce a picture of him painted in an entirely different medium than that provided by an anthropological philosophy of the human being; but those who look at both pictures will be able to find a harmony between their mental pictures similar to that between the negative of a photograph and the corresponding positive print.

[ 18 ] This essay, I hope, has shown how the question raised at the beginning—about the possibility of a fruitful discussion between anthropology and anthroposophy—can be answered in the affirmative, especially from the anthroposophical point of view.

• 1. Although the anthroposophy advocated by me stands on a completely different ground, with its results, than the presentations of Robert Zimmermann in his book Anthroposophy (1881), still I believe myself justified in using the concept by which he characterized the difference between anthroposophy and anthropology. As the content of his anthroposophy, however, Zimmermann only draws together into an abstract schema the concepts provided by anthropology. For him, the knowing vision that is the basis for what I mean by anthroposophy lies outside the domain of scientific procedure. His anthroposophy differs from anthropology only through the fact that the former first submits the concepts it receives from the latter to a process like that of Herbart's philosophy, before making these concepts into the content of its purely intellectual schema of ideas.
• 2. A more detailed presentation and justification of this notion of “spiritual organs” can be found in my book The Riddle of Man, Mercury Press, 1990, page 125ff. and in my books on Goethe's world view.
• 3. The inner experiences that the soul must undergo in gaining the use of its spiritual organs are described in a number of my books, but especially in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment and in the second part of Occult Science, an Outline.
• 4. Sich Vorstellen means to visualize, to picture to oneself mentally. The ability to “place something before oneself inwardly is a crucial factor in spiritual development and as such is referred to constantly in this essay. How do we hold something up before our inner eye? What is the attention we focus upon it? Who does this? What is the nature of mental pictures (Vorstellungen) themselves? Such questions are among the many painful riddles that ordinary consciousness cannot solve, and that bring us up against an invisible world. Translator.
• 5. See F. Brentano, Research into a Psychology of the Senses, Leipzig, 1907, p. 96f.
• 6. The awakening of those soul faculties which, in ordinary consciousness, are unawakened is described in more detail in my book The Riddle of Man, page 132ff.
• 7. For a more extensive validation of what is stated here, please see addendum 1: The Philosophical Validation of Anthroposophy.
• 8. Limits to knowledge like those discussed above do not merely present themselves in the small number of which most people are aware; they occur in great number along the paths that intelligent reflection, according to its own inner nature, must take in order to gain a relation to true reality. Please see addendum 2: The Appearance of Limits to Knowledge.
• 9. A more detailed case is made for these views in the last chapter of my book The Riddles of Philosophy: “Sketch of a Perspective of an Anthroposophy.”
• 10. Please see addendum 3: The Abstractness of Our Concepts.
• 11. For further clarification of what has just been expressed, please see addendum 4: An Important Characteristic of Spiritual Perception.
• 12. Like the thoughts before footnote 7, what has been indicated here can be clarified further in a certain direction by addendum 1: The Philosophical Validation of Anthroposophy.

[ 1 ] If we reflect upon ourselves, we soon come to realize that, in addition to the self we encompass with our thoughts, feelings, and fully conscious impulses of will, we bear in ourselves a second, more powerful self. We become aware that we subordinate ourselves to this second self as to a higher power. At first, this second self seems to us a lower being when compared to the one we encompass with our clear, fully conscious soul and its natural inclination toward the good and the true. And so, initially, we may strive to overcome this seemingly lower self.

A closer self-examination, however, can teach us something else about this second self. If periodically we look back on what we have experienced or done in life, we make a strange discovery, one that becomes more meaningful for us the older we become. Whenever we think about what we did or said at some time in the past, it turns out that we did a great many things we actually understood only at a later date. When we think of things we did seven or eight years ago—or perhaps even twenty years ago—we realize that only now, after a long time, is our mind sufficiently developed to understand what we did or said then.

Of course, there are people who do not make such self-discoveries because they do not try to. Nevertheless, this sort of soul-searching is extraordinarily fruitful. For in such moments as we become aware that we are only now beginning to understand something we did in our earlier years-that in the past our minds were not mature enough to understand what we did or said then-a new feeling emerges in our soul. We feel ourselves as if sheltered by a benevolent power presiding in the depths of our own being. We begin to trust more and more that, in the highest sense of the word, we are not alone in the world and that whatever we can understand or do consciously is fundamentally only a small part of what we accomplish in the world.

[ 2 ] After we have gone through this process of discovery a number of times, an insight that is theoretically easy to understand can become part of our practical lives. We know, in theory at any rate, that we would not get very far in life if we had to do everything in full consciousness, rationally understanding all the circumstances and ramifications in every case. To see that this is so we need only consider how and when we accomplish those acts that are the wisest and most important for our existence. A moment's thought will reveal that we act most wisely in the time between birth and the moment at which memory, that first moment we can remember when in later years we try to recall our early life, begins.

This is to say that, as we think back to what we did three, four, or five and more years ago, we reach a certain point in childhood beyond which our memory does not extend. Our memory does not go back any further. Parents or other people can tell us what happened before that time, but our own memory does not go back beyond a certain point. This is the point in our lives when we first began to perceive ourselves as an I. People whose memory is intact can usually remember back to, but not earlier than, this moment.

Our souls, however, have already performed their wisest deeds before this time. Never again in later life, after we have attained full consciousness, will we be able to accomplish such splendid and tremendous deeds as those we accomplished out of the unconscious depths of our souls in the first years of childhood. As we know, we bring the fruits of earlier lives on earth with us into the physical world at birth. For example, at birth our physical brain is still an incomplete and unfinished instrument. The soul must then work on it, adding the finer, detailed structures that make it the medium of all the soul's faculties. In fact, before the soul is fully conscious, it works on the brain to transform it into an instrument to express all the capacities, aptitudes, characteristics, and so on, that it has as a consequence of earlier lives. This work on our own body is guided from a perspective that is wiser than anything we can achieve later with our full consciousness. Moreover, during this time when the brain is being transformed, we must also acquire the three most important capacities for life on earth.

[ 3 ] The first capacity we must learn is to orient our body in space. People today do not realize what this means and that it touches on the most essential differences between human beings and animals. Animals are destined from the beginning to achieve their equilibrium in a certain way: one is destined to be a climber, another a swimmer, and so on. Animals are so constituted that from the outset they can orient themselves in space correctly. This is true even of primates. If zoologists were aware of this, they would put less emphasis on the number of similar bones, muscles, and so forth that human beings and animals have. After all, this is not nearly as important as the fact that human beings are not given an innate way to achieve equilibrium in space but must develop it out of their total being.¹

It is significant that we must work on ourselves to develop from beings that cannot walk into ones that walk upright. We achieve our vertical position, our position of equilibrium in space, by ourselves. In other words, we establish our own relationship to gravity. Those who do not wish to consider the question deeply will, of course, easily dispute our explanation on apparently good grounds. They may claim, for example, that we are just as well constituted for walking upright as climbing animals are for climbing. Upon closer examination, however, we find that animals' orientation in space is determined by their physical organization. In human beings, however, it is the soul that establishes the relationship to space and shapes the organization.

[ 4 ] The second capacity we learn out of ourselves from our essential being—which remains the same through successive incarnations—is language. This allows us to relate to our fellow human beings and makes us bearers of the spiritual life that permeates the physical world primarily by means of human beings. It has often been emphasized, and with good reason, that someone stranded on a desert island who had had no contact with other human beings before learning to speak would never learn to do so. What we receive through heredity, on the other hand, what is implanted in us for development in later years, does not depend on our interactions with other human beings. For example, we are predisposed by heredity to change teeth in our seventh year. Even on a desert island our second set of teeth would grow if we reached that age. But if our soul being, the part of us that continues from one life to the next, is not stimulated we will not learn to speak. In a sense, we must sow the seed for the development of the larynx in the time before our earliest memory-before we attain full I-consciousness-so that the larynx can then become an organ of speech.

[ 5 ] There is still a third, even less well known, capacity that we learn on our own through what we bear within us through successive incarnations. I am referring here to our ability to live within the world of thoughts and ideas, the world of thought itself. Our brain is formed and worked on because it is the tool of thinking. At the beginning of life, the brain is still malleable because we must shape it ourselves to make it an instrument for the thinking appropriate to our essential being. The brain at birth is the result of the work of forces inherited from our parents, grandparents, and so on. It is in our thinking that we bring to expression what we are as individuals in conformity with our former earthly lives. Therefore, after birth, when we have become physically independent of our parents and ancestors, we must transform the brain we have inherited.

[ 6 ] Clearly, then, we accomplish significant steps in the early years of life. We work on ourselves in accordance with the highest wisdom. In fact, if we had to rely on our own intelligence, we could not achieve what we must accomplish without our intelligence in the first few years of our lives. Why is this so? Why must all these things be accomplished from soul depths that lie outside our consciousness? Because, in the first years of our lives, our souls, as well as our whole being, are much more closely connected with the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than is the case later.

Clairvoyants, who can trace the spiritual processes involved because they have undergone spiritual training, discover that something tremendously significant happens at the moment when we achieve I-consciousness, that is, at the moment of our earliest memory. They can see that, during the early years of childhood, an aura hovers about us like a wonderful human-superhuman power. This aura, which is actually our higher part, extends everywhere into the spiritual world. But at the earliest moment we can remember,² We can experience ourselves as a coherent I from this point on because what had previously been connected to the higher worlds then entered the I. Thereafter, our consciousness establishes its own relationship to the outer world.

This conscious relationship to the outer world does not yet exist in early childhood. In childhood, a dream world still seems to hover about us. We work on ourselves with a wisdom that is not in us, a wisdom that is more powerful and comprehensive than all the conscious wisdom we acquire later. This higher wisdom works from the spiritual world deep into the body; it enables us to form the brain out of the spirit. We can rightly say, then, that even the wisest person can learn from a child. For the wisdom at work in children does not become part of our consciousness in later life. It is obscured and exchanged for consciousness.

