The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today we want to look at something that I would like to call the relationship that can develop between the individual human soul and what we mean by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Today, wherever one hears about this spiritual science, one often does not yet look hard enough at how different this relationship of the human soul to spiritual science is supposed to be from the relationship of any other knowledge, any other insight, to this human soul. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, is indeed such that it speaks to the human soul in a completely different way than any other knowledge. Through any other knowledge, one gets to know this or that; one learns something about one or the other in the world; one then knows more than one knew before. Spiritual science does not relate to the human soul in such a way that it would only convey something that one knows afterwards. Spiritual science appeals to much deeper impulses of the human soul than mere knowledge, than mere thinking. Spiritual science seizes, or at least wants to seize, the deepest being in us, which, coming from spiritual worlds, moves into our human earthly being at birth and which this human earthly being then leaves in death to pass over into the spiritual worlds to other tasks. Only when we have a true intuitive grasp of this relationship between spiritual science and the outer world, and between the spiritual science and human life, shall we be able to comprehend the full significance of spiritual science for the human soul.

We do not understand the human being fully if we do not realize: that which lives in me as a human being, that which develops in me as a human being through the fact that I have taken on a physical body through birth, that which accompanies me in the course of my life, first as an inexperienced child, then more experienced, more skillful, what takes place in me as fate, everything that is present in my body and in my life, it is actually the transformation of a spiritual-soul being that lived in the spiritual-soul before the human being was conceived or born. And it is this spiritual-soul element that dwells in the body that is actually addressed by what is meant as spiritual science.

Now one might perhaps believe that it is not necessary for a person to occupy himself with this spiritual-soul element within him, because this spiritual-soul element will already find its way in the world. But that is not the case. That which is spiritual and soul in us takes hold of us and is in us, and is to some extent wrapped in our body, in part in our abilities, in part in our destiny. And one could say: It is precisely in the present developmental cycle of humanity, in which humanity has now arrived and in whose sense it will continue to develop towards the future, precisely in the sense of this present and the future, that the human being, as a spiritual principle of his body, as a spiritual principle of his life and his abilities, as a spiritual principle of his destiny, redeems what has become incarnate in him. We cannot escape the spirit. The spirit lives in us. We can leave it out of consideration, but it still lives in us. We can look at the laziest, most comfortable, most casual person who has never made an effort in his life to bring something that lies as a religious or spiritual disposition in his mind to independent development, who has remained quite dull, so to speak. We can look at him: he is not spiritless. To speak of people as spiritless is just an incorrect word. There are no spiritless people; nor is it possible to be spiritless in life. For the spiritual and the soul are our endowment when we enter the physical world from the spiritual worlds; they are allotted to us according to what we have gone through before we descended to this present life on earth. We cannot be without spirit, but we can disregard the spirit within us. We can, as it were, sin against it, we can refuse to want to redeem it. We can want it to merely slip into us, to shroud itself within us: then it is present in us, but we have not liberated it within us, we have not redeemed it.

In this way, too, we must gradually learn to look at people's lives. And our view of life will become quite different, and in the course of time it must become quite different. We can find people in life who have become dull and unfeeling. We will not say that they are spiritless, but we will say that they have committed the sin of burying their spirit during their lifetime, of leaving the spirit in its enchantment, of letting the spirit slip into the flesh, into the merely outward course of life, of letting the spirit degenerate in fate. When we are born, we can only become human beings if the spiritual-soul individuality descends from spiritual-soul worlds. And when the child appears in its first organization, it is still an imperfect image of the spiritual individuality. This lies within him. It can be ignored, or it can be disenchanted, or it can gradually be brought out of the flesh, out of the course of life, out of fate. But it is man's task, and in the future it will increasingly become man's task, not to let the spirit degenerate. We cannot kill the spirit, but we can let it go to rack and ruin by forcing it to take a different path than the one it takes when we bring it out.

If we endeavor from one day on to learn something about the spiritual worlds, to feel something about the spiritual worlds: we actually bring it out of ourselves. The other is just a suggestion. We get it out of ourselves. Whatever you have ever said to yourself about spiritual science, you have drawn from within yourself, because it is within your deepest inner being and wants to come out. And it is meant to come out, and it is a sin against the order of the world to leave the spirit within mere flesh, because there it goes astray; there we abandon it to a fate that it should not take. We liberate the spirit by bringing it out of the flesh. And by consciously permeating ourselves with the spirit, we release that which wants to be released from the underground of existence. One will understand this more and more. It will be increasingly recognized that materialism does not simply prevent the emergence of a [different] theory or allow a false theory to emerge, but that materialism consists in allowing that which wants to enter into the knowledge and perception of the human soul to flow down into coarse matter and to proliferate in coarse matter. This is the question that humanity must decide in the near future: whether it wants to let the spirit proliferate in matter – in which case the spirit becomes a deformity, it leads to diabolical, devilish, Ahriman delusion, or whether humanity will want to transform the spirit into thoughts, into feelings, into impulses of will: then the spirit will live among people and achieve what it wants to achieve by entering into the life of the earth through people. For that is what the spirit wants: to enter into the life of the earth through man. We should not hold it back. And every time we resist becoming acquainted with the spirit, we hold it back: it must, as it were, plunge down into matter, must make matter worse than it is. For the spirit has its allotted task: it is to enter into earthly life through the development of the human soul; there it has a beneficial effect. If it is pushed back into matter, then it has a devastating effect in matter, then it has a bad effect.

If you take this as the essence of spiritual science, you will see that it has a lot to do with our human life. Spiritual science does not want to be a theory like other theories, but wants to give people the opportunity to release and liberate the spirit that is enchanted in human nature, to work in the world what wants to be worked by the spiritual worlds. That is certainly also the reason why many people still very energetically reject spiritual science today. People gladly accept other science because this other science flatters the pride, the vanity of people, but it does not make the claim to be something real, but it merely makes the claim to give thoughts, to to educate the intellect, perhaps also to teach people some useful moral concepts; it does not claim to get to the core of the human being, to be brought from worlds in which a task is assigned to the spirit. I would like to say: only through spiritual science does human knowledge become serious, and people shy away from that. They would also like to have spiritual science only as something that splashes along at the surface of existence. People are afraid that it will get to the core and essence of man. That is why they do not want to accept spiritual science. If they would accept spiritual science, then many things in social life, in historical life, would have to change in the very near future, then people would have to think differently in the most everyday life. And that is what matters. That is why it is also the case that one can take in the other science, but one remains the same throughout one's life, one only becomes richer in knowledge. One should not take in spiritual science without it transforming one, and one cannot take it in without it transforming one. It slowly and gradually makes one into a different person. One must have patience, but it makes one into a different person, because it appeals to completely different human tasks, and it appeals to something completely different in human nature.

Let us take a look at human nature and see how diverse this human life is. The human being devotes himself to three currents: as a conceiving human being, as a feeling human being and as a willing human being. In imagining, feeling and wanting, what we can experience is actually exhausted. Now, all three impulses of the human soul, imagining, feeling and wanting, stand in a very specific relationship to what spiritual science actually wants to address in the human soul, in the core of the human soul.

Let us first take imagining. Imagining is certainly shaped by ordinary science and by what is increasingly being taken from this ordinary science and applied to child-rearing and is therefore so important for the whole development of human destiny, including for practical life, because it is intended to permeate the child. Imagining is not shaped by ordinary science. It is not so very long ago, a few centuries, that this has been the case in the most eminent way, which is why people do not notice it today. But it will not be long before what I am saying now can be observed in an almost comprehensive way. Scientific concepts, as they are taught today to the youngest people, to children, can be absorbed throughout one's entire life without becoming different in terms of one's imagination through absorbing so many concepts in the sense of today's science. One remains the same. Not only that, but it cannot be denied that one becomes more and more limited, even in intellectual terms, through the ordinary scientific concepts that are increasingly becoming part of general education. The mind, in so far as it is a thinking one, loses the flexibility to adapt to living conditions that are much more complicated than what a person can absorb through ordinary knowledge.

You see, it goes deep into the heart when you have some opportunities to see into life today. Those who have become completely accustomed to the concepts that science can provide today are increasingly unable to grasp the vital social interrelations and social demands. They are virtually pushed aside by real life. And that is why I have said here and elsewhere in recent days: Make parliaments and state assemblies out of people who are educated in the sense of today's world view. You will see what these scholars decide, who think scientifically! This is quite certainly suited to corrupting people in terms of social institutions, because in this area of social life, only unfruitful thinking can be done from a scientific point of view. It is the same in many, many respects. One loses a certain flexibility of mind through this merely intellectual knowledge. This will change as soon as you engage with the concepts of spiritual science. Try to realize how differently you have to tune your mind if you want to grasp what is offered in spiritual science and if you want to grasp what is offered in the education of the outer world today. Certainly, spiritual science encounters so much resistance because it requires more agility, more fluidity of mind, to find one's way into it. In what is available today in popular literature - or even its offshoots, which flow through the channels into journalism, where people then absorb information in their Sunday papers - people can move around with extraordinary ease. And if they go to today's lectures, where people are spoon-fed information in words and pictures, so that they don't even have to think, don't even have to set their minds in motion, you will find nothing in all of this that frees the mind to think, to imagine. It loses its freedom. The mind becomes narrow and limited. Our intellectual education is the path to spiritual limitation. Certainly, our intellectual education has made great strides in the fields of science and technology, but it is the path to limitation; it narrows thinking, imagination. And one must appeal to something quite different in the imagination if one wants to understand spiritual science. Therefore, when people approach spiritual science today, they are afraid to take the first step! When they have read only a few pages, some say: I lose myself there, I do not get any further, it goes into fantasy! - It does not go into fantasy at all, but the person in question has only lost the opportunity to really free his thoughts, to plunge into reality with his thoughts, when they are not leading the external sense world by the hand.

That is one thing: spiritual science appeals to the power in human nature that frees us from narrow-mindedness and enables our thinking and imaginative life to grasp not only a little but a great deal. I meant it very seriously when I said in a public lecture in Stuttgart these days: For the spiritual researcher, it makes no difference whether one is a materialist or a spiritualist; that is not the point, that is irrelevant. What is important is to develop sufficient spiritual strength to make real progress. Those who have this strength, this spiritual power, may be materialists, they find the spirit in matter and its processes if they are only consistent. And those who are spiritualists do not stop at saying: spirit and spirit and spirit...! but they delve into material life, into practical life as well, they allow their thinking to bear fruit even in their actions. Versatility, as demanded by today's life - and the life of the future will demand it even more - versatility is what will become of spiritual science in the near future. And that is what humanity needs as it works towards the future. Anyone who is familiar with life today and looks at the catastrophic events that are happening around us knows that one of the deeper causes of today's catastrophe is that people have become one-sided, despite all their high scientific education, that they lack the opportunity to penetrate things in a versatile way. They lack the flexibility of mind to immerse themselves in reality. Versatility is what is gained through spiritual science for the imagination.