In the first years of life, however, this higher wisdom functions like a “telephone connection” to the spiritual beings in whose world we find ourselves between death and rebirth. Something from this world still flows into our aura during childhood. As individuals we are then directly subject to the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which we belong. When we are children—up to the moment of our earliest memory—the spiritual forces from this world flow into us, enabling us to develop our particular relationship to gravity. At the same time, the same forces also form our larynx and shape our brain into living organs for the expression of thought, feeling, and will.

[ 7 ] During childhood, then, we work out of a self that is still in direct contact with the higher worlds. Indeed, to a certain degree, we can still do this even in later life, although conditions change. Whenever we feel that we did or said something in earlier years that we are only now coming to understand, we have an indication that we were guided by a higher wisdom at that earlier time. Only years later do we manage to gain insight into the motives of our past conduct. All this indicates that at birth we did not entirely leave behind the world we lived in before entering into our new, physical existence. In fact, we never leave it behind completely. What we have as our part of higher spirituality enters our physical life and remains with us. Thus, what we bear within us is not a higher self that has to be developed gradually, but one that already exists and that often leads us to rise above ourselves.

[ 8 ] All that we can produce in the way of ideals and artistic creativity—as also the natural healing forces in our body, which continuously compensate for the injuries life inflicts—originate not in our ordinary, rational minds but in the deeper forces that work in our early years on our orientation in space, on the formation of the larynx, and on the development of the brain. These same forces are still present in us later. People often say of the damages and injuries we sustain in life that external forces will not be of any help and that our organism must develop its own inherent healing powers. What they are talking about is a wise, benevolent influence working upon us. From this same source also arise the best forces that enable us to perceive the spiritual world—that is, to have true clairvoyance.

[ 9 ] We can now ask why the higher powers work on us only in the early years of childhood. [ 10 ] It is easy to answer one half of this question, for if these higher forces continued to work on us in the same way into later life, we would always remain children and could never achieve full I-consciousness. What worked previously from without must be transferred into our own being.

But there is a more significant reason, one that can tell us more about the mysteries of human life. Spiritual science teaches that we have to consider the human body at the present stage of the earth's evolution as having developed from earlier conditions. People familiar with spiritual science know that in the course of this evolution various forces have worked on our whole being—some on the physical body, others on the etheric body, and others again on the astral body.³ We have evolved to our present condition because beings we call luciferic and ahrimanic have affected us. Through their forces, our essential being became worse than it would have been if only the forces of the spiritual guides of the world, those who want to advance our development in a straight line, had worked on us. Indeed, suffering, disease, and death can be traced to the fact that, in addition to the beings who advance our development in a straight line, luciferic and ahrimanic beings are also at work and continuously thwart our progress.

What we bring with us at birth contains something that is better than anything we can make of it in later life. [ 11 ] In early childhood, the luciferic and ahrimanic forces have only a limited influence on our being. Essentially, they are active only in what we make of ourselves through our conscious life. If we retained the best part of ourselves in its full force beyond the first phase of childhood, its influence would be too much for us because the luciferic and ahrimanic forces opposing the part of ourselves that is better than the rest would weaken our whole being. Our constitution as human beings in the physical world is such that, once we are no longer soft and malleable as children, we can no longer stand to have the forces of the spiritual world continue to affect us directly. The forces that underlie our orientation in space and the formation of the larynx and the brain would shatter us if they continued to influence us directly in later life. These forces are so powerful that our organism would waste away beneath their holiness if they continued to work on us. However, for the activity that brings us into conscious contact with the supersensible world, we have to call upon these forces again.

[ 12 ] This leads us to a realization that is very significant if we understand it rightly. In the New Testament it is put thus: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) What then seems to be the highest ideal for a human being if the above statement is correctly understood? Surely that our ideal must be to approach ever closer a conscious relationship with the forces that worked on us, without our awareness, in the first years of childhood. At the same time, we must realize that we would collapse under the power of these forces if they were immediately and too easily to affect our conscious life. That is why a careful preparation is necessary to achieve the capacities that lead to a perception of supersensible worlds. The goal of this preparation is to enable us to bear what we simply cannot bear in ordinary life.

[ 13 ] Our passing through successive incarnations is significant for the overall evolution of our essential being, which has undergone successive past lives and will continue to go through future lives. The evolution of the earth runs parallel to our own. At some point in the future, the earth will have reached the end of its course; then the planet earth, as a physical entity, will have to separate from the totality of human souls—just as when we die the body separates from the spirit, and the soul, in order to live on, enters the spiritual realm between death and rebirth.⁴ From this point of view, our highest ideal must be the striving to make all the fruits to be gained in earthly life truly our own before we die.

[ 14 ] The forces that make us too weak to bear those forces that work on us in childhood originate in the organism of the earth. By the time this separates from humanity, we must have advanced to the point of giving over our whole being to the forces that presently work on us only in childhood. Only when we have reached this level can we claim to have attained our goal. Thus, through successive earthly lives, we must gradually make our entire being, including our consciousness, an expression of the forces that work on us under the guidance of the spiritual world in early childhood. This is the purpose of evolution.

After such considerations, the realization that we are not alone takes hold of our soul. This realization imbues us with humility, but also with a proper consciousness of our human dignity. We realize at the same time that something lives in us that can prove at all times that we can rise above ourselves to a self that is already surpassing us and will continue to do so from one life to the next. As this realization assumes a more and more definite form, it can have a very soothing, heartwarming effect and, at the same time, imbue the soul with the appropriate humility and modesty. What lives within us is truly a higher, divine human being, and we can feel ourselves pervaded by this being as by a living presence of whom we can say, This is my inner guide in me.

[ 15 ] Given this, the thought easily arises that we should strive in every way possible to achieve harmony with that part in us that is wiser than our conscious intelligence. Thereafter, our attention will no longer be directed to the conscious self but will be focused instead on an expanded self, and from this perspective we can then combat and eradicate all our false pride and arrogance. From this feeling we will gradually come to a right understanding of our present incompleteness. We shall come to see that we will become complete when the comprehensive spirituality at work in us has the same relationship to our adult consciousness that it had to our unconscious soul life in early childhood.

[ 16 ] Even though we may not remember anything from our first four years of life, we can safely say that the active influence of the higher spiritual realms lasts for about the first three years. By the end of this period we have become able to connect the impressions from the outer world with our I-concept. To be sure, this coherent I-concept cannot be traced back beyond the first moment we can remember. This is a moment that is difficult to locate, for with the awakening of distinct I-consciousness, our memory may be so weak that it cannot be recovered later. Nevertheless, we may say that people generally remember as far back as the beginning of the fourth year. In other words, we are justified in saying that the higher forces that have a decisive influence on us in childhood can work on us for three years. It follows that our constitution in the present, middle phase of the earth's evolution enables us to absorb these higher forces for only three years.

[ 17 ] Now if, through some special cosmic powers, we could somehow remove the ordinary I from a person—if the ordinary I that has accompanied a person through successive incarnations could be separated from that person's physical, etheric, and astral bodies—and we could then replace the ordinary I with an I that is connected with the spiritual worlds—what would happen? After three years this person's body would fall apart! If such a thing were to happen, world karma would have to do something to prevent the spiritual being connected to the higher worlds from living in this body for more than three years. [During the transition from childhood to the following stages, our organism retains its viability because it can still change during this period. In later life it can no longer change, and therefore cannot survive with the self connected directly to the spiritual worlds.] Only at the conclusion of our earthy lives will we be able to retain the forces within ourselves that allow us to live with that spiritual being for more than three years. Then we will be able to say, Not I but this higher self in me, which has been there all along, is now at work in me. Until then, we will not be able to experience this. At most, we will be able to feel the presence of this higher self, but our actual, real human I will not yet be able to bring the higher self fully to life.

[ 18 ] Let us now assume that a human organism were to enter the world at some moment in the middle of the earth's lifetime, and that, at a certain point by means of certain cosmic powers, this organism was freed of its I and received in its stead the I that is usually active only in the first three years of childhood—the I that is connected to the spiritual worlds we live in between death and rebirth. How long would such a person be able to live in an earthly body? Such a person would be able to survive in this earthy body only for about three years. After three years, world karma would have to intervene and destroy this human organism.

[ 19 ] What we have assumed here did actually occur at one time in history. When the human organism known as Jesus stood on the banks of the Jordan to be baptized by John, his I left his physical, etheric, and astral bodies. But after the Baptism, that organism bore within itself the higher self of humanity in fully conscious form. The self that works on us with cosmic wisdom in childhood, before we are conscious of it, was then fully conscious in Jesus of Nazareth. And by this very fact, this self, which was connected to the higher spiritual world, could live in this human body for only three years. Events then had to follow a course that brought an end to Jesus' physical life three years after the Baptism.

[ 20 ] Indeed, we have to understand the external events in the life of Jesus Christ as resulting from the inner causes discussed above. They are the outer expression of these causes. [ 21 ] This reveals the deeper connection between the guide in us—which radiates into our childhood as into a dark room and always works under the surface of our consciousness as our best self—and what once entered into human history to live for three years in a human sheath.

[ 22 ] This “higher” I, which is connected to the spiritual hierarchies, entered history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth—an event that is symbolized by the spirit descending in the form of a dove, saying: “This is my well beloved Son, today I have begotten him” (Matthew 3: 17). (Such is the original meaning of the words). What is revealed here? If we hold this image of the Baptism before our eyes, we have before us the highest human ideal. That is what is meant when the gospels tell us that Christ can be seen and known in every person. Even if there were no gospels and no tradition to report that a Christ once lived, our knowledge of the nature of the human being would tell us that Christ is alive in us.