Something is also gained for feeling through spiritual science. For the one who wants to think as spiritual science makes necessary, who must become accustomed to this much more mobile world, releases something that otherwise only lives [hidden] in the human being, so that it unfolds out of the human being. In our feeling, as we brought it with us at our birth, the rhythm of the world lives. More than we realize, the entire rhythm of the world lives in us. This can even be proven mathematically, but very few people know about these secrets of existence. Do not be afraid to join me in considering how the entire rhythm of the world lives in our own organism, in what goes on within us. You know that the sunrise moves a little further each year. If we go back in time, the so-called vernal point of the sun was in Taurus; then it came into Aries, but in Aries it moved further every year; now it is in Pisces. The sun does not rise at the same point every year on March 21; that's how it comes around the whole circle. And after about 25,920 years, the sun goes all the way around, apparently, of course, describing the whole ellipse. If it rises today at a certain point in Pisces, it will return there in 25,920 years. The strange thing is: if you consider these approximately 25,920 years as the great cosmic year, as the ancient Greeks did, and you now look for one day of this cosmic year, you have to divide by 365. What is one day of this great cosmic year? That is approximately 70 to 71 years. That is, on average, a human life when a person grows old. If you think of a human life as it is spent here on earth as one day, and take the whole Platonic year, it is 365 times as much. That is how long it takes the sun to make one revolution around the world: 365 days, of which a person lives through one in an earthly life. It is a beautiful rhythm, but this rhythm goes much further. Consider that we take about 18 breaths in one minute. These 18 breaths multiplied by 60 give the number of breaths in one hour; this multiplied by 24 gives the number of breaths in one day and one night. If you calculate 18 times 60 times 24, you get: 25,920. That means you take as many breaths in one day as the sun takes [Earth years] to go through its own year. The same rhythm is in your breathing inside that is in the course of the sun outside. And again, the strange thing is: you spend a day breathing 25,920 times in one day. Take a day and treat it as if it were a breath: in a sense, a day is a breath, because in the morning our body and our etheric body breathe in our ego and the astral body, and in the evening, when we fall asleep, we breathe out our ego and the astral body; it is one inhalation and one exhalation. How often do we do this in a single day, in about 70 to 71 years? We do this breathing, which means that we live – calculate it in a day – almost exactly 25,920 times. That is how many days we live in 71 years. The individual breath is therefore related to the breaths of the whole twenty-four-hour day like the advance of the vernal point in one year to the advance of the sun through 25,920 years. In relation to the great solar year of 25,920, a single human life on earth is like a day, a day of our life, a twenty-four-hour day occurs as many times in our 71-year life as there are years in the solar cycle. Imagine what it actually means that we are part of the wonderful rhythm of the sunlit cosmos, that our life, insofar as it is inner human life, is purely mathematically expressed in the great music of the spheres of the cosmos!

When a person begins to immerse himself in these things emotionally, only then does he feel like a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm. Only then does he feel how this whole great and infinite world of God has created its image in his human nature. But this is something to be sensed, to be felt. This sensing, this feeling, this feeling of oneself in the universe, this feeling of oneself in the whole spirituality of the world, that is something that ultimately comes to us from spiritual science! We open ourselves up to the world, whereas otherwise we close ourselves off in our narrowly limited ego. We are an image of God, but otherwise we know nothing; we begin to feel ourselves as the image of the divine world, as the microcosm in the macrocosm. We learn to know ourselves through feeling. This happens bit by bit, slowly. I would like to say: just as we go through this slow sequence of days through our lives, so does feeling with spiritual science bring forth this sense of the world. But man must acquire this sense of the world. For this feeling for the world will in turn inspire him to the great tasks that lie before humanity in the future. However strange it may still sound today, in less than fifty years people will no longer be able to build factories or cultivate the soil according to the requirements that will be placed on humanity if they do not have this feeling! The catastrophe we are currently facing is only an expression of the impasse into which humanity has entered. The world has moved on, but people have not yet come far enough with their thoughts and feelings; therefore, their thoughts and feelings are not sufficient to truly penetrate this world and make the work of humanity harmoniously concordant. Humanity will be condemned to develop more and more disharmony in social coexistence and to sow more and more seeds of war across the world if it does not find its way into harmony with the cosmos in feeling, in order to carry this into everything it does, even into the most mundane. Therefore spiritual science is already connected with that which must intervene directly in the course of the most extreme culture, or humanity will not come out of the impasse. In the future, factories and schools will not be maintained if concepts from the great tasks of the universe are not developed. These were already tasks today, but people have not taken them into account; that is why this catastrophe has come. The deeper causes already lie in what has just been said. These signs of God, which express themselves in these catastrophic events, must be taken into account by humanity. People must learn to develop a conscious relationship with the cosmos, because otherwise it will no longer be possible.

Let me give you an example that many people today will still consider foolish, some will denounce as insane: we have certainly made great progress, say in the field of chemistry, but we have done so without such a sense of the world as I have just expressed. In the future, this sense of the world will have to be developed as well: the laboratory bench will have to become an altar. The service to nature that is being developed, even in chemical experimentation, must be conscious of the fact that the great cosmic law is present over the laboratory table whenever one dissolves any substance with another in order to obtain a precipitate or the like. One must feel at home in the whole universe, then one will go about it differently, and then something quite different will be found from what people have found today, which is great but will not be able to bear the right fruit because it is found without reverence, without the feeling that permeates the harmony of the universe. How many people have abstracted what was called the music of the spheres in Pythagoras! Here you have a sense of the music of the spheres in the experience of the rhythm that runs through the universe. You don't have to imagine anything abstract, but something that goes into the living feeling (see note).

Do you know what would happen if this broad-mindedness of the soul did not enter into the feeling? We have just said: flexibility of thinking, versatility of thinking and imagination, that is one thing that helps thinking and imagining. For feeling, broad-mindedness, an open mind towards the world, should prevail. The opposite – you can already see it approaching if you just look at the world with a little courage – is philistinism. What has the great, for many materialistically thinking people 'blessed' culture of modern times brought to people? At the bottom of the soul lies philistinism. Philistinism and banality will only be overcome by that open-mindedness, that broad-heartedness of soul, which feels itself as a microcosm within the macrocosm, which can have reverence for everything that, as divine-spiritual, permeates and pulses through the world. Just as narrow-mindedness, intellectual narrow-mindedness in the life of the intellect must be conquered by spiritual science, so philistinism and vulgarity in the sphere of feeling must be conquered by spiritual science. And a third aspect presents itself to us when we look at the will. In many cases, things are in their initial stages as far as the will is concerned. Only the psychologist, the expert on the soul, can see what is being prepared, but it will come! Of course, many people today believe otherwise, but anyone who is able to see through the deeper course of human development already notices that nothing is as widespread in general human life in the realm of will — much more so in modern times than in older times — as clumsiness. Clumsiness is something that threatens to develop into a terrible evil for the development of humanity in the future. I think that today we can already see it quite clearly: people are taught to do this or that in a one-sided way. If they are to prepare to do something that they have not learned by rote, they will not be able to manage it. How few people today are capable - if you will allow me to mention such things - of sewing on a trouser button if necessary in special situations. Few people are able to do anything else that is not directly related to what they have learned in the narrowest sense. This is something that must not befall humanity. People would allow what was in them as spiritual heritage to wither away when they descended from the spiritual world through birth to existence if they became as one-sided as the “blessed” culture demands in many ways. Those who only look at things theoretically do not see the connections. But anyone who truly embraces spiritual science with a sense of life is an enemy of one-sidedness, for spiritual science gives rise to a mood in the human soul that also tends towards versatility. If you do not merely take up spiritual science with your head, but if you put yourself in a position to absorb spiritual science so that this spiritual science pulsates in your soul like blood in the body, you will certainly also gain a certain versatility in adapting to your surroundings. You will gain the ability to do things that you would otherwise not be skilled at doing. The skill in the will develops, and the person becomes adaptable to the environment. Of course, you can say, if you want to say this: We certainly do not notice that the anthroposophists, who are united in the society, have become terribly more skilled or more able to cope with life. Many say that. Not I say it, but it is said. Yes, that stems from something else. The anthroposophical life in the soul does not yet pulsate in people as blood pulsates in the body, but the bad habit of taking everything only into the mind, into the intellect, has been brought in from outside. Spiritual science, too, becomes only a theory for many; it becomes only something that they think, but that is not their nature. If you only think spiritual science, it does not matter whether you read a spiritual science book or a cookbook. Perhaps a cookbook will be more useful. Spiritual science must become so serious that it really seizes the whole person in his whole soul. Then it goes out to the limbs, then the limbs become agile, the person becomes more capable of living. Then it is a matter of gaining an inner power of conviction, of not being satisfied with the outer conviction, but of gaining an inner conviction.

Those who are familiar with the inner value of spiritual science know that it is indeed capable of extending the physical life of a person, provided it is taken up with freshness and vitality. Of course people may come and say: Well, there is someone who only reached the age of forty-five, or even twenty-seven! Yes, but just ask the counter-question: How old would the person who reached the age of forty-five through spiritual science have become if he had not taken it up in the twenties? Just ask the counter-question! The external forms of proof do not apply to these internal things. Statistics and the like have no value if you want to take the inner being into account. Statistics are of great value in external life, but even there they are limited to the external and do not grasp what is the principle of life. You can see this quite simply: it is completely justified to set up insurance companies according to statistics and arithmetic; they base themselves on how long a person is expected to live and then they insure people accordingly. But it would not occur to you to then have to die when, according to the probability calculation, your year of death for the insurance company arrives! So for reality, you do not consider what is decisive for the external life to be decisive. All that statistics and probability calculations possess of value for the outer life ceases to have significance when the value of conviction for the spiritual begins. But you will only gain this if you take spiritual science itself as a living elixir of life. But then it becomes such an elixir of life that the human being fits into the circumstances.

Then the opposite will take place. I was once extremely saddened - you can say: that's a strange person to be saddened by it! - when I once lived in a house and the master of the house always had to weigh himself on a scale to determine exactly how much meat and how much vegetables he had to eat. He had to weigh every single meal! Imagine the loss of instinct that would ensue for humanity if everyone wanted to weigh their rice and cabbage at every meal. This uncertainty of instinct would come from purely intellectual science, because it can only show the external statistically. But it is not a matter of losing our instinct - and through intellectual education we do lose it - but of spiritualizing it; of becoming as sure as instinct usually is, but spiritually.

This is what I have to characterize as particularly significant, taking into account the will. Spiritual science creeps into the will, prepares it, so that the human being is prepared for his surroundings, without even noticing how he actually grows into what is around him. By growing together with the spirit, he grows into the environment.

You see, you have to learn to experience the spirit. But you do that through spiritual science. And humanity will need it more and more in the future to experience the spirit.

For how does man experience what is given to him through conception or birth? Imagine: a cannon is fired at some distance from you. You hear the bang. You see the light a little earlier. But now imagine the following: You are standing next to the cannon and, due to some event, you are shot out as fast as the sound. You would fly through the air at the speed of sound: you would not hear the sound; you would stop hearing the sound the moment you move at the speed of sound. That is why man does not notice the spirit, because he moves from birth to death at the same speed as the spirit works. The moment you absorb spiritual truths, you put yourself at a different speed than the body. Therefore, you begin to perceive the world in a different light. Just as you perceive sound because you do not have the same speed, so you perceive the spirit in the course of your life by bringing yourself to a different pace, creating inner peace, as you can read in my book 'How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds'. Not living with the body, but creating a different pace! But this is something that humanity must acquire in the first place, something that is of tremendous importance.

People today take no account of how it actually was in earlier times. History is really a kind of fable convenante, but that is not what concerns us today. People were educated differently in earlier times. In earlier education, much more consideration was given to the life of the mind. This purely intellectual life has only really emerged in the last four or five centuries. In this, no consideration is given to the fact that the human being is a multi-part entity. The intellect is very capable of being educated in humans; it can develop, but unfortunately it is not capable of development throughout the whole of a person's life, and especially not in our present time cycle. It is bound to the human head, and the head remains capable of development only up to the age of twenty-eight at the most. A person needs to live three times as long as their head is capable of developing. Of course, we are intellectually capable of development in our youth, but we only remain so until around the age of twenty-eight. The rest of our organism remains capable of development throughout the rest of our lives; it also demands something from us throughout our lives. What is given to people today is only head knowledge, not heart knowledge. I call heart knowledge that which speaks to the whole organism, head knowledge that which is only intellectual and speaks only to the head. Now the head must stand in a continuous interrelationship with the heart, morally and spiritually as well. This cannot take place today because we give our children so little for the heart, so to speak, for the whole of the rest of the organism, and only give them something for the head. A person reaches the age of thirty-five. At most, he now has head knowledge; if he is lucky, he has the memory of the head knowledge he absorbs. He remembers purely intellectually what he has acquired. But ask whether today's teaching is able to achieve that later in life one not only remembers by heart what one has learned, but that one lovingly transfers oneself back to what one took in during one's youth with feeling; that one really still has something of what one was taught there, so that one can refresh it anew. But this must become the ideal of spiritual science in education, so that one does not just remember back. Now, today, people do not even do that. They take their exams and then forget what they have studied. But let us assume that people do remember back: is what people had at school a paradise to which one likes to be transported? Do you go back so far that you can say: As I think back, the morning of life shines in for me, and as I have now grown older, becoming older transforms it within me into something new; I have been taught in such a way that I can transform it, I not only remember it, I transform it, it becomes new to me.

The soul content of human beings will become full of life when the principles of spiritual science renew our entire education and our entire spiritual culture. And then the effects of early aging in humanity will become increasingly rare. Anyone who follows the development of humanity knows that before the 15th century, the oldest people were not as old as the youngest people today. The prevalence of old age is increasing to a devastating extent. This old age can only be controlled by creating the right mood, by giving us in our youth what can be transformed in old age, what can become new to us; what we not only remember but transform because we think back to a paradise. As a real elixir of life, spiritual science will also bring this into our immediate lives. The school will become something completely different. The school will become a place where people are aware that they have to take care of the whole of human life. Because what is offered to the child comes out in a completely different way in old age. Certain things are offered to the child in the form, let us say, of learning to look up with admiration and reverence. This comes to expression in later life. In middle age it remains more withdrawn, but in old age it comes to expression in that it gives us the power to have a beneficial effect on children. Or as I once said in a public lecture: Those who have not learned to fold their hands in childhood cannot bless in old age. The inner feeling that is connected with folding the hands reappears in us, as if transformed, in later life in the ability to bless. Today, if we only follow today's education, we have no idea what we are giving the child for later life, in the age from seven to fourteen and even earlier, and especially beyond the age of fourteen, with what is offered to today's youth. This is terribly serious, because it lays the foundation for all the megalomania that is being instilled in young people today, for all the arrogance and prejudice, as if one could somehow already have a “point of view”! Today, even the youngest people say, “That is not my point of view.” Everyone has a point of view. Of course, it is not possible for someone to have a point of view at the age of twenty. This awareness is not encouraged today.

All these things can be summarized by saying that what lives in the human being will in turn be brought to reality. Reality is placed in a healthy relationship to the human soul. This is what the ideal of spiritual science must become in relation to the human soul and reality. Especially on the big plan of life, people today speak without any relationship to reality. Those who understand the relationship that must live in the human soul in relation to reality can sometimes suffer torments purely because of the form that today's thinking has. The child then, when the teacher thinks like that, endures these torments unconsciously. An example: a very famous professor of literature gave a lecture on taking up his post, at which I was present. He began: We can ask this, we can ask that. He listed a series of questions that were all to be answered during the semester, and then he said, “Gentlemen!” I have led you into a forest of question marks. I had to imagine a forest of question marks! Imagine what it is like for a person to stand before a forest of question marks without being able to visualize it! This is something that is often underestimated. What must be aimed at is a vital relationship to reality.

Recently a statesman said the words: Our relationship with the neighboring monarchy is the point that must become our political direction in our entire future life. - So imagine: the relationship of one country to another country is a point, and the point becomes a direction. One cannot think more unrealistically! But imagine what a configuration the entire inner life has, which is so far removed from reality as to turn out such empty phrases! But such an inner life is also just as far removed from the outer social life; it does not merge into the social life. What it dreams up does not become real. In spiritual science it is impossible to think as unrealistically as the conceptual shells that have been gradually developed in recent times. The present time is so conceited that it imagines itself to have become particularly practical. But it has only become schoolmasterly, out of touch with life. And a future age will characterize our age by the fact that, strangely enough, the world schoolmaster had a highly impressive effect on so many people: Woodrow Wilson, who is not connected to reality by a thin thread in his thinking either, but for whom all words correspond to unreality. But they are admired by those who are only a little hindered by the fact that they are at war with him. But there are many members of the Central Powers today who admire Woodrow Wilson! In the future it will be especially difficult to understand how political programs, without any relation to reality, can be found in which the crazy ideas of world treaties and peace treaties between nations and so on are laid down. If only it could have been done so easily! The abstract thinkers since the Stoics have been thinking about these things! What today emerge as Wilsonian ideas were there for those who know the subject, ever since there have been human beings. A healthy mind says, of course: because it was always there and could not be realized, it is unhealthy! Today's thinking has become alien to reality, which is why it takes no pleasure in such unreal thoughts.

Things are connected with the deepest principles and impulses of life. And the fact that there is so much confusion and chaos today stems from the fact that humanity has arrived at a way of thinking that it believes can master the practice of life, but which is basically very far removed from true reality. A union with true reality in a vigorous thinking, which develops such strong powers that it can penetrate into reality, that is what must come to mankind from spiritual science as an ideal. But to do this we must begin with the small. We must develop in the child not only an understanding of the abstract concept, but also of the real, the conceivable. We ourselves must first have the connection with it. He who wants to teach the child the idea of immortality in the image of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, but who does not himself believe in this immortality, teaches the child nothing. But anyone who is familiar with the field of spiritual science knows that the butterfly is the real image of immortality created by the spirit of the world. We ourselves believe in this image, and we choose nothing other than that in which we ourselves believe because we know it or strive to know it. In this way we seek to submerge ourselves in reality, to overcome the egoism that still wants to have something abstract in thinking. We seek to penetrate the spirit of reality, and in doing so we will find the paths that are necessary for newer humanity, and are all the more necessary because they have been most abandoned by those who call themselves practical people. They are not the practical people, but those who have become impoverished and who impose their impoverishment on humanity through brutality. Help in this difficult situation will only come if humanity seeks the spirit and through the spirit, reality.

This is what I wanted to share with you today as something that we must appropriate as a feeling for the relationship of the human soul to the world, as it arises from spiritual science as the fundamental mood of the soul. And more important than the individual spiritual-scientific truths is this fundamental mood with which we then go through life when it has been kindled in us through spiritual science.

Today I would like to return to much of that which I said in previous lectures and I would like to amplify, in the first place, certain ideas about the inner being of man, about the soul spiritual nature of man. You know that we speak in the first place of that particular member of the inner human being which we designate with an abstract expression as the ether body. Whereas the physical body of man is perceptible for the external senses to external science which is bound to the intellect and its observation, we know that the ether body is something of a super-sensible nature. Furthermore, we speak of the next member of human nature as the so-called astral body. We remember how often we have emphasized the fact that one cannot say that the inner being of man is completely unknown to us. Indeed, man perceives within his bodily existence in the physical world, he perceives his thinking, his feeling and his willing. He experiences it inwardly and he experiences this thinking, feeling and willing as being radiated through by his “I”. One can say that man inwardly perceives this thinking, feeling and willing. However one cannot say that you can actually perceive your astral body. Also one cannot say that you really perceive your “I”, because this “I”—and we have brought this to your attention in the course of these lectures—this “I” of which man speaks falls back into unconsciousness with every sleep and is actually only a reflection of the real “I”. Therefore, in a certain sense, it can he concluded also that this “I” with this thinking, feeling and willing, is in a similar way only an expression, a manifestation of the actual inner being of man, just as with the physical body what you have is a manifestation, an expression of the spiritual nature of that which we designate as the etheric body.