[ 23 ] To know the forces at work in childhood is to know the Christ in us. The question then arises whether this realization also leads us to acknowledge that Christ at one time really lived on earth in a human body? We can answer “yes” to this without requiring any documents, because true clairvoyant self-knowledge convinces people in our time that there are forces in the human soul that come from Christ.

In the first three years of childhood these forces are active without any effort on our part. They can also work on us in our later life—if we seek Christ in ourselves through contemplation. It was not always possible to find the Christ within; indeed, as clairvoyant perception reveals, prior to Christ's life on earth, there were times when no amount of contemplation would have helped people to find the Christ. Clairvoyant cognition teaches us that this is so. Between the time when Christ could not be found within and the present, when he can be found in this way, lies Christ's life on earth. It is because Christ lived on the earth that we can now find him within, in the way I have indicated. Thus, for clairvoyant perception, the fact that Christ lived on the earth is proven without recourse to any historical documentation.

[ 24 ] It is as if Christ had said: Human beings, I want to be an ideal for you that presents to you on a higher, spiritual level what is fulfilled in the body. In the early years of life we learn out of the spirit, first, to walk—that is, we learn, under the guidance of the spirit, to find our way in earthly life. Then we learn to speak—to formulate the truth—out of the spirit. In other words, we develop the essence of truth out of speech sounds. Finally, we also develop the organ for our life as earthly I-beings. Thus, in the first three years of life, we learn three things. We learn to find the “way,” that is, to walk; we learn to represent the “truth” with our organism, and we learn to express “life” in our body through the spirit. There is no more meaningful paraphrase imaginable of the words “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

Most meaningfully, therefore, the I-being of Christ is expressed in the words: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” The higher spiritual forces form our organism in childhood—though we are not conscious of this—so that our body becomes the expression of the way, the truth, and the life. Similarly, the human spirit gradually becomes the conscious bearer of the way, the truth, and the life by permeating itself with Christ. Thereby we transform ourselves in the course of our earthly life into the power at work in us in childhood.

[ 25 ] Words such as these about the way, the truth, and the life can open the doors of eternity for us. Once our self-knowledge has become true and substantial, these words will resound for us from the depths of our soul.

[ 26 ] What I have presented here opens up a twofold perspective on the spiritual guidance of the individual and of humanity as a whole. First, as individuals, we find the Christ, the guide in us, through self-knowledge. We can always find Christ in this way because, since his life on earth, he is always present in us. Second, when we apply the knowledge we have gained without the help of historical documents to these documents, we begin to understand their true nature. They are the historical expression of something that has revealed itself in the depths of the soul. Therefore, historical documents should be regarded as part of that guidance of humanity that is intended to lead the soul to itself.

[ 27 ] If we understand the eternal spirit of the words “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” in this way, we do not need to ask why we have to enter life as children even after having passed through many incarnations. For we realize that this apparent imperfection is a perpetual reminder of the highest that lives in us. We cannot be reminded often enough—we need to be reminded at least at the beginning of each new life – of the great truth of what we really are in our innermost essential being, that underlies all our earthly lives but remains untouched by the imperfections of earthly existence.

[ 28 ] It is best not to present too many definitions or concepts when talking about spiritual science or theosophy [anthroposophy] or about occultism in general. It is better to describe things and to try to convey an idea of what they really are like. That is why I have tried here to give you a sense of what is characteristic of the first three years of life and of how this relates to the light that radiates from the cross on Golgotha. The description I have given bespeaks an impulse in human evolution that will make St. Paul's words “Not I, but Christ in me” come true. All we need to know is what as human beings we really are; on the basis of this knowledge we can then gain insight into the being of Christ. Only after we have arrived at this Christ-idea through a real understanding of humanity, and after we have understood that to find Christ we must seek him in ourselves, will turning to the Bible be useful for us. No one has a greater or more conscious appreciation of the Bible than those who have found Christ in this way.

Imagine that a Martian who had never heard anything about Christ and his works, came down to earth. This Martian would not understand much of what happened here, and much of what interests people today would not interest this visitor. However, this Martian would be interested in what is the central impulse of earthy evolution, namely, the Christ-idea as expressed in human nature. Once we understand this, we will for the first time be able to read the Bible correctly, for we will then see that it expresses in a wonderful way what we have first perceived within ourselves. You see, we do not need to be taught a particular appreciation of the gospels. When we read the gospels as fully conscious individuals, what we have learned through spiritual science enables us to fully realize their greatness.

[ 29 ] I am hardly exaggerating when I claim that there will come a time when the general opinion will be that people who have learned to understand and appreciate the content of the gospels through spiritual science will see them as scriptures intended for the guidance of humanity and that their understanding will do the Bible more justice than anything else has so far. It is only through understanding our own inner being that we can come to see what lies hidden in these profound scriptures. Now, if we find in the gospels what is so completely part of our own being, it follows that it must have entered the scriptures through the people who wrote them. Thus, what we have to admit concerning ourselves—and the older we get, the more often we have to admit it—namely, that we do many things we don't understand fully until many years later: this must also be true for the writers of the gospels. They wrote out of the higher self that works on all of us in childhood. Thus, the gospels originate in the same wisdom that forms us. The spirit is revealed physically in the human body as well as in the writing of the gospels.

[ 30 ] In this context, the concept of inspiration becomes meaningful once again in a positive sense. Just as higher forces work on the brain in the first three years of childhood, so the spiritual worlds imbued the writers of the gospels with the forces out of which they wrote their gospels. These facts reveal the spiritual guidance of humanity. After all, if there are people in the human race who write documents out of the same forces that wisely shape human beings, then humanity as a whole is truly being guided. And just as individuals say or do things they understand only at a later age, so humanity as a whole produced evangelists as mediators who provided revelations that can be understood only gradually. These scriptures will be understood more and more as humanity progresses. As individuals, we can feel a spiritual guidance within us; humanity as a whole can feel it in persons who work as the gospel writers did.

[ 31 ] The concept of the guidance of humanity we have just established can now be expanded in many ways. Let us assume a person has found students or disciples, that is, people who declare their faith in him and become his loyal followers. Such a person out of genuine self-knowledge will easily realize that having found students gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not originate within him. Instead, spiritual forces from higher worlds want to communicate with the students and find in the teacher a suitable instrument for revealing themselves.

[ 32 ] Such a teacher may then reason as follows: When I was a child, I worked on myself by means of forces that came from the spiritual world. The best I can now contribute here must also come from higher worlds. I must not consider it as part of my ordinary consciousness. Indeed, such an individual may feel that something like a daemon—the word daemon here refers to a benevolent spiritual power—works from the spiritual world through him on the students.

According to Plato, Socrates felt something like this when he spoke of his daemon as something that guided and directed him.⁵ Many attempts have been made to explain Socrates' daemon. However, to explain it we must accept the idea that Socrates could feel something akin to what emerges from the above considerations. Based on this, we then realize that during the three or four centuries when the Socratic principle prevailed in Greece, Socrates introduced a mood into the Greek world that served as preparation for another great event. The mood I am referring to accompanied the realization that what we perceive of an individual does not comprise the whole of what enters this world from the higher one. This mood continued to prevail long after Socrates' death. The best people who had this feeling later also best understood the words “Not I, but the Christ in me.” They realized that Socrates had to speak of a daemon-like force working out of the higher worlds, but through the ideal of Christ it became clear what Socrates had really meant. Of course, Socrates could not yet speak of Christ because in his time people could not yet find the Christ-being within.

[ 33 ] Here again we feel something of a spiritual guidance of humanity; nothing can enter the world without preparation. Why did Paul find his best followers in Greece? Because Socratism had prepared the ground there. That is, more recent events in the development of humanity can be traced back to earlier events that prepared people to allow the later events to work upon them. This gives us an idea of how far the guiding impulse of human evolution reaches; it puts the right people at the right time in the place where they are needed for our development. In facts such as these the guidance of humanity is evident in a general way.

[ 34 missing ]

• 1. For a further description of the essential differences between human beings and animals, see Wolfgang Schad, Man and Mammals, (Garden City, NY: Waldorf Press, 1977) and Rudolf Steiner, Study of Man, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966).
• 2. Steiner describes the aura in Theosophy, 140–153.
• 3. The physical body is the corporeal aspect of the human being, related to the mineral kingdom. The etheric body, or body of formative forces through which life unfolds, is related to the plant kingdom. The astral body bears desires, pleasure and pain, and the qualitative world of emotions, and is related to the animal kingdom. See Occult Science, 21–28.
• 4. For a description of earth evolution, see Occult Science, chap. 2.
• 5. Socrates, 470–399 B.C., Greek philosopher and teacher. Plato, 427–347 B.C., Greek philosopher, the most famous student of Socrates.

Spiritual investigation cannot meddle with the immediate events of the day. But at the same time, one should not believe that spiritual science floats in the clouds above every reality and that it has nothing to do with practical life. To-day we shall not speak of the events that are stirring the world just now, events of the kind: described in the daily newspapers, nor do we belong to those who prefer to be blind and deaf to the occurrences that move the human heart. The spiritual-scientific investigator must always thread his way between two rocks; he never loses himself in the ruling opinions and views of the day, and on the other hand he never becomes involved in empty abstractions and authoritative concepts. On many occasions I had the opportunity to tell you that spiritual science should make us practical; far more practical than is generally believed to be the case by the men of daily practical life. It should make us practical, by leading us to the deeper forces which lie at the foundation of life and throwing light upon everything from these deeper forces, and by guiding our actions so that they are in harmony with the great laws of the universe. We are able to achieve something in the world and we can influence its course of events only if we act in accordance with the great laws of the universe.

After these introductory words, let me begin by pointing out a few facts for the sole purpose of calling up in your mind the importance of present-day problems, I might say the actuality of these problems.