Now, man is obviously happy when, in reference to any given domain of knowledge, he has such a very tightly fit division which he can neatly preserve. Therefore people are so happy when they know that man consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and ego. However, in the man—and I want to emphasize this—all you have with these four expressions are just four words, nothing more than four expressions. And when you advance to real contemplation, then you must, in a certain sense, always pass beyond the borders which are so easily established by these expressions. you speak in a general way, to be sure you may say: Thinking, feeling and willing proceed in the astral body. However that is really only a one-sided abstract way in which the fact of thinking exhausts itself. Just as we as human beings stand in the first place within the physical world, so, to be sure, the impulse to the thinking which exist in the astral body is that impulse which proceeds from the “I”. However, the thinking develops itself as a thought only through the fact that we have the mobile ether body. Our whole thinking would remain unconscious to us as physical human beings if the astral body did not send its impulses into the ether body and the ether body in its mobility would be unable to take up the thought impulses of the astral body. And every thought again would simply just pass over in a transitory way without having the possibility of a memory if we did not have a physical body. You cannot say the physical body is the carrier of the memory. No. The carrier of the memory is the ether body. However, for us human beings, if our thinking were to merely flow along just as dreams flow along and if it were not possible to have it engraved in the physical materiality of the physical body, then our thoughts here in the physical body can assert themselves through the fact that we have this physical body. Thus you see how this thinking is actually a very complicated process. It has its impulses in the astral body, actually already in the “I”. These impulses continue themselves as forces in the ether body, call forth the thoughts, and the thoughts in their turn engrave their tracks into the physical body. And through the fact that they are imprinted, you can always fetch them out of the memory again during the physical life.

Now, just consider—and we have often spoken about this situation—what the memory actually represents for man here in the physical body. As you know, man has experiences. He works these experiences over; then he goes away from these experiences. There comes a time when such experiences relate themselves to the human being as if we knew nothing about them, as if we no longer stood in relationship to them. However, there again comes the time when we are able to fetch the thought experiences out of our inner being. That which we have already experienced is present for us again in in the form of memory. Now, in the first place, man must believe the following. This process of memory belongs to him; it belongs to his soul. When we as human beings walk through the streets and associate in society, someone outside of us with external physical sense organs cannot really know what is hidden within us as our memories, that is, he cannot know what sort of experiences we have had. We carry these in our soul. I might say the sheaths of the physical body are so arranged that they cover over our soul for us. It is as if true physical body is a mantle which hides our soul and in which we can preserve these memories. They belong to us and they work in us through our whole life. We make the outside world into our own inner world. Then we carry this external world in the form of memories with us through existence. We carry these memories as our own possession.

Now, it would be a great mistake if one were to believe that this carrying of the memories through life really comprises the whole process. This is not the case. Darwin, for example, had the correct idea when he investigated to see if rain worms had a special task, and he discovered that rain worms are not there just to merely enjoy their existence but have the very important task of making the soil fruitful as they crawl through it. These are things which natural science certainly admits and this is a ground upon which natural science believes itself secure. Now, natural science, in so far as it does that, should not be criticized because it is really good when they enter into certain single details. However, the problem is that one builds world views upon such details. Obviously you must consider the saying about a man who digs for treasure and is happy when he finds rain worms. However, from the spiritual point of view one can ask the following: Was this activity through which man forms thoughts during his whole life and preserves them in his memory, has that any significance for the whole cosmos? Is this process of memorization only a process which occurs in ourselves? Now, the materialist says that obviously that is a process which only occurs in us. With death we put our physical body in the grave and then that which we have preserved in us as memory is obviously something which is rarely an extinguished thing. We are not going to enter into such a materialistic reply. We want to ask the question: Is our thinking process and memory process something quite different from that which occurs in our memory?

So it is. While we think, while we form thoughts and out of our experiences preserve these memories, during this time we occupy ourselves not only with our thoughts, but the whole world of the Third Hierarchy occupies themselves with our thoughts, the Hierarchies of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. When we think, we think not only for ourselves, we think and we preserve our thoughts in our inner being in order that a field of activity should be created for Angels, Archangels and Archai. Whereas we believe that our thoughts live only in us, actually the three spiritual Hierarchies occupy themselves with our thoughts. The very smallest of that which we propose with our thoughts is something which concerns us. Even when we have forgotten the thoughts, they are in us and we again call these thoughts out of our memory. Just as we as human beings occupy ourselves on earth with our machines or with eating and drinking, so do the Angels, Archangels and Archai occupy themselves with a web which is formed from our thoughts; they work continuously on our thoughts. It is thus only the side of the activity of the thoughts which is turned toward us that we know about. There is in addition another side and this other side of our thoughts so appears for spiritual perception that we can say the following. While our thoughts which we have in our inner being occupy themselves from outside, the above mentioned spiritual beings weave these thoughts so that we, when we achieve this knowledge, can say the following of ourselves. Our thought process is acutely not something unnecessary for the world. Our thought process is something not only for ourselves, but it stands within the whole world development and contributes to it so that something new can continuously be woven into the world development. If we were not born as single individuals, if we had no thoughts, if we had not preserved memories in us, then at our death, that portion which would have been able to be woven out of our thoughts, that which we ourselves do not weave, that would be lost for world development. And when we pass through the portal of death—the elementary process I have often described—we put aside our physical body and this is given over to the elements of the earth in various ways. Our ether body remains with for a short time. It represents itself to our inner being as a great life tableau which is in front of us. Everything of that which we otherwise remember, that which has gone on in a time continuum becomes as a mighty panorama all at once, a mighty life tableau placed around us. Then, however, our etheric being is separated from us. It is, as it were, drawn out of us.

Now, who does that? Indeed, that is done by the beings of the three Hierarchies we mentioned and they weave it gradually into the cosmic ether so that after our death this web of the cosmic ether consists of that which we during our life between birth and death have added to it, also that which was worked over by the beings of these next three Hierarchies. The new webbing is taken away from us and is interwoven with the whole cosmic all. Every human being has a knowledge of this when he passes through the portal of death, since, for the human being after he has passed the portal of death, something enters which can be described in no other way than as follows. Now, you must see that the ether body is separated from him; his etheric web has been interwoven into the universal cosmic ether. That which he has carried in himself all through his life is now outside, it is external. And that is important. That person who knows these things indicates it with a short phrase which one should call forth before the soul in a meditative way. It can be described through a very essential process by saying the following. The inner being becomes the external, which means that which we always have felt as our thought life becomes external world. Just as here we are surrounded by rivers, mountains, trees, clouds, stones and stars, so after our death something occurs which one can characterize in following way. That which during our physical life has lived in in us now has become a portion of the external world so that it can now be perceived by us.

In addition to this ether body, we have the world of our astral body. This world of our astral body comes to our consciousness, in the first place, so that we feel it as thinking; we feel the world of the astral body as thinking. However, the thinking I have precisely characterized, indeed, sends its impulses down into the ether body so that the thinking itself cannot be conscious in the astral body. You can only become aware of feeling and willing in your astral body. You cannot be conscious of your thinking there, but you become aware of your thoughts in the ether body. It is very important that feeling and willing can become conscious for us, it has to go down into the ether body. Throughout our whole life we feel and we will, we foster feelings about certain experiences. These are processes in our astral body. That again is a very characteristic weaving, but now not just a web in thoughts as I have formerly described it but a web of perception, feeling and impulses toward willing. Higher beings also work in that which we have throughout our whole life as feeling and will impulses. Just as in our thinking beings of the Third Hierarchy work, so there work in our feeling and our will impulses the beings of the Second Hierarchy including the Thrones.

Just imagine how we stand in the world when we know these things how we feel ourselves inserted into the spiritual world. On the one side we say to ourselves: Man, you go through the world thinking, but your thinking in so far as it is turned to its inner side is only the one side of thinking. That which you think is substance for the work of the Angels, the Archangels, the Archai. In so far as we feel and will, we create substance for the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom, the Thrones, or the Spirits of Will. Just as the human being cultivates the earth and works it over, he does not know that while he is working over the earth that it is only one side which is worked over, but on the other side actual processes are occurring which he does not know of with his normal consciousness. In a similar way, man believes that his feelings and his will impulses merely belong to him, but they are a field for the work of the indicated beings of the hierarchies.We are truly not merely physical body that only stands in connection with our environment, but we are also there as soul spiritual beings so this soul spiritual man can stand in connection with the environment. Normally one does not think about how our physical body belongs to our whole environment. But this is easy to work out.

In any given moment when you visualize yourself in a bodily way, you possess not only bones, blood, muscles and so on, but you also have a certain stream of air in yourself which you have breathed in and which you will soon breathe out. This belongs to you while you have breathed in; that was out of you in the previous moment, in the next moment it is again outside you. Just think of yourself without this stream of air. It is impossible to think in this way without realizing that you have this stream of air within you. It belongs to us, it is nonsense to think of the physical body as if it were only enclosed within the skin; whereas you are pointed to the fact that you live with the whole atmosphere environment. However, just as we through our physical body live with the atmosphere environment, with the warmth environment, so do we live with the environment of the Hierarchy of the Third Order through our thoughts and we live through our feelings and will impulses with the Beings of the Hierarchies of the Second Order and with the Spirits of Will. This is how we stand within the cosmic all.

Let us now turn our attention to passing through of the portal of death. We can then say the following. When man passes through the portal of death, we know that when his ether body is taken away from him, when the interweaving into the universal cosmic ether begins, then he has to live backwards three times as fast as he experienced during physical life between birth and death, in so far as during that period he perceives the effects of his experiences between birth and death. Thus, that which we have experienced in us during our physical life we do not perceive them just because we have perceived it here in physical life. We will perceive the feeling out of which we have executed an injury to someone else, not our feeling but that of the other person, that which we have lived through here in the physical life stands as a causative factor there and carries in itself the karma. We have not experienced the impression that our injury has made upon the other person's soul. We experience here, in the main, not that which our deeds, our actions, our thoughts have resulted in effects in the external world, we do not experience that here in the physical life, but we do experience that when we go through our backward vision in the time between death and a new birth. There we live through everything that is outside, not in the way it was experienced by us but in the way in which it was experienced by the external world with which we were in contact. Really everything which other human beings have perceived, have felt through our thoughts, through our words, we live through and because of this the external must become the inner in our new state of post mortem. Through this experience the effects of our thoughts, the effects of our deeds in life, the external effects now become inner which means something which we inwardly experience, something which is experienced by the spirit human being after death, because now he must live himself into that world in which he lived unconsciously during the time of his life.

In so far as he has an astral body, and the Spirits of the Second Hierarchy have worked upon his astral body, he must now live into that world in which his astral body gradually dissolves itself into the external, but now he experiences the external in an inward way, he really lives through it inwardly. He must learn between death and a new birth to work in that sphere in which the Spirits of the Second Hierarchy work, in which they prepare that which again can lead into a new incarnation. And, indeed, then we know that after the astral body has dissolved into the external world and man lives on further with his actual inner being in the time between death and a new birth.

When we want to understand something of this life between death and a new birth, we must make many points of view valid for ourselves. Our goal is not to be one-sided but to make various viewpoints valid so that gradually a comprehensive understanding of these processes can open themselves to us. Thus you must keep the following in view. Just as man through birth enters natural processes which around him in the mineral world, in the plant world, in the animal world, so he enters into a world where things are happening around him with the beings of the Hierarchies which we have mentioned. He is, as it were, enfolded into their activities and that which he has brought with him for them, they weave together so that it can become the foundation for his next incarnation.

You must realize that in this it is, I might say, very difficult to give our present age the correct concepts and ideas for reasons which I have often presented. The present age works precisely with the most reversed concepts in this realm. When a human being enters through birth into physical existence, he enters with certain characteristics. The present time speaks purely of heredity, and means physical heredity, and one speaks of this physical heredity in the following way. A man shows this or that characteristic. Therefore to find out where those characteristics come from, you must look for its ancestors. For example, there is a very industriously worked over book about Goethe, in which Goethe's characteristics are so presented that it has looked for one thing in this ancestor, another in that, one characteristic from a great-great grandmother, another from a great-great grandfather, and so on, as if everything that Goethe had had came to him through heredity. I have often said the following: When you say that the child has the qualities of his parents, it is just as wise a saying as a human being is wet when he falls into water and is then drawn out of it. Naturally he is wet from the water when he is taken out. In the same way he has the properties of his ancestors in him, because they have been led through his soul. There is no greater wisdom there either. Therefore to go back to causes is, for the logical aspect ultimately the most logical, because one can say the following: One wants to prove that the soul-spiritual properties come through heredity in so far as one shows that a genius like Goethe has the same characteristics which his ancestors had, but as we have said, it is no cleverer than the assertion that the man is wet after he has fallen into water.

Now, if you really want to prove that the properties of genius are concerned with heredity, then you would have to show how the descendents of a genius show the properties of the genius. In other words, if you have to prove that genius can be transmitted by heredity, that would be a proof. Look at Goethe's son. See if he has Goethe's genius. Now, behind all this there is a much deeper process. Just imagine this hypothesis, for example, just imagine that there are beings who are not able to see human beings and just imagine that one of these beings who cannot see the activity of man goes to Berlin and sees how watches are being produced everywhere. This being obviously has to say to himself: These watches produce themselves. And that is no wiser than people who say that you do not need any additional explanations about how human beings come into the world; that that occurs quite of itself in the course of propagation in the generations. These ideas can only be held by people who cannot see human beings, who cannot see that that which occurs here in the physical world is only the external expression of an activity which continuously flows down out of the spiritual world just as the activity of the watchmakers flow into the watches. Therefore that which precisely occurs here upon the earth, of which human beings in their foolishness believe that they occur completely for themselves, that is only an external physical process which is directed just as the activity of making watches is a directing activity, so the moment which I have called the Midnight Hour of Existence in my mystery dramas, from that moment on which lies within the middle between death and a new birth, there already begins that activity of the spiritual world, as it were, of inclining itself into the physical in order after centuries to lead the human being into physical existence. When man goes through the portal of death, there is the activity of a working over of that which the human being experienced in his last life which is exercised in the spiritual world. All this occurs in the first half of the life between death and a new birth. However, in the second half of the life between death and a new birth,
the preparation for the next incarnation begins. And now the following can be said about the situation.

That person who is born has ancestors; ancestors again have ancestors; these ancestors have ancestors. Just see how far this goes when you go through 30 generations. However, if you go through 30 generations, you will find that in many people, as it were, there already is the tendency which ultimately leads to the fact that man A is brought together with woman B and then they bring another human being into existence. And if the whole thing did not so occur through 30 generations, if the people had not married, A not coming together with B, therefore that human being who descends into a physical incarnation would not have ultimately been produced. From the whole working together of many people which finally peaks into two, the single individuality of the human being has been a participation in the spiritual world. Thus when we see that the son has the characteristic of his father, of his mother and then again the father's and mother's characteristics are led back to grandfathers and grandmothers and great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers and so on, that is because there has previously been an influence exerted on these great-great-grandparents through 30 generations by that individuality who then later on after many centuries wants to be born and this has all been determined according to the plan to find himself as a human being through the generations. All that is a participating activity and the fact that you have similar inherited characteristics emanates from the fact that through the generations that power works down through the spiritual world which finally comes to appearance in a certain human being. This individuality already works in a father, a mother, a grandfather, a grandmother, a great-grandfather, a great-grandmother, and ultimately one gets the qualities which come to expression. It is not the physical stream which makes the inheritance, but the physical stream is inserted in this way through inheritance. Therefore, precisely the reverse of that which the so-called natural scientific view maintains, is true. In order that Goethe ultimately comes to appearance through Johann Casper Goethe and his Frau Eiya, Beings of the Second Hierarchy have worked through 30 generations in such a way that Goethe could ultimately be produced. Naturally this applies not only for genius but for eveiy single human being.

Now, you can say that this is difficult to imagine, and you could also ask yourself how is this compatable with human freedom when we have already been determined 30 generations before we descend. I know it is very complicated, but you must remember that this is complicated for the normal consciousness which has been apportioned to you during your earth existence. You will remember that what we are dealing with is not only the individual himself, but the individual in community with the Spirits of Form, with the Spirits of Motion, and so on, and so it is worked out in such a way that freedom is not influenced. Naturally this works in such a way that it corresponds to the working of these Higher Hierarchies. The situation is just like that.

There is worked together that which we are able to give over as thoughts to the cosmic ether with that which we express during our earth existence in our feeling life and in our will life. Therefore Spiritual Science is not supposed to be a totality of knowledge, but above all it should be capable of bringing forth a certain soul mood. I have attempted to indicate this soul mood in the first part of my second mystery play, in the meeting between Capaius and Benedictus, when the goal is that man as a complete human being lives here upon the earth. In order that that can happen, Gods and Gods, Spirits and Spirits work together so that the human being is a goal for Gods and Gods, Spirits and Spirits. This feeling, I might say, the thankfulness, the gratitude to the spiritual universe, this feeling to know ourselves in the spiritual universe must flow into our souls through spiritual science. This must become as natural for us as it is natural for us to know about the connections with the physical world.

Science today has advanced so far that everyone is aware of the fact that man cannot just live on his own resources but needs the atmosphere, that he is a menber of the whole environment. When he is hungry or thirsty, then he notices that the external world is necessary in a physical way for his existence, that he stands within the external world, within a universal process. However, man also stands in a universal process in the spiritual world. When he thinks he stands within Angels, Archangels, Archai, and in so far as he feels and he wills, he then stands in a spiritual connection with the next higher Hierarchy. Just as the air stretches itself into man's physical body in so far as his physical nature is concerned, so the spiritual aspect of the activity of the so-called Hierarchies works in his soul.

Quite often you get a materialist raising the objection: Indeed, it may be true that a spiritual world does exist, but it does not help us to know anything about this spiritual world even when you tell us that thinking, feeling and willing stand in connection with the Higher Hierarchies. It does not matter, because in order to think we do not need to know about these Higher Hierarchies. We already think in the world without knowing anything about them. Man believes, thank God. If he had to wait until he knew about the breathing process in a theoretical way before breathing, then he also would not be able to think unless he knew about the breathing process. You think without knowing anything about these Higher Hierarchies. However, let us present a counter question. Can you really think without one having that? At the present time you see that people work with the inheritance of the ancient times; they work with that which they have inherited and they are still inventing machines from that. All this is an inheritance of an earlier age. Much of what we accomplish today is a result of what we have inherited in the past.

Recently we were in Hamburg and saw a picture done in the 13th, 14th century by Master Bertram and I want to tell you something about this picture. Let us go back to the biblical story of the fall into sin which we in spiritual science call Luciferic temptation. When a painter in our modern age paints the fall into sin, so he would paint Adam and Eve on either side of the tree and then, naturally, a serpent on the tree. According to whether he is an Impressionist, Cubist, Expressionist or any other ‘ist’, he would more or less paint this; he would paint it beautifully. But he will paint a serpent looking like any serpent which crawls in the grass; that is realism. But is it realism? Is it actually not realism? I cannot imagine any simple woman being deceived by such a serpent. We know from spiritual science that Lucifer is a being who had remained behind at the Moon development. Lucifer, during the Moon evolution, could not be seen with physical eyes such as we have upon earth, so the serpent could not be something which could be seen with the physical eye, not the serpent referred to in the Garden of Eden. Lucifer had to be seen inwardly. When you study the human being more accurately, you can see in every skeleton that it consists of two portions. You have the skull and the spinal column attached to it with the brain inside the skull and the spinal fluid in the spinal column, and the rest of the human being is attached to it. You can consider the human being only as being attached to it. You have the head like a small cosmic sphere attached to the whole thing. You can also say: Thank God that man through his own wisdom cannot contribute to this head coming into existence through his birth. It would look very strange if the anatomists and physiologists could contribute anything to produce this wonderful structure of the human head. This human head comes into existence between death and a new birth as in a large sphere which we could compare with our blue heavenly sphere, that in which our karma is woven and is an organization which as it goes towards incarnation, becomes smaller and smaller and then unites itself with the mother. That which then becomes our head is woven through by countless beings of the Hierarchies out of the whole cosmic all. It is a wisdom of the most immense magnitude, a wisdom which has embodied in it all the experiences. Our head is an inheritance of the Saturn, Sun and Moon incarnations. The earth with all its forces could not have been able to produce this head. It is only possible to bring into existence that which is added to the head, not the head with all its forces. The other part of the human being, not the head with the spinal column, but that which is attached to it actually is earth man. Now, how would a person with inner vision try to represent Lucifer actually as a Moon being? One would represent a human head and would attach something like a boned up spinal column to it, something like a serpent; and that is how Master Bertram in the 13th, 14th century presents Lucifer there on the tree between Adam and Even. In the Hamburg Museum you can see the picture represented just like that. So you see that the painter who painted this picture has the living knowledge
of the configuration of Lucifer within him. You can also see that it was not so very long ago that we still had the ancient atavistic clairvoyance which has now been lost.