One, fact which everyone may perhaps remember is that on the 24th of August 1898 the Czar's authorised representative sent a circular to all the accredited foreign representatives at St. Petersburg, containing among other things the following words: The maintenance of peace and thee diminution of armaments that weigh upon the nation constitute an ideal of modern civilisation, an ideal upon which the governments of all nations should turn their attention. My sovereign completely dedicated his strength to this task. Hoping that this, may be in keeping with the desire of most of the other lowers, the Imperial Government holds that it is now the best moment to ensure peace upon the basis of international discussion and to put an end to the present uninterrupted arming.

This document also contains the following: Since the financial means required for armaments are constantly rising, capital and labour are deviated from their true paths and are devoured unproductively. The armaments consequently correspond less and less to the purpose allotted to them by the respective governments. The document concludes by saying that a Conference with God's aid would be a good omen for the new century.

To be sure, this is not exactly a new resolution, for we can go back many centuries, and in the l6th/17th century we come across a ruler, Henry IVth of France, who then advanced the idea of holding such a universal Peace Conference. Seven of the sixteen nations of that time had already given their consent, when Henry IVth was murdered. No one continued his work. If necessary, it would be possible to trace intentions and plans having this aim and flowing from such quarters, much further back still.

This is one sequence of facts. The other one is: the Conference of The Hague. You all know the name of that praiseworthy person who pursues her ideals with such rare devotion and with such a good knowledge of the facts: Bertha von Suttner. One year after the Conference at The Hague she collected the acts into a book in which she recorded speeches which were sometimes very beautiful. She also wrote an introduction to this book. Please bear in mind that one year passed by since Bertha von Suttner envisaged this book about the Peace Conference.

At this point there is an interruption in the text.)

War has now broken out, in diametrical opposition to these ideas, war due to refusal of intermediation—the cruel Transvaal war. If we now look around in the world, we find that very noble-hearted men are lighting for the ideal of Peace and the love for universal peace lives in the hearts of high- minded idealists—nevertheless so much blood has never before been shed on earth as during this short time. This is an earnest very earnest matter for everyone who is also interested in the great problems of the soul.

On the one hand we have the devoted apostles of Peace and their untiring activity, we have the excellent books of Bertha von Suttner who knew how to set forth the terrors of war with such rare skill—but do not let us forget the other side. Do not let us forget that many clever men who belong to the other side assure us again and again that war is necessary for human progress, that it steels the forces. The strength increases by having to face opposition. The scientific investigator who attracted so many thinkers to his side, often said that he desired war, that only a fierce war could advance the forces in Nature.¹ Perhaps he did not express himself so radically, nevertheless many people harbour these thoughts. Even within our spiritual-scientific Movement some people voiced the view that it would be a weakness, nay a sin against the spirit of national strength, if any objection were raised against the war which had led to national honour, national power. In any case, the opinions in this sphere are still strongly opposed.

But the Conference at The Hague brought with it one thing. It brought to our notice the views of many people who are at the head of public life. Many representatives of Governments at that time agreed that the Conference at The Hague should take place. One might think that a cause which had gained the support of such high quarters, would be highly successful. -

In order to. view things in the way in which they have to be viewed from the aspect of a spiritual conception of the world and of life, we must penetrate more deeply into the whole subject. When we study the problem of peace as an ideal problem and see how it developed in the course of time, but at the same time observe the facts of battle and strife, we must say that perhaps the way in which this ideal of peace has been pursued, calls for a closer investigation and claims our attention.

You see, even the hearts of many soldiers are filled with pain and abhorrence for the consequences and effects of war. Such things, may indeed induce us to ask: Do wars arise through anything which can be eliminated from the world by principles and opinions? These who look more deeply into the souls of men know that two quite distinct and separate directions produce that which leads to war. One direction is what we designate as power of judgment and understanding, what we name idealism; the other direction is human passion, the human inclinations, man's sympathies and antipathies.

Many things would be different in the world if it were possible, without further ado, to control desires and passions in accordance with the principles of the heart and of the understanding. For this is not possible, the very opposite has so far always been the case in human life. The understanding, the heart itself, provide in idealism the mask for what is pursued by passion and desire. And if you study the history of human development, you may again and again ask, whenever you come across certain principles, whenever you see idealism flashing up: What are the passions and desires which lurk in the background?

You see, if you bear this in mind, it is quite possible that with the best principles one cannot as yet achieve anothing; perhaps something else will be required, because the human, passions, instincts and desires are not sufficiently developed to follow the idealism of individual men. The problem has, as you see, a deeper root and we must grasp it more deeply.

If we wish to judge the whole matter rightly, we must cast a glance into the human soul and its fundamental forces. We do not always survey the course of development to a sufficient extent, generally we only survey a short space of time,—so that an encompassing conception of the world must open our eyes, giving us on the one hand a deep insight and on the other a survey of larger epochs of time, in order that we may form a judgment of the forces which are to lead us into the future.

Let us consider the human soul, where we can study it deeply and thoroughly. Let us consider from another aspect something which we mentioned eight days ago.² We have, a natural-scientific theory, the so-called Darwinism. There is one idea which plays an important part in this natural-scientific conception. It is the idea designated as the “STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE,” the “BATTLE OF LIFE.” Our whole natural science, our whole conception of life stood under the sign of this struggle for existence. The scientists declared: In the world the beings that can best assert themselves in the battle of life, that can gain the greatest advantage over their fellow-creatures, are those who survive, whereas the others perish! Consequently, we need not be surprised that we are surrounded by beings, who adapted themselves best of all, for they developed throughout millions of years. The fittest survived and the unfit perished.

The struggle for existence has become the watchword of scientific research. From where did this struggle come? It has not been taken from Nature. Darwin himself, though he sees it in a greater style than his followers, took it from a conception of Malthus,³ spreading over the history of human development, a conception according to which the earth produces food in a progression rising in a far more reduced measure than the increase of the population. Those who versed in these questions will know that one says: The increase in food is in accordance with arithmetic progression, whereas the increase in the population is in accordance with geometrical progression. This produces a struggle for existence, a war of all against all. Setting out from this idea, Darwin placed the struggle for existence also at the beginning of the life of mature. This conception is not only in keeping with a mere idea, but with the modern ways of living. This battle of life has become reality reaching as far as the conditions of individual existence, as expressed in the form of general economic competition. This battle of life was observed at close quarters, it was looked upon as something natural in the kingdom of man, and then it was taken over by natural science.

Ernst Haeckel set out from these ideas, and in warlike activities, in war itself, he even saw a lever of civilisation, Battle strengthens, the weak must go under,—civilisation demands that the weak should perish. National economy then applied this struggle to the human sphere. We thus have great theories in national economy, in the conceptions of social life, theories which look upon the struggle for existence as something quite justified which cannot be severed from the development of humanity. With these principles, not with prejudices, one went back to the remotest times, and one tried to study the life of the wild barbaric peoples; one believed that it was possible to listen to the development of human culture and thought to discover in it the wildest principle of war. Huxley said: If we survey the animals in Nature, their struggle for existence resembles a fight of gladiators—and this is a law of Nature. And if we turn our attention from the higher animals to the lower species in keeping with the course of world-development, we find that the facts prove everywhere that we live in the midst of a general struggle for existence,

You see, this idea could be expressed, it could be accepted as a general law of the universe. Those who realise that no words can be uttered which are not deeply rooted in the human soul, must say to themselves that the feelings, the soul-constitution even of our best people are still based upon the idea that war, battle, in the human race as well as in Nature, constitutes a law, something from which we cannot escape.

Now you can say: These scientists were perhaps very humane, perhaps in their deepest idealism they longed for peace, for harmony. But their profession, their science convinced them that this was not so, and perhaps they wrote down their theories with a bleeding heart.

This might stand as an objection, if something quite different had not arisen. We can say that the above-mentioned theory was universally accepted by all those who believed that they were sound thinkers, scientifically and economically, in the sixties and seventies of the 19th-century. generally accepted was- the view that war and strife were, a law of Nature, from which one could not escape. The old conception of Rousseau⁴ had been disposed of completely—so people thought—for Rousseau held that only man's wickedness had brought battle and strife into the general peace of Nature, opposition and disharmony into its harmony. At the end of me l9th century the Rousseau atmosphere was still prevalent, according to which a glance into the life of Nature which is still uninfluenced by man's super-culture, reveals everywhere harmony and peace. It is man, with his arbitrariness and culture, who brought strife and battle into the world.

This was still Rousseau's idea and during, the last third of the 19th century the scientists assured us: it would be fine if this were true, but this is not the case: the facts show us a different state of things. Nevertheless, let us ask ourselves earnestly: Has human feeling expressed a verdict, or the facts themselves? ... It would be difficult to raise any objection if the facts themselves spoke in this way.

But a strange man appeared in the year 1880, who gave a lecture in St. Petersburg in Russia, during the Congress of Scientists of 1880. This lecture is of profoundest significance for all who are really interested in this problem. This man is the zoologist Kessler.⁵ He died soon after. His lecture dealt with the principle of mutual help in Nature. All those who earnestly deal with such questions, will find in the research and scientific maturity contained in this lecture a completely new impulse. Nor the first time in our modern epoch facts were collected from the whole of Nature proving that all the former theories on the struggle for existence are not in keeping with reality.

You see, this lecture expounds and proves by facts that the animal species, the groups of animals, do not develop through the battle of life, in reality, a struggle for existence only exists exceptionally between two different species, but not within the same species, for the individuals belonging to it on the contrary help each other. Those species are the fittest, where the individuals belonging to it are most inclined to this mutual help. Long existence is guaranteed not by a struggle for existence, but by mutual help.

This opened out a new aspect, by a strange coincidence and chain of circumstances in modern scientific research, this subject was continued by a man who adopted the most extraordinary standpoint, by Prince Kropotkin: He was able to prove in the case of animals and certain tribes, by bringing forward innumerable sound facts, the great significance of this principle of mutual help, both in Nature and in human life. I would advise everyone to read his took.⁶ It brings a number of ideas and concepts which are a good school for an ascent to a spiritual outlook.

But these facts can be grasped in the right way only if they are considered in the light of a so-called esoteric conception, if we gain insight into these facts upon the foundation of spiritual science. I might adduce many facts which speak very clearly, but you can read them in the above-mentioned book. The principle of mutual help in Nature declares that those in whom this principle is developed in the highest measure are those who advance furthest. Consequently, the facts speak clearly and will speak more and more clearly for us.

When we speak of a single animal-species in the theosophical conception, we speak of it in the same way in which we speak of man's single individuality. An animal species is upon a lower sphere the same as the single human individuality upon a higher sphere. I already explained before that there is one fact which, we must clearly envisage in order to grasp the difference which exists between man and the whole animal kingdom. This contrasting difference may be expressed in the words: Man has a biography, but the animal has no biography. In the case of an animal it suffices to describe its species. Father, grandfather, grandson and son—these distinctions do not count in the case of a lion; we do not need to describe each one in particular. Certainly I knew that many objections can be raised: I know that those who love a dog or a monkey think that they can write a biography of the dog or of the monkey. But a biography should not contain what another person knows of the being that is the subject of a biography, but what that being himself knew. Self-consciousness is essential for a biography, and in this meaning, only the HUMAN BEING has a biography. This would correspond to a description of a whole animal-species. That each group of animals has a group-soul, is the external expression for the fact that each individual human being bears a soul within him.

I was able to explain to you here that a hidden world is immediately connected with our physical world; it is the astral world which does not consist of the objects and beings that can be perceived through the senses, but which are woven of the same substance of which our passions and desires are woven. If you examine the human being you can see that he led down his soul as far as the physical world, the physical plane. But the animal has no individual soul upon the physical plane,—you find instead the animal's individual soul upon the so-called astral plane, in the astral world that lies concealed behind our physical world. The groups of animals have individual souls in the astral world.

You see, here you have the difference between man and the animal kingdom. If we now ask ourselves: What is really waging battle, when we observe the struggle for existence in the animal kingdom? We must reply: In truth, the astral battle of the soul's passions and instincts stands behind this struggle of the different species in the animal kingdom, the battle of soul-passions and instincts which is rooted in the double souls, or in sex. But if we were to speak of a struggle for existence WITHIN the same species in the animal kingdom, this would be the same as if the human soul were to wage war upon itself in its different parts. This is a very important truth: We cannot accept the rule that a struggle exists within the same animal species, but a struggle for existence can only take place between different species; for the soul of one whole species is the same for all the animals belonging to it ... and because of this it must control the single members. In the animal species we can observe mutual help and assistance, which is simply the expression for the uniform activity of the species or of the group-soul. And if you consider all the examples mentioned in the above-named interesting book, you will obtain a beautiful insight into the way in which these group-souls work. We find, for example, that when a specimen of a certain species of crab has accidentally fallen on its back, so that it cannot turn around alone, a number of animals in its neighbourhood come along and help it to get on its legs again. This mutual support comes from the soul-organ which the animals have in common. Follow the way in which beetles help each other when they have to protect a brood, or tackle a dead mouse, etc., how they unite and carry out their work together, there you can observe the activity of the group-soul. It is possible to observe this right up to the highest animal-species. Indeed, those who have some understanding for this mutual support and assistance among animals, also obtain insight into the activity of the group-souls and an idea of how they work—and just there they can develop a spiritual vision. The eye acquires sun-like qualities.

In the case of man, we have an individualized group-soul. Such a group-soul dwells in each single human being. We must therefore apply to the human beings what must be applied to the different animal species, so that in the case of man it is possible that one human being fights, against another human being; an individual strife is possible.

But let us now consider the purpose of strife, whether battle exists in the development of the world for the sake of battle. For what has become of the struggle of existence among the species? The species that supported each other most of all survived, and those who fought against each other perished. This is a law of Nature. Consequently, we must say that in external Nature development progresses through the fact that peace replaces the struggle. Where Nature reached a definite point, where it arrives at the great turning point, we really find harmony; the peace which is the final outcome of the whole struggle, can really be found there. Consider, for instance, that the plants, as species, are also engaged in a struggle for existence. But consider at the same time how wonderfully the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom support each other in their common process of development: for the animal breathes in oxygen and breathes out nitrogen, whereas the plant breathes in nitrogen and breathes out oxygen. Thus peace is possible in the universe.

What Nature thus produces through its forces, is destined to be produced by man consciously, out of his individual nature. Man progressed gradually and what we designate as the self-consciousness of our individual soul unfolded little by little. We must look upon the present situation of the world as the result of a course of development, and then follow its tendency towards the future. Go back into the past; there you will find group-souls at the beginning of human development. These group-souls were active within small tribes and families, so that we also come across group-souls in the human beings. The further back you look into the development of the world, the more compact you will find the structure of human life, the people will appear to you harmoniously united. One spirit seemed to pervade the old village communities; which afterwards became the primitive State. You can study that when Alexander the Great led his armies into battle, it was a different thing from leading modern armies into war, with their far more developed individualized will-forces. This must be seen in a true light.

The progressive course of civilisation consists in the fact that the human beings became more and more individualized, more and more independent and self-conscious. The human race developed out of groups and small communities. Even as there are group-souls that guide and control the single animal-species, so the different nations were guided by the great group-souls. By his progressive education, the human being more and more emancipates himself from the guidance of the group-soul and becomes more and more independent. Whereas formerly he confronted his fellow-men with more or less hostility, his independence brought him to the point of standing in the midst of a battle of life which now takes hold of the whole of humanity. This is the present situation of the world, and this is the. destiny particularly of our epoch or race, that is to say, of the immediate present.

Spiritual science distinguishes in the present development of the world five great races, the so-called sub-races. The first sub-race developed in ancient times, in distant India. This sub-race was to begin with filled by a culture of priests. It is this culture of priests which gave our present race its first impulses. It had come over from the Atlantean culture; this developed in a region which is now the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The leading note was given by this race and it was followed by the others; now we live within the fifth sub-race. This subdivision is not taken from anthropology or from some racial theory, but will be explained more in detail in my 6th lecture (of the 9th of November 1905: FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF THEOSOPHY).

The fifth race is the one which made us progress furthest of all in our individual existence, in our individual consciousness. Christianity was in fact a preparation for the attainment of this individual consciousness; man had to attain to this individual consciousness.

If you go back to the time before Christ, to ancient Egypt where the gigantic pyramids were built, you will find there an army of slaves who carried out tasks so difficult and fatiguing that it is hardly possible to conceive this to-day. But for the greater part of the time these workmen built the immense pyramids as a matter of course and they were filled by an immense peacefulness. They submitted to their work because at that time the teaching of reincarnation and of karma was a natural thing. No books tell you about this, but if you penetrate into spiritual science this will be quite clear to you. Each slave who toiled until his hands were sore and who lived in pain and misery, knew: This is one of many lives, and what I am suffering now must be borne as the consequence of what I prepared for myself in my former lives! If this is not the case, I shall experience the effect of this life in my next; and the one who now orders me about, once stood upon the same stage on which I am standing now, or he will do so one day.

With such a mentality, however, it would have been impossible to develop a self-conscious earthly life, and the High Powers that lead human destiny as a whole, knew what they were doing, when for a time—which lasted many thousands of years—they blotted out the consciousness of Karma and of Reincarnation. This disappearance was brought about by the great course of development of Christianity, up to the present time; it eliminated the power to look up to another world which brought a harmonising influence, and drew attention instead to the immense importance of this life upon the earth.

Though this might have gone too far in its radical application, it was never the less necessary, for the world's course of development does not follow logic, but quite different laws. From earthly life people deduced an eternity of punishment, and although this is nonsense, the tendency of human development led to this. Humanity thus learned to grow conscious of this one earthly existence and the earth, the physical plane, thus assumed an immense importance for the human being. This had to come, the earth had to acquire this great significance. Everything that takes place to-day in the form of a material conquest of the earthly globe, could only grow out of a mentality based upon an education cut out for this earth and emitting the idea of Reincarnation and Karma.

We now see the result of such an education: man came down completely to the physical plane during his earthly life; for the individual soul could only unfold upon the physical plane, where it is isolated, enclosed within the body and where it can only look out into the world through the senses, as an isolated individual existence.

This brought human competition into the human race, in an ever-growing measure, and the effects of such an isolated existence. We must not be surprised that to-day the human race is not by a long way ripe enough to eliminate once more what was thus drawn in. We saw that the present species of animals reached their state of perfection by mutual help and that the struggle for existence only exists between the species, passing from species to species. But if the human individuality is upon a higher stage the same as the group-soul of the animals, then the human soul will only be able to attain self-consciousness by passing through the same struggles through which the animal-species passed in Nature. This struggle will last until the human being will have developed complete independence. But he is called upon to reach this consciously; consciously he must attain what exists outside upon the. physical plane. Along the stages of consciousness pertaining to his own sphere, he will be guided towards mutual help and support, because the human race is one species. The absence of struggle which exists in the animal kingdom must be attained for the whole human race in the form of an all-embracing, complete peace. It is not struggle, but mutual help and support that led the single animal-species, to their present state of development. The group-soul that lives in the animal-species as an individual soul is at peace within itself and a uniform soul. Only man's individual soul has a special structure within its isolated physical existence.

You see, the great acquisition which spiritual development can bring to our soul is to recognise truly the one soul that, fills the whole human race, the unity with humanity as a whole. We do not receive this as an unconscious gift, but we must conquer it for ourselves consciously. It is the task of the spiritual- scientific world-conception to develop really and truly this uniform soul that lives within the whole human race.