I would like to present the situation from another side in order that you will see the assertion of the materialist who says that you do not need to know anything that comes out of the spiritual world, that all you need to do is use your thinking and feeling just as we breathe in the atmosphere and take in food for our hunger and thirst. I have often talked about the very significant criminal anthropologist, Benedict. He was the first to investigate the brains of criminals, naturally, after their death. He analyzed these brains in order to see if he could find some connections between the structure of the brain and criminal qualities. Benedict found that they all have a common characteristic, namely, their rear head lobes were too short and did not completely cover up the small brain. Just imagine this: the common qulaities of the criminal brain is to have a too short rear head lobe just as the apes also have it, something which does not cover the small brain. Obviously this actually is a property of the physical body and so from that you can conclude that there are two types of people being born, those having a correct rear head lobe and those with too short lobes. Those who have a correct rear head lobe do not become criminals and those with too short rear head lobes must become criminals. From the standpoint of the materialistic world conception you cannot raise any objection against this knowledge, but then all talk about morality is nonsense. Can we really punish people when we have to say that they have to be criminals because they have too short rear head lobes. You can see how materialism and all that can come about from it can gradually degenerate. You must extinguish all sorts of spiritual aspects from the social, ethical and juristic life, otherwise we are living in a complete lie, because there can be no objection against the facts which have just been presented.

Now, let us see how we approach the situation. To be sure, there are those who have correct rear head lobes and those with too short rear head lobes. However, there is an ether body there which can be developed in a quite different way and is much more mobile than the physical body. Behind the rear head lobes of the physical body there are the rear head lobes of the ether body and the human beings of the future will have to learn to distinguish between children who have too short rear head lobes and those who have longer rear head lobes. The educators will have to know in what characteristics a short hind head lobe manifests itself in the earliest years of childhood. These children will have to be educated in such a way that the ether lobes can be correspondingly developed and so form a counter weight. Then through the fact that you have developed the ether lobes strongly, they will prevent the damage which the physical lobes can produce when they are too short. So we can see that if spiritual science does not enter into our civilization, then as a result of materialism, all morality, all ethics, all justice would be meaningless. The spiritual would be extinguished from mankind's experience.

Recently in my public lectues I spoke about a forgotten thinker, Karl Christian Plunk. I do not intend to defend everything which Karl Christian Plunk has written in a dogmatic way. However, I have showed you how he worked out of a very deep spiritual consciousness and that he had a certain spiritual world conception. He died in 1880. Very few people bothered about his books. In 1912 the book entitled A TESTAMENT OF A GERMAN by Karl Christian Plunk appeared,a wonderful book. Since he died in 1880, this book had to be written before that. In the first edition of my RIDDLES OF PHILOSOPHY which was entitled WORLD AND LIFE VIEW OF THE 19TH CENTURY, I had already pointed in the year 1900 to Karl Christian Plunk. Plunk actually was an Idealist; he really was a man who lived in the spiritual world and wanted to bring into existence that which inserts itself in the world from the spiritual. I could mention many other examples, however, I am just pointing to Karl Christian Plunk. (An extract from Plunk's book TESTAMENT OF A GERMAN written in 1880 is given in which he spoke of the present war ‘1914–1918’) In this book he refers to the fact that in the future war, Germany will have to defend herself in the West and the South; how on all sides the enemy has national jealousy against the Center. The people will be jealous of the success and growth of the culture of Germany. How many people who had a materialistic concept could have thought like that? Very few of them. Yet, these are the very people who call the people who have a spiritual feeling, idealists.

When a spiritual researcher says: Today people are alright, they can still continue to think, because they have an inheritance of the ancient type of thinking and are able to invent machines. However, human beings will come to a standstill before 50 years is over. They will not be able to discover anything more unless they decide to take spiritual influences up into their thinking. They will reach a dead end. They will have to go to the next stage which will be a development of a spiritual scientific point of view, then they will be able to have new discoveries. Today we have machines only because we have inherited the ancient thinking in our consciousness. We see that the time demands that we allow ourselves to become fructified from the spiritual world. And only this fructification will make it possible to be able to understand the spiritual facts as anthroposophical spiritual science gives us. And unless this happens, the great world tasks will not be solved. I have often mentioned the fact that we are living in a time when the second appearance of Christ will occur shortly, the Etheric Christ Being, that second appearance of Christ upon earth. However, it is necessary to have a preparation in order that this event does not go by unnoticed.

Just recently when I gave a lecture, two people came to me after the lecture and said that they are very surprised about what I was saying and they thought that they would not expect a Theosophist to speak the same way that I spoke. They thought Theosophists would speak differently, because they were pacifists. They forgot the fact that ever since pacifism arose, we have had the bloodiest wars. We talked about illnesses and I tried to explain that illness is the reaction of nature in order to make man healthy, that before the appearance of illness there are unnatural relationships and illness is an attempt to compensate for these unnatural relationships. The illness is necessary, because the unnatural relationships were there. You must see that in all circles of materialism, it leads to the unfruitfulness of thinking.

Spiritual scientific truths must work in our feeling, in our soul mood in a fructifying way and there must be a number of people in our age who can hold them true out of an inner conviction to that which is a necessity for world evolution, that which comes out of spiritual science. Then there will be what should be, then the Christ when He appears in His new form will find those people whom He needs; and that must be. When he appears in His etheric figure, and when someone says that he has experienced the Etheric Christ, then he must not be grasped as being an idiot. It is very necessary today to give mankind a strong push forward, a push which is able to overcome the materialism and its consequences, and this century needs it, needs it in order to take up a new form. And we have as the signs of fire for this goal of mankind today the significant bloody events all around us. We take up spiritual science so that the sacrifice of all those people who have died as a result of this will not have died in vain. If we take up spiritual science, then all that which has gone an around us as a sacrifice of these souls in this war, will be some sort of compensation for it and that will contribute towards the elevation of mankind. that must be, that is why we have to express this invocation again and again.

From the Courage of the fighters,
From the blood on fields of battle,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the people's sacrifice:
There will ripen fruit of Spirit,
If souls will turn in consciousness
Towards the realm of Spirit.

In connection with what I said yesterday about our Appeal, I should like to emphasise again that in man's present conditions of life everything depends upon arousing, in as many people as possible, a right social understanding. You must not forget that the way the relations in life have recently developed has brought a great part of the civilised world into a state of chaos such as is only occasioned by what arises out of human souls. As the situation is at present, external means cannot greatly help mankind, whether this is in the form of laws or in the form of outward administration of the economic life. In individual States it is possible, of course, that for a time things may go on, but it would be a mistake to think conditions in these individual States can permanently remain as they are in the midst of the developing social upheavals encompassing all mankind. Help can come only when an understanding of the social relations is cultivated in men's souls.

What I have put in rather a complicated form can also be said more simply. We may say that what is now a striving for disorder will first take an orderly direction when men show themselves capable of producing order. They will be so only when they arrive at a real social understanding from which man today—of whatever party—stands very far removed. It is the most imperative task to spread this understanding. It is a fact of the utmost importance that what is agitating the souls of many millions of the proletariat is something very different from what lives in the souls of their leaders. The leaders have for the greater part inherited the bourgeois attitude to life, which they try to apply to the conditions of proletarian life adorned with a few flourishes of the agitator. This is an essential fact with which we act in accordance only when deciding to work above all for social understanding. Even when external conditions of life have to be recognised as being in still greater confusion and error than formerly, nevertheless the assumption that something can be attained by muddling through would be false. What modern man lacks is social understanding. And this lack is due to the whole of human thinking, feeling and willing having developed in recent times without being applied to this understanding. It is remarkably limited even in the many people today whose social impulses are strong.

Do not think that this social understanding needs some specially comprehensive and far-reaching knowledge for its development. That is not of any consequence; the point is that in contemporary mankind there is lacking even the elementary basis for such an understanding. People's thoughts are very different from those needed for grasping the most primitive social questions.—It is quite right today that attention should be given above all to finding a way to avoid the abstract sentimental concepts at present pacifying so many. It is widely believed that it is possible today to deal with the social problem from some kind of ethical or religious standpoint. This possibility does not exist. Today one cannot just preach religion or ethics, however excellent. This may just warm the feelings and, in an egoistic sense, have some effect. Concepts, however, must be made capable of gripping hold of the everyday affairs of human beings.

Infinitely much depends today on acquiring this understanding. I have said that men today in whom social impulses are flashing up have very often only primitive concepts. Many in leading circles as well as among the proletariat imagine that a simple reassortment of social levels can bring about real change;—for example, if those who were at the top, ministers and secretaries of State were to fall and those who were formerly proletarians were to rise, in effect, if there were a re-levelling. It would be quite a mistake to fancy that things could be changed thus. Many have this idea however much they may protest. Befogged by the outlook of some party or another they are unconscious of holding these views. It is a question, however, of coming quite simply to a clear understanding of the threefold social organism, often dealt with here and also in many public lectures. It is a question of every detail in social measures being so developed that they comply with the necessity inherent in the threefold order. Whether measures have to be taken to build a railway, either under a private company or the State, or a decision is to be made about the ways and means for paying an undertaking on some occasion (I am not speaking of labour-power but of undertakings) it is always a matter of carrying out the measures in the threefold direction, in accordance with the independence of the spiritual life, of the political life of rights and of the economic life. You can of course ask how this or the other should happen. But at the stage where the matter now stands those are for the most part the wrong kind of questions. The spirit living in the threefold order can perhaps be described like this, to take an example: What is the best system of taxation? Now today the important thing is not to think out a system of taxation but to work towards the threefold order. When this threefold membering of the social organism becomes more and more an actuality the best system of taxation will arise through this threefold activity. It is a matter of establishing the conditions under which the best social organisation can originate. Someone or other ruminating over what would be best is not of importance and is not in accordance with reality. But imagine that one of you were a genius, such a genius as has never before been seen in human evolution, and were therefore in a position to think out the best possible system of taxation. But what if you were to stand alone with your magnificently thought-out system and the others refused it, wanting perhaps something less good but anyhow not yours? You see it is not a matter of thinking out the best, but of finding what men as a whole would accept as a basis on which to do their best.