This is expressed in our first fundamental principle, to establish a brotherly league throughout the world, independently of race, sex, colour, etc. This implies the recognition of the SOUL that lives in the whole of humanity. The purification enabling us to discover the same soul also in our fellow-men must go as far as our passions. In physical life we are separated, but in the life of the soul we are one with the Ego of the human race. This can only be grasped in real life; true life alone can lead us to this. Consequently, only the development of spiritual life can permeate us with the breath of this one Soul. Not the people of the present, but those of the future who will more and more unfold the consciousness of this One Soul, shall lay the foundation of a new human race that will devote itself entirely to mutual help. Our first principle therefore means something quite different than is generally supposed. We do not fight; but we also do not oppose war or any other thing, because opposition and battle do not lead to a higher development. Each animal-species developed into a special race by coming out of the struggle for existence. Let us leave fighting to the bellicose who are not yet mature enough to go in search of the common Soul of the Human Race in spiritual life. A real Society of Peace is one that strives after a knowledge of the Spirit, and the spiritual-scientific current is the true Peace Movement, it is the Peace Movement in the only form in which it can exist in practical life, because it envisages what lives within the human being and what will unfold in the future.

Spiritual life always developed as a stream that came from the East. The East is the region where spiritual life was fostered. And here in the West we have the region where the external. materialistic civilisation was unfolded. That is why we see in the East the land where people dream and sleep. But who knows what is going on in the souls of those whom we call dreamers or sleepers, when they rise up to worlds which are quite unknown to the peoples of the West? We must now come out of our materialistic civilisation, and yet bear in mind everything that surrounds us in the physical world. We must ascend to the spiritual with everything which we conquered upon the physical plane.

It is more than symbolically significant that in England Darwinism should have found a new representative in Huxley who deemed it necessary to state out of his western conception: Nature shows us that the human apes fought against each other and the strongest remained on the field ... whereas from the East came the watchword: Support, mutual help, this is the guarantee for the future!

Here in Central Europe we have a special task: It would be of no use to use to be one-sidedly Oriental, or one-sidedly English. We must unite the morning dawn of the East with the. physical science of the West so that they become a great harmony. Then we shall be able to grasp how the idea of the future may be connected with the idea of the struggle for existence.

It is more than a coincidence that in one of the fundamental books of Theosophy those who penetrate more deeply into spiritual life will find light upon the path, for the second chapter significantly closes with a sentence which coincides with this idea. “Light upon the Path” does not contain it as a phrase, for spiritual development will lead us to a point where we shall recognise that the beautiful words at the end of the 2nd chapter in “Light upon the Path” harmonize with the One Soul that enters the individual human soul, flashing up and coming to life within it. Those who immerse themselves in this beautiful little book—which does not only fill the soul with a content that makes us feel inwardly devout and good and that gradually gives man real clairvoyance by the power of its words—will discover in the single individual this harmony, when they experience what is written in every chapter. The final words, “Peace be with you,” will then descend into the soul. In the end this will be experienced by the whole of humanity, for the most significant words will then be: “Peace be with you.”

This opens out to us the true perspective. Then we must not only speak of peace, not only envisage it abstractly as an ideal, make treaties or long for the verdicts of a court of arbitration, but we must cultivate spiritual life, the Spiritual. We then awaken within us the strength which will be poured out over the whole human race as the source of mutual help and support. We do not oppose, we do something else: we foster love, and we know that by fostering love, every opposition must disappear. We do not set up struggle against struggle. We set up love against struggle by developing and fostering love. This is something positive. By pouring out love we work upon ourselves and we establish a society based upon love. This is our ideal. If this livingly penetrates into our souls, we shall realize an old saying in a new way, and this will be in accordance with Christianity. And a new Christianity, or rather the Christianity of the past, will arise again for a new humanity. Buddha gave his people a motto which envisages this. But Christianity contains even more beautiful words on the unfolding: of love, words which should be grasped in the right way: Not by strife we overcome strife, not by hatred we overcome hatred, but strife and hatred can in reality be overcome by love alone.

• 1. See the lecture of October 5th,1905:HAECKEL, THE RIDDLES OF THE WORLD AND THEOSOPHY
• 2. In the lecture on Haeckel.
• 3. Thomas Robert Malthus, 1760-1854
• 4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 28 June 1712- 2 July 1778
• 5. Karl Fedorovich Kessler, On the principle of Mutual Help, lecture by Prof. Kessler, Dean of the St. Petersburg University, given in January 1880 during the congress of Russian Scientists. (Kessler died in 1881)
• 6. Peter Kropotkin: MUTUAL HELP IN ‘EVOLUTION’

The theosophical world view is for those who need a more solid foundation of their concepts and ideas with regard to the super-sensible world, and for those who strive for such a more profound foundation of the knowledge of soul and mind. Those are really not few in our time.

We see that the cultural scholars made every effort for a long time to investigate the origin of the religions. They search for the origin of the religions with primitive tribes, with the so-called original peoples to recognise how the religious images have developed in the course of time. In these religious images that is included basically which ideas the human being made to himself in the different epochs, ideas of the super-sensible, psychic and spiritual worlds. There we see that—on the one side—the researchers make every effort to trace all religions back to nature worship originating in the simple, childish, naive human beings. On the other side, we see other researchers tracing back the origin of the religions to the fact that the simple, naive human being sees his fellow man stopping to live stopping to breathe, sees him dying, and that he cannot imagine that nothing more should remain. We see that he forms the idea—on account of his different experiences of the super-sensible world, of his dreams, of his spiritual experiences which the primitive human being has to a greater extent than the civilised one—that the forefather, the deceased ancestor, is still there, actually, that he is effective as a soul, holding his hand protectively over his descendants and the like.

So some researchers trace the origin of religions back to the ancestor worship, to the soul cult. We could still state a lot of other similar researches which should teach how religion came into the world. The human being tries to get a solid support for the question: are our images of a life after death, of a yonder realm which is not enclosed within the sensory world, how are our images of an eternal life solidly founded? How does the human being get to such images?—This is one kind how the human being tries today to found these ideas of the super-sensible.

The theosophical world view is not eager to offer this foundation to the present humankind. Whereas the cultural studies come back to the experience of the primitive, simple, naive, childish human being, the theosophical world view asks rather for the religious experience of the most perfect human being, of that who has come to a higher level of the spiritual view what he can develop as his view, as his experience of the super-sensible world. What the human being who has developed his inner life, who has got certain forces, certain abilities which are not yet accessible to the average person of today what such a human being is able to experience of the higher world is the basis of the theosophical world view. It is this higher experience which goes beyond the sensory one, which rests on the so-called self-knowledge of the soul and the mind, and forms the basis of the theosophical world view. What is this higher experience? What does it mean to experience something of the spiritual and astral worlds? Most of the human beings of today understand that fairly hard. This was not the case in former times. Today, however, the human being has moved with his experience to the sensuous world, the world of the external phenomena. In this world of the external phenomena the modern human being is at home. He asks how does this appear to the eye, how does that feel to the touching hand how can one understand this or that with the reason. He only sees the world of the external phenomena. Thus this world of the sensory experience lies before him openly.

Let us have a look once at that which this sensory experience can give us. We want to understand how this sensory experience faces us. We look at something that belongs to these external phenomena. We look at any being, at any thing of the world. We can show that all these things of the world have come into being once; they formed and were not there once. They were built up either by nature or by human hand, and after some time they will have disappeared. This is the quality of all things which belong to the external experience that they come into being and pass. We can say this not only of the lifeless things; we can say this also of all living things, also of the human being. He comes into being and passes if we look at him as an external phenomenon. We can say the same about whole nations. You need only to throw a glance at the world history and you see how peoples which have been setting the tone for centuries which have done big, tremendous actions disappeared from the world history, for example, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. We move on from there to the phenomena which one calls human creations, to that which is regarded as the highest and most marvellous human performances. If we look at a work of Michelangelo or of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), or to something other, to a significant work of technology, you have to say to yourselves: such a work remains for centuries or millennia; and may the human eyes feel contented at the sight of the works of Raphael or Michelangelo, may human hearts be delighted at the sight of such works—but you cannot ignore the thought that that which appears here as an external phenomenon perishes once and disappears in the dust. Nothing remains of the external appearance. Yes, we can still go on. Natural sciences teach us today that our earth that our sun originated in a particular point of the cosmic evolution and the physicist already states that one can almost calculate when that point in time must have happened at which our earth has arrived at the end of its development at which it goes to a state of inflexibility, so that it cannot continue its development. Then the end of the external appearance has come. Then everything sense-perceptible has disappeared. Thus you can study the whole realm of external forms, of external phenomena—you find everywhere in this world: coming into being and passing; or if we go to the realm of the living beings: birth and death. Birth and death hold sway in the realm of the forms, in that realm which is accessible to the sensory experience.

We ask ourselves: is this realm the only one which is to us? We ask ourselves: is the realm, in which birth and death hold sway continually, the only one which is accessible to the human beings? For somebody who only accepts the sensory view who wants to know nothing about self-knowledge of the mind, of abilities which exceed the mere consideration of forms, the consideration of the external phenomena to him it may probably appear in such a way, as if everything is contained in the appearing and disappearing phenomena, in the processes of originating and passing, in birth and death. You can also not get to a higher view if you consider nature and spirit as you gain the external experience. You cannot go far beyond birth and death in the same way, by means of the senses.

You need to become absorbed in higher mental abilities; not in abnormal mental abilities which only particular people have, no, only in those soul forces which are beneath the external superficial layer. If anybody transports himself into that soul region, he is able to obtain another view about the things and beings with deeper consideration. Look at the simplest one: the plant life. There you see birth and death perpetually changing. You see a lily originating from the germ and you see the lily disappearing again, after it has delighted your eye some time and has pleased your heart. If you do no longer see with the eye of your body, but with the eye of your mind, you see even more. You see the lily developing from the germ and becoming a germ after its development again. Then a new lily comes into being which produces a germ again. Look at a seed; there you see how in this world a form comes into being and passes, but any figure already contains the seed and the germ of a new figure. This is the nature of the living; this is the nature of that which one calls force which exceeds the mere form and the mere figure.

There we come to a new realm which we can see only with the eyes of the mind which is as absolutely true for the eye of the mind as the external form for the bodily eye. The forms originate and pass; what appears, however, again and again what is there with every new figure time and again is life itself. For you cannot seize life rationally with natural sciences, with external observation rationally. However, you can see it flowing through the originating and passing figures with your spiritual eye. Which is the character of life? It appears time and again. As well as birth and death are the qualities of the external phenomena and forms, rebirth and perpetual renewal are the qualities of life. The form which we call alive has enclosed in itself the force, the same force which is able to let come into being a new figure in a new birth instead of the old one. Rebirth and once more rebirth is the being, the typical in the realm of the living beings as birth and death is the typical in the realm of the forms, the external figures. If we ascend to the human being if the human being considers himself, takes a look at his soul, then he finds that something exists in him that represents a higher level than life which we have seen with the plant; that this life must have, however, the same quality like the life in the plant, going from figure to figure.

We have said that it is the force which allows the new figure to be reborn from the old one. Look at the little seed; its external appearance is insignificant. What you cannot see, however, is the force, and this force, not the external appearance, is the creator of the new plant. The new lily comes from the insignificant seed because the force of the new lily slumbers in the seed. If you look at a seed, you see something externally insignificant, and of the way, as it has formed life, you can make an idea of the force to yourselves. If you see, however, in your own soul with your spiritual eye, then you are able to perceive the force in yourselves with which this soul works, with which this soul is active in the world of forms.

Which are the forces of the soul? These forces which cannot be compared at all with other forces, but are on a higher level and are not immediately identical to the life-force of the plant, these forces are sympathy and antipathy. The soul is thereby active in life and does actions. Why do I carry out an action? Because any sympathy located in my soul drives me. Why do I feel revulsion? Because I feel a force in myself which one can call antipathy.

If you try to understand this perpetually surging soul-life by means of internal observation, you find these two forces in the soul again and again and you can attribute them to sympathy and antipathy. That must induce the thoughtful soul observer to ask: what about it? Which forces must exist in the soul?—If you asked: where from has the lily originated—and you would say: this lily has originated from nothing, then one did not imagine that it has come from the seed in which already the force was put by the former plant; then one did not assume that from the seed a new figure could originate. The new figure owes its existence to the old, dead figure which has left behind nothing but the force of the creation of a new one. As we never understand how a lily comes into being if not another lily releases the forces to the creation of a new lily, just as little we can understand how the surging soul-life which consists of sympathy and antipathy could be there if we did not want to trace it back to the origin. Just as we must be aware of the question that every plant and its figure must be traced back to a preceding one, we must also realise that the force cannot have originated from nothing.

Just as little the force of the lily can disappear into nothing, just as little the force of the soul can disappear into nothing. It must find its effect, its further shaping in the external reality. We find rebirth in the realm of life, we also find it—considering our soul intimately—in the psychic realm. We only need to pay attention to these thoughts in the right way. We only need to imagine that infinite consequence, and we can easily move from the thought of rebirth or reincarnation on the force which must enliven the soul, without which the soul cannot be thought at all, if one does not want to imagine that a soul has originated from nothing and disappears into nothing.

With it we also come in the psychic life to reincarnation, and we only need to ask ourselves: how must reincarnation be in the psychic life?—The matter here is that you do not keep to the sensory view, but that you develop the view of the spiritual life in yourselves to understand the perpetual change of the figures in connection with the unchanging life. There you only need to take a great German spirit, then you will get an idea how you can look with the spiritual eye at the life flowing from figure to figure. There you only need to take Goethe’s scientific writings, which are written so gracefully, where you have lively considerations of life seen with the spiritual eye and you will recognise how one has to look at life.

If you transfer these considerations to the view of the soul-life, you are led to the fact that our sympathies and antipathies have developed that they have arisen from a germ, as well as the plant has come from a germ with regard to its figure. This is the first primitive mental picture that forms the basis of a main thought of the theosophical world view, the idea of the reincarnation of the psychic life. What we ask from the point of view of the thoughtful reflection is: how have we to imagine the intricate soul-life if we do not want to believe in the reincarnation of the soul?—One may argue: certainly, it would be a psychic miracle; it would be a psychic superstition if I had to admit that my soul-life has originated all at once, and that it has to have its effect, too. One could argue: yes, but the preceding figure of the soul does not need to have been on our earth, and its effect also does not need to be anywhere on this earth.—However, also there you can overcome the apparent cliff with some thoughtful reflection. The soul enters the world; the soul has a sum of dispositions, these are developed and have not originated from nothing. As little the psychic from the physical, as little anything psychic has originated from the material as little an earthworm has come into being from mud. As well as life comes into being only from something living, the soul can have originated only from something psychic.

The origin of the soul must be on our earth. If its abilities came from distant worlds, they would not fit into our world, and then the soul would be not adapted to the life of the world of appearance. As well as any being is adapted to its surroundings, the developing soul is adapted directly to its surroundings. Hence, you have not to search for the preconditions of the present soul-life anywhere in an unknown world, but in this world first of all. With it we have conceived the thought of reincarnation.

Thus everybody can get the idea of the reincarnation of the soul only using pure thoughtful reflection if he wants to become engrossed really. This has forced all the excellent spirits, who understood the living nature, to the idea of transmigration in this sense, in the sense of transmigration from form to form, a transmigration which we call reincarnation, reincarnation or re-embodiment.

I still want to refer to one of the most excellent spirits of the newer time, to Giordano Bruno who expressed the reincarnation of the soul as his creed considering the human being. Bruno died a martyr’s death because he agreed openly as the first to the father of modern natural sciences, Copernicus. Thus you admit that he knew to assess the external figure in its sensory appearance. However, he understood even more. He knew how to look at life flowing from figure to figure, and that is why he was led to the idea of reincarnation by itself.

If we go on, we find this teaching of reincarnation with Lessing in his Education of the Human Race. We find it touched also with Herder. We find it indicated in various forms with Goethe even if Goethe did not express himself very clearly in his careful kind. Jean Paul and countless other writers could still be mentioned. What these modern spirits induced, on whom our whole cultural life is dependent who also have influenced the most important conceptions, is not only the endeavour to satisfy the human being, but that, above all, an image is created by this teaching which makes the world explanation only possible. The soul incarnates perpetually. Sympathy and antipathy have been there and will always be there. The theosophical world view has to tell this about the soul.

We return now to our starting point. We have seen that figure transforms to figure, form to form in our sensory world that everything emerges and disappears, is birth and death. We have seen that also the most wonderful works which are created pass. If we ask ourselves, however: is only the work involved in the work? Is with the creation of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) or Michelangelo or with the simplest, primitive human creations, is nothing else involved there than this work?—Nevertheless, we have to distinguish the work and the activity which the human being has used, the activity which any being has used to achieve a work or something that can be called a creation. The work is given away to the external world of the figures and forms, and in this external form the work is subjected to the destiny of these external figures, to emergence and disappearance.

But the activity which takes place in the being itself, that which took place in the souls of Raphael or Michelangelo in those days when they created their works, this activity is also that which the soul, so to speak, draws back again in its own being. This is the activity which did not flow out into the work. As well as a seal impression remains in the seal, this activity remained in the soul; and with it we get to something that remains in the soul not only for a short time, but that remains as something imperishable in the soul. If we look at Michelangelo some time later, has his activity passed him without a trace?

No! This activity has increased his internal abilities, and he moves up to a new work, he creates not only with that which was before in him, but he creates with the help of that force which has only originated from his activity in former works. His forces are raised, are consolidated, have been enriched on account of his first activity. Thus the activity of the soul creates new abilities which transform again in the work, take action again, withdraw again into the soul and give forces to a new activity. No activity of the soul can get lost. What the soul develops as an activity is always the origin, the cause of a rise of the soul being, of developing a new activity.

This is the activity and life of the soul, this is the imperishable, and this is really formative force, this is not only a figure, not only life, this is a creative force. With my activity I create not only the work, but I cause a new activity, and I always create a new activity through the preceding one.

This forms the basis of all great world views. In a very nice way an old Indian writing tells how one has to imagine this activity inside of a being. It tells how all figures disappear in an endless world of figures how birth and death hold sway in the external world of the forms how the soul is born repeatedly. But even if lily on lily comes into being, a time comes when no new lily originates, a time comes when the soul does no longer live in sympathy or antipathy. The living is born time and again; what does not stop, however, is the activity which always increases which is imperishable.

This third level of existence, the always increasing activity, is characterised by the fact that it does not belong to the transient or to the constantly creative. On the first level our figure is a sensuous being, it is a being born repeatedly as a soul, and it is an imperishable higher being as spirit. The consideration of the spirit itself and its demands shows us that sympathy and antipathy must originate and also pass, even if their time of existence is much longer than that of the external figure. What does the spirit demand from the human being if he immerses himself in this spirit?

This spirit has the quality to remind us energetically and strongly time and again that it can never be content with the soul only, with sympathy and antipathy. This spirit says to us that the one sympathy is justified the other is not. This spirit is the guide of our soul activity. We have the task if we want to develop as human beings to arrange our sympathy and antipathy according to the demands of the cultural life, which should lead us to the heights of development. With it the spirit has the control over the world of mere sympathy and antipathy from the start, over the mere psychic. If the spirit overcomes the world of the unjustified lower sympathy and antipathy again and again, the soul ascends to the spirit. There are initial states of the soul; then it is involved in the figures of the external reality. At that time its sympathy went to external forms. But the higher developed soul listens to the demand of the spirit, and the soul develops from the tendency to the sensuous to the sympathy for the spirit that way.