It is true that you may say here: One must begin somewhere. The threefold State must be set up even though men appear unwilling to accept it. That is something different, for there it is not a matter of what men can wish for or not, such as a system of taxation, but of what fundamentally all men would want were they to understand it. If you find the right way you can make it intelligible to them, for subconsciously men want it to be realised during the coming decades throughout the civilised world. That is not merely thought-out, but seen to be what men are wanting. And it is not because they lack the desire that countless men reject it, but because being still full of prejudices, they work in opposition to this matter, which in future will be fully realised. The essential thing is to pay heed to what is primary. The primary is that for which, in a longer or shorter period, understanding can be awakened when once the hindrances to this understanding have been removed. Naturally there are always leading personalities who stand in the way. These personalities are not to be convinced; they must first break their heads against the obstacles they meet. And there will be many such obstacles. On this account if at first the affair does not go as one had imagined, it need not be labeled a failure. Things of this sort must be prepared for. Something must be there when what is now brought about in a mistaken way will have led to an absurd situation, when much that now appears in the world is no longer there—just as the German princes are no longer there, who in 1913 never dreamed they would have disappeared by 1919—when what so many people now applaud is gone, then something on which they can fall back must at least be there in people is heads and hearts. Preparation must be made, the ground must be ready. When once you have penetrated long and deeply enough into this threefold membering of the spiritual life, the economic life and the political life, then the need will arise in you to have a more fundamental understanding of all this. This understanding is absolutely essential, otherwise even when spoken with all possible goodwill what is said will have no connection with reality. The social organism is subject to definite laws in the same way as the natural human organism. You gain nothing by acting against these laws even on grounds of principle. You can at best lead men into a blind alley.

Now do not say: Where is human freedom when man finds himself in a social organism with fixed laws? You might as well ask whether a man can be free when daily he has to eat. It does not make him free to refrain from eating. Things subject to certain laws—even men themselves—have nothing at all to do with the problem of freedom, just as little as our not being able to grasp the moon has to do with our freedom.

To gain a social understanding it is advisable for us to be in the position to go back to fundamentals, to primaries, rather than let our understanding remain bogged in secondaries or tertiaries, which are subsequent phenomena. We may give this example from a certain condition of life—a man needs a definite minimum, let us say in money—since we have converted our values into money—in order to support life. This subsistence minimum can be spoken of as referring to some special condition of life. But we can so speak of it that we say something apparently extremely obvious on the one hand, on the other, what is complete nonsense. I will try to make this clear to you by an example. Taking given conditions of life in any part of the world you may perhaps say with feeling that a manual worker needs so and so much as a subsistence minimum, otherwise he would be unable to live in the particular community. This can seem quite an obvious idea. But how is it then, in accordance with what has been assumed here, when this is not realisable within a certain social organism? The question that must first of all be answered is: What then if the realisation of this is impossible?

To reflect upon the matter thus is not the primary thinking I have represented. Thought out in the abstract, the subsistence minimum demanded does not lead us to fundamentals but ties us down to what is secondary, what appears as a mere consequence. To attain social understanding we have to be in a position to enter into fundamental things. It is fundamental to cultivate a practical view as to how there can be a subsistence minimum in accordance with conditions of life in the social organism. In this case I mean by ‘practical’ such a view that would result in humanly possible social conditions and social community life. This is the primary.

And now one comes to certain conceptions very unpopular with a great part of present-day mankind, because the basic teaching that should work towards such things, and really guide them in this direction, has been neglected. Men need to realise that even to be half-educated one should not merely know that three times nine is twenty-seven; one should also know, for example, what it is that we call ground-rent. I ask you, how many people today have any clear idea of what ground-rent is? But without considering the social organism in connection with such things, no human progress can be made.

The wrong-headed conceptions men hold today are due to confusion in this sphere. Ground-rent, which can be reckoned according to the productivity of a piece of land in a certain district, yields a certain sum for a State-bounded area. The land tapes its value according to its productivity, that is, in accordance with the way or the degree in which it is put to rational use in relation to the whole economy. It is very difficult today for anyone to gain a clear concept of this simple land value, since in the modern capitalistic economic life interest on capital, or capital in any form, has confused the whole picture of ground-rent, and the true concept of its economic value for the people has been blurred by phantoms in the form of mortgage law and the system of stocks and shares. Strictly speaking, everything has been forced into conceptions that are impossible and false. Naturally a true conception of ground-rent cannot be acquired in the twinkling of an eye. But think of it simply as the economic value of the land in some territory, with regard to its productivity. Now there exists a necessary relation between this ground-rent and subsistence what I have referred to as a subsistence minimum. There are many social reformers and social revolutionaries today who dream of the wholesale abolition of ground-rent, who believe, for example, that ground-rent will be done away with by all land being nationalised or communalised. Essentials, however, are never changed by a mere change of form. Whether a whole community owns the land or it is owned by a number of individuals makes no difference to the existence of ground-rent. It is simply obscured and takes on other forms. Ground-rent as I have defined it is always there. Take the ground-rent of a certain district and divide it up among the individual inhabitants, then you will get as quotient the only possible subsistence minimum. This is a law as definite and unalterable as a law of Physics. It is a primary fact, something fundamental, that in a social organism in reality no one deserves more than is yielded by the ground-rent being divided among the total population. What can be earned further arises through coalitions and associations in which conditions are established where one individual can acquire more value than another. But not a whit more can pass into the movable property of an individual man than what I have here indicated. From this minimum, which really exists everywhere even though the real conditions are obscured, arises all economic life in so for as it applies to an individual's movable property. It must have arisen from this basic fact. Hence it is that one starts not from something secondary but from this primary fact. This primary fact may be compared to any other, for example to a primary fact also valid for the economic life, that on a certain territory there is only a certain amount of raw product. Naturally you may think it desirable to have more of this raw product and to be able just to reckon how much more might be had from this land. But the raw product does not allow of any arbitrary increase; that is a primary fact. And it is a primary fact in the same way that, in a social organism, in reality nothing more can be earned through work—however hard this work may be—than can be yielded by the quotient I mentioned. As I said, all surplus is acquired through human coalition.

The social and political administration can be in contradiction to these facts. Therefore it is necessary to bring all organising thought into the direction that facts take. Man can find satisfaction only when these things are thoroughly understood. Then the organising factor, the thinking that has taken on reality, is brought into line with what the nature of the social organism demands, and other thinking adjusts itself to it, so that it cannot happen that one thinking considers itself prejudiced by the other. That is what lies as a law at the basis of the true life of the social organism. Right thinking, realistic concepts on such matters can be gained—as I showed by the example of the relation of a subsistence minimum to ground-rent—only when you make your start on the basic principles of the threefold order. For only under its influence is it possible for men to create measures by which human life in common on any given territory can be developed really productively. Life will develop most productively when it goes in a direction that accords with law and not in the opposite direction. Thus it is a matter of living in time with the social organism.

It is necessary to be quite clear about this—that you will never gain insight into the fundamentals of the Threefold Order by observing life externally, any more than observation of any number of right-angled triangles will give you the Pythagorean theorem. But once known it can be applied to any real right-angled triangle. It is the same with these fundamental laws. Once grasped correctly in accordance with reality, they can be of universal application. And in addition you have from the basis of Spiritual Science the opportunity to grasp the necessity of the Threefold Order. Consider what can be given through it—the life of earthly spirituality, if I may so call it, art, science, religion and also, as already mentioned, civil and criminal law; that is one sphere. The second is the political association of men and is concerned with man's relation to his fellows. And the third is the economic life, concerned with man's relation to the lower man, what man needs in order to raise himself to his true manhood. The Threefold Order has to do with these three spheres. Man should be established in the social organism in accordance with these three members; he must be so established. For the three members have each a quite distinct origin in regard to the human being as such. All life of the spirit on earth—and what I now say counts for our own age—is a kind of echo of what man lived through in the life before his descent through birth into physical existence. In that life the human being lived as a spiritual individual in a spiritual relation to the higher hierarchies, with those disembodied souls who were in the spiritual world and not at the time incarnated on earth. What man develops here as spiritual life, be it in devotion to religious practice or life in a religious community, be it in activity in the arts, or as a judge passing sentence on those of his fellowmen found guilty, everything lived out in this spiritual life has its origin in the forces acquired by man when, before he entered physical existence through birth, he lived with the higher hierarchies in the spiritual worlds. Here you must distinguish between life lived in common with other men in accordance with individual destiny, and that lived with others in accordance with what I have just described. In earthly existence we come into individual relations with one or other of our fellow-men. These relations depend upon our individual karma, and either trace back to earlier lives on earth or point to those coming later. But among these individual relations between human beings you must distinguish those, for example, that arise from belonging to a certain religious community. For in a religious community you think or feel as a number of other men do. Or suppose a book is published. Men read the book, take up thoughts from the book, and thus enter into a community. Spiritual life on earth, whether having to do with the bringing-up of children, education, or anything else of the kind, consists in our coming into relation with people and developing a life in common with them, in order thereby oneself to make spiritual progress. All that, however, is experiencing relationships in which, before descending into spiritual life on earth, we were in a quite different form. It has nothing to do with individual karma but with what was prepared during life in the spiritual world in the time lived through between death and a new birth. Thus, one has to seek the source of what I have called the spiritual sphere, in the life passed through by man before he prepared to descend. through birth into earthly existence.

Then there comes what is experienced simply by living on earth between birth and death. We grow into this life by degrees. When as an infant we enter into this existence through birth, we still bear—if I may make a foolish comparison—much of the egg-shell of the spiritual world around us, though it is not hard. The child is very spiritual in spite of its main task being the development of its physical body. In its aura there is much of the spiritual; what it brings with it is very nearly akin to the spiritual life on earth. Gradually, however, it enters more and more deeply into the life that belongs entirely to the time between birth and death.

Now the sources of the life of the political state are found in this life not chiefly concerned with the spiritual. The political state has to do only with what man experiences between birth and death. Therefore nothing should be involved in it save what concerns us as beings between birth and death in our mutual relations as man to man. If the state involved itself in anything other than what concerns the public life of rights between birth and death, if it spread its wings over Church and School, for example, well—in the places where there were people with a faculty for judging such things it used to be said: “There the Prince of this world holds his unjust sway!” Nothing belongs to all that is the object of state-organisation except what has to do with the life between birth and death.