You can still pursue that in other way. The soul is a demanding being at first. The soul is fulfilled with sympathy and antipathy, with the world of desire. However, the spirit shows the soul after some time that it is not allowed to demand only. If the soul has overcome the desire by the decision of the spirit, it is not inactive, and then love flows from the soul just as desire flows from the undeveloped soul. Desire and love are the opposite forces between which the soul develops. The soul which still clings to sensuousness and external appearance is the demanding soul; the soul which develops its relationship to and harmony with the spirit is that which loves. This leads the soul in its run from reincarnation to reincarnation that it turns from a desiring soul to a loving soul that its works become works of love.

We have shown the third form of the feelings, and we have represented the basic qualities of the spirit at the same time, have shown its effectiveness in the human being and have shown that it is the great educator of the soul from desire to love, and that it pulls up the soul to itself like with magnetic forces. On the one side, we see the world of the figures and forms, on the other side, the world of the imperishable spirit, and both associated with the world of the psychic. In this discussion I have merely taken a thoughtful self-reflection into consideration which every human being—if he finds the necessary rest in himself and is involved not only in external observation—can see with the eye of the spirit. Somebody, however, who has developed the higher spiritual abilities in himself, an occultist, learns something else. He knows not only how to reach these three worlds with the apt consideration, but he has a view of life and spirit, just as the external eye has a view of the external sensory reality.

As the eye distinguishes light and darkness, as the eye distinguishes different colours, the spiritual, the developed, open eye of the occultist distinguishes the higher, brilliant light of the spirit which is no sensory light which is a brighter shining light in higher worlds, in higher spheres, and this radiant light of the spirit is for the occultist also reality as our sunlight is reality for our view. We see that the sunlight is reflected at single things. In the same way the occultist distinguishes the self-illuminating spirit from the peculiar glimmering of the light, which is reflected by the world of figures, as psychic flame. The soul is reflected light of the spirit, spirit is radiating creative light.

These three fields are the spiritual world, the soul-world and the world of figures, because they appear to the occultist that way. Not only are the fields of existence different.—The external figure is for the occultist the emptiness, the darkness, what is basically nothing, and the great, only reality is the sublime, shining light of the spirit. What we feel as a brilliant light, what is put around the figures is the world of the psychic which is born again and again, until it is got by the spirit, until this has completely moved it up to itself and joins with it. This spirit appears in manifold figure in the world, but the figure is the external expression of the spirit only. We have recognised the spirit in its activity, in its always increasing activity, and we have called this activity karma.

What is now the really important and typical aspect of this activity of the spirit? This spirit cannot remain unaffected in its activity by the action which it has done once on the level which it had then. I would like to make clear to you how this activity of the spirit must have its effect. Imagine the following: you have a vessel with water before yourselves and you throw a warm metal ball into this vessel. This ball heats up the water; this is the work of the ball. However, the ball itself has experienced a change while it caused a change.
The change remains as long as a new change happens. If the ball has done this work, then it has the imprint of its work, then it carries this character with it. If you throw the ball into a second vessel, it will not be able to warm up this second water again because of its first activity. Briefly how it works the second time is a result of its first activity. By this simple metaphor one can realise how the spirit works in its activity. If the spirit does a particular work, then not only the work is characterised, but also the activity of the spirit gets the same imprint. As the ball has cooled down and has received something permanent that way, the spirit has got its permanent signature, its character from its action. Whether good deeds whether bad deeds, the deeds do not simply pass what clings to the soul. As well as the action was, the imprint exists which the action has received and which it carries from now on.

That leads us to recognise that—as the great mystic Jacob Böhme says—on any action a sign is imprinted that cannot be taken away from it from now on, only if a new action takes place, so that the old imprint is replaced with a new one. This is the karma which the individual human being experiences. While the soul progresses from rebirth to rebirth, the imprints of its actions remain on it, the signature which it has attained during the actions, and a new experience only results from old experiences. This is the strict teaching of karma developing the concepts of cause and effect which the theosophical world view represents. I am the result of my former actions, and my present actions have their effects in future experiences. With it you have the law of karma. Somebody who wants to consider himself in his actions completely as a spirit must consider himself in this sense, he has to realise that any action has an effect that there is also the law of cause and effect in the moral world as it is in the external sensory world of forms.

These are the three basic laws of the theosophical world view: birth and death hold sway only in the world of forms, reincarnation holds sway in the world of life, and karma, or the perpetually forming and increasing activity, holds sway in the realm of spirit. The form is transient, life bears itself over and over again, and however, the spirit is eternal.

These are the three basic laws of the theosophical world view, and with it you have also received everything that the theosophical world view can introduce in the human life. The spirit educates the desiring soul to love. The spirit is felt by all within the human nature if this human nature is engrossed in its inside. The single figure is only interested in that which belongs to it as a single figure. Hence, this single figure works only for itself, and this working for itself is working in selfishness, is working in egoism. This egoism is all over the world of figures, of the external forms, the principal law. But the soul does not consist only of the single figure; it goes from figure to figure. It is longing for perpetually returning to a new birth. However, the spirit makes every effort to develop the perpetually transforming higher and higher, to form it from the imperfect to the perfect figure. Thus the soul leads in its desire from birth to birth, the spirit educating the soul leads from the undivine to the divine; for the divine is nothing else than the perfect to which the spirit educates the soul.

The education of the soul by the spirit from the undivine to the divine, this is the theosophical world consideration. Thus you also have the ethics of the theosophical world view. As well as the spirit cannot avoid educating the soul to love and to transform desire into love, the theosophical world view has as its first principle to found a human community which is built on love. The moral philosophy of the theosophical world view has got to harmony with the eternal laws of the spirit that way. Nothing else than what the spirit has to recognise as its innermost being, the transformation of desire into love, has led to the foundation of the Theosophical Society encompassing the whole humankind with the soul-fire of love. This ethical world view illuminates the theosophical movement.

We ask ourselves now: does the modern human being find his satisfaction in this world view?—The modern human being is used to no longer believe in external traditions, in external observation and in any authority. The human being rather develops in such a way that he looks for a world view which satisfies his thoughts which satisfies the self-knowledge of his mind. If the modern human being is eager to attain this self-knowledge, then there is for him nothing else than this theosophical view which excludes no confession basically, however, encloses everything. Because this theosophical view really offers to the soul what it looks for. The soul continually puts questions about the human destiny and his dissimilarity to itself. Can a thoughtful soul endure that on one side innocent human beings live in bitterness and misery, and on the other side, people live apparently in happiness who do not deserve it? This is the big question which the human soul has to put to destiny. As long as we consider life only between birth and death, we never find an answer to this riddle.

We never find consolation for the soul. If we look, however, at the law of karma, we know that any bitterness, any misery is the result of causes which were there in former lives. Then we say on one side: what the soul experiences today as its destiny is the effect of former experiences. This cannot be anything else. Consolation becomes this explanation immediately when we look at the future because we say: somebody who experiences something painful or bitterness and grief today can complain of his destiny not only, but he has to say to himself: bitterness, heartache have effect on the future. What is your pain today is for your future life in such a way as the pain of a child if it falls: it learns to go. Thus any grief is the cause of a rise of the soul-life, and the soul finds consolation immediately if it says to itself: nothing is without effect. The life which I experience today must bear its fruit for the future.

I want to mention another phenomenon, the conscience. This phenomenon is inexplicable at first. It becomes immediately clear to us if we look at its development. If we know that every soul shows a particular level of development, then we admit that the urge for figure lives in the undeveloped soul. However, if the spirit has drawn the soul to itself, has united more and more with it, the spirit speaks at any moment of sympathy and antipathy. The human being hears the spirit speaking from his soul; he perceives this as the voice of conscience. This conscience can appear only on a particular level of the human development. We never see the voice of conscience with primitive peoples. Later when the soul has gone through different personalities, the mind speaks to the soul.

These are the main concepts of the theosophical world view, and you have seen how clear this view is for that world of the external forms. Yes, we would never understand this world of forms if we did not understand them from our mind. However, somebody who lives only in the external figure who can be carried away in the world of forms is on the level of the transient, is on that level where he develops selfishness and egoism because our external form only has interest in the form.

But he develops out of selfishness because the spirit becomes more and more speaking. However, we only recognise this spirit, which is the same in any human being, if we bring ourselves to consider the eternally imperishable, the innermost core of the human being. We recognise the human being only in his innermost being if we get to his spirit. If we recognise the innermost core of the human being, we recognise the spirit in ourselves. However, only that who regards the other human being as a brother understands the spirit in the other human being; he understands him only if he completely appreciates brotherliness.

That is why the theosophical movement calls brotherliness the ideal which the spiritual development of humankind wants to achieve under the influence of this world view.

Dear audience, the modern human being finds this in the theosophical movement. Because this movement offers to the modern human being what he looks for, it has spread in the course of 29 years over all the countries of the earth. We find it in India, Australia, America, in all countries of Western Europe. It is to be found everywhere because it brings clear conceptions to this modern human being. Theosophy offers this to the modern human being. It is something that the modern human being looks for, it is something that the modern human being feels, something that any human being has felt clearly who knew how to look with thoughtful look at nature and human life and found what applies itself to this view of the spirit and impresses that which gives satisfaction, consolation, courage and life.

It is the view that the transient that birth and death are not the only one, but that in this transient, passing creative life of the external being the inner being of the spirit enjoys life. Then we safely look at the past and full of courage at the future if this view has become our conviction. Then we say from the deepest soul full of consolation and courage what the poet expressed by full conviction:

Time is a flourishing countryside
And nature a big living being,
Everything is fruit, everything is seed.

Notes:

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), Italian Dominican monk, philosopher, mathematician, astrologer and astronomer. c f. R. Steiner CW 7 Mystics after Modernism, chapter on G. B.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), German writer, philosopher. Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (On the Education of the Human Race) (1780)

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), German theologian, poet, philosopher

Jean Paul (1763–1825), German writer

Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), German mystic. cf. R. Steiner CW 7 Mystics after Modernism, chapter on J. B. (Anthroposophic Press, 2000)