The third member is the economic. This economic life, which we are obliged to lead because we eat and drink, clothe ourselves and so on, forces us as human beings to descend into the subhuman. It chains us to something beneath the level of our full humanity. By having to concern ourselves with life economically, by having to dive down into economic life, we experience something which, when observed socially, has more in it than is usually thought. In so far as we stand in the economic life we cannot live in the spiritual nor in the life of rights, but must plunge below the human level. But just by this plunging into the subhuman we take into ourselves something that thus has an opportunity to develop. Whereas in the economic life we are active and higher thoughts must be silent and even the human mutual relations play in only from another sphere, there is worked in our subconscious then what we then carry with us into the spiritual world through the gate of death. Whereas in the spiritual life on earth we experience the echo of what we lived through before our descent to earth, and in the life of rights of the political state experience only what lies between birth and death, in the economic life, into which we cannot enter with our higher self, something is being prepared that is also spiritual and carried by us through the gate of death. People would like the economic life to exist only for the earth. But this is not so. Just through our plunging down into the economic life something is prepared for us as human beings that is again connected with the supersensible world. Therefore no one should think of holding the economic life too lightly. However strange and paradoxical it may seem, this external materialistic life has a certain connection with the life after death. So that in actual fact, for anyone who knows man, the three spheres fall asunder—the purely spiritual sphere points to life before birth; the political sphere of the State points to life between birth and death; the economic life points to life after death. It is not in vain that we cultivate fraternity in the economic life. In all that we develop as brotherliness in the economic sphere lie the foundations and preliminary conditions of life after death. I am giving you only a first brief indication of how the threefold membering of the nature of the human being gives the spiritual scientist in these three distinct spheres the differentiation necessary for social life.

It is a particular characteristic of Spiritual Science that, when we come to deal with it, we find it directly practical. It sheds light on the life around us, and at the present time men have no other possibility of getting light on the real relationships of life than by in some way accepting spiritual knowledge. Thus it is desirable that those who are interested in the Anthroposophical Movement should let the light of their understanding ray out to others; for the Anthroposophist it is relatively easier to penetrate these things with insight. He knows something of life both before and after birth, for example, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, and this shows him the necessity for the threefoldness in life from this point of view. This necessity can indeed be seen today. But we shall gain a deeper, more comprehensive insight if we have the anthroposophical basis of which I have been speaking here.

In the course of the last centuries how much has been spoken in a sentimental way, when men have held forth, for instance, about universal moral teaching and the like, and religion has been kept as far as possible apart from external daily life. We are now at a point of time when we have to develop concepts that can penetrate right into daily life and do not just extend to the promise of salvation or to the demand “Children love one another”. They do not do it in any case when they do not have to or when other business is on hand. The concepts we develop must have sufficient driving force to enable us really to understand our present-day complicated economic life. Thus, simply through knowledge of the nature of man we are shown the necessity for the sound social organism to be threefold.

It must become clear to as many people as possible today that this is the very foundation-stone of a new structure. just to prate about the spirit is, as I was saying yesterday, perhaps more harmful just now than the materialism which, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, has up to now continued to spread. For mere talk of the spirit, mere sighing after the spirit, mere worship of the spirit, no longer meet the needs of our epoch. In our epoch it is fitting that we realise the spirit, that we give the spirit the possibility of living in our midst. Today it does not suffice just to believe in the Christ; it is essential that men should now manifest the Christ in their deeds, in their work. This is the important thing. If man develops sound thinking and perceiving in this sphere, these sound thoughts and perceptions will flow into another sphere as well. Consider how a great many of the present official representatives of one or other of the Christian faiths speak today of Christ. But if asked: Why is He whom you call Christ, the Christ? they can give only a fictitious answer, what is indeed an inner lie. Many modern theologians talk of Christ, but were you to ask them: How does your concept of the Christ-being differ from your concept of the Jahve-God, the one God, weaving and creating throughout the universe? they would have no answer to give.

The great theologian Harnack, in Berlin, has written a book on The Being of Christianity. What he describes as the Being of Christianity is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, with all Jehovah's characteristics. It is inwardly a lie to describe Jehovah as Christ, And it is thus with hundreds, nay thousands, of those preaching Christianity today; they are simply preaching God in general, the God of Whom we can say ex Deo nascimur. Christ is discovered only when one has experienced a kind of new birth. We need only be healthy human beings to have to recognise the God of Whom we say ex Deo nascimur; for to be an atheist is in reality to be ill. But one can speak of the Christ only when in the life of soul one has experienced a kind of re-birth, in the way this happens in the present cycle of human evolution. For this, it is not enough that man is simply born as a human being.

Man as he is born today is necessarily full of prejudices; that is the nature of present-day man. And if we remain as we are born we carry these prejudices with us through life; we live in one-sidedness. We can save ourselves only by having inner tolerance, by being able to enter into the opinions of others even when we think them wrong. If we can bring a deep understanding for the opinions of other souls even when considering them mistaken, if we can take what the other thinks and feels in the same way as we take what we think and feel ourself, if we adopt this faculty of inner tolerance, we may overcome these prejudices due to the human cycle in which we were born. We then learn to say: What you have understood in this the least of my brethren, you have understood of me. For Christ did not speak to men in this way only at the time when Christianity began, but has made good His word “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of earthly time”. He still continues to reveal Himself. Once Be said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto Me”. Today He tells men: What you understand with inward tolerance in the least of your brothers, even when he is mistaken, you have understood of Me, and I will let you overcome your prejudices when you convert those prejudices into tolerant reception of what others think and feel.—That is one thing; that, in regard to thinking, is the way to come to Christ. Then Christ can so permeate us that we not only have thoughts about Him but Christ can live in our thoughts. This, however, is only achieved in the way I have just described.

And secondly, in regard to the will. In youth the human being is sometimes idealistic. This is an inherent idealism and we have it simply by being born as human beings. Today, in this era, this idealism belonging to mankind is not enough. We now need a quite different kind—an idealism to which we educate ourselves; we do not have it simply by becoming human beings but by making an effort. It is this kind of idealism we need. We need the idealism we have ourselves acquired. It then becomes the idealism that will not vanish with youth, it will keep us young and idealistic throughout our life. If through training we make an idealism our own, then, on the basis not of logical law but of the law of reality, we bring to bear the driving force to place ourselves actively into the social organism in accordance with the very purport of this organism, instead of acting egoistically as an individual man. No one today who does not train himself to this self-acquired idealism will gain a true social understanding. The ex Deo nascimur is innate. The way to Christ is found on the one hand through supersensible thought, on the other hand through the will. It comes through the thought by our being convinced beforehand that nowadays we are born as men full of prejudice and must overcame our prejudice by tolerantly listening to the opinions of others, thus gaining right judgment. Where the way of the will is concerned, this will only be fired socially in the right way today when we have this self-acquired idealism, the idealism we drive into ourselves through our own activity. That is re-birth. And what we have found when we as men have gained it for ourselves leads us to the Christ. Not the God of Whom we say Ex Deo nascimur may we describe as Christ, for that is inwardly untrue. That God was known in the Old Testament. When we as men shall have transformed ourselves in life in the two directions mentioned, we shall clearly see the distinction between the God Who is pure Father and the God Who will then speak to us. For this God is the Christ.

Modern Theology actually speaks very little about this Christ. This Christ must eater men as a social impulse. What many people say today of Christ is intrinsically untrue. Now such things are not to be looked into as people today subtly present them, taking them logically, point by point. As I once told you recently, there is an understanding in accordance with reality different from one that is merely external and logical. But when man has developed in himself what I have called a re-birth, then human thinking will be brought near Christ, and we shall learn to think and feel as we must think and feel if, for the benefit and salvation of man, we are to place ourselves into human society. We shall also learn to think and feel rightly in other matters by thinking and feeling rightly on these fundamental things. From this, however, the spiritual life of modern mankind has travelled terribly far. And the reason is that this spiritual life has been absorbed by the political State. Man's spiritual life must be freed from the political State to become fruitful and full of impulse for human evolution. Otherwise all thinking will be dislocated and from this dislocation false realities will be created.

I have already referred to Wilson's definition of freedom. For anyone who has some understanding of philosophy it is not very important how a statesman of the day defines freedom. It is important, however, as symptom of what lives in a men when he has thoughts about freedom. Now Wilson says: We call free what adapts itself to certain conditions so that it can still move freely. Thus we say when in a machine the piston can move freely, when it does not knock against anything but can move without impediment—we say the piston runs free. Or a ship moves forward freely which is so built that it runs before the wind. If it run against the wind it is hampered and not free. So man is free when he fits in with the conditions of the social mechanism. There, then one can only speak of the social mechanism.

It is not very important that thoughts such as these live in a head and are realised; the importance lies in what is realised being experienced in such thoughts. Then one knows whether this is sound or the opposite of sound. The thinking is quite dislocated; and why? Now you need only reflect on the following with the experience you have gained from Spiritual Science: when you fit into the external conditions of your life, when your life is running according to this adapting oneself to conditions without impediment, then you are free, free as a ship is free when running with the wind. But man does not stand thus in the whole world: For if indeed the ship running before the wind does run freely, it must, however, sometimes also be able to stop. And that is just what is very important for man—that he can sometimes turn round and take his stand against the wind, so that he not only fits in with circumstances but can also adapt himself to what is within him. One cannot think of anything more foolish, more absurd, than Wilson's definition of freedom, for it is opposed to human nature and the very reverse of what lies at the basis of true freedom. If we compare a man with a ship running freely before the wind, we must also compare him with a ship that having run in a certain direction and not needing to go further, can turn to face the wind. For if a man has to proceed only in accordance with external conditions, he is naturally free in them but not in himself. We have completely lost sight of the human being today in our observation of the world and of life. He has dropped out of our considerations concerning life and the world. But he must once more be given a place in the world. [ Note 01 ]

This has its exceedingly serious side; here it is seen only as a symptom but it has a most serious side. For today the human being is placed into the social organism in such a way that really he is only running with the wind, and the capitalist ordering of economy has particularly destined the proletariat only to run with the wind, never to be able, as a rest, to stop and face the wind. In a public lecture in Basle I said that within the capitalist. economic system the capitalist uses only the labour of the workers; in a healthy social organism the capitalist must use the workers' leisure also. Abstract capitalistic capital needs only labour-power. Capital that, under the threefold order, will give back to men their purely human driving force will also use the leisure of the workers, the leisure indeed of all mankind. For that, capital must be placed into the social organism, it will know how it is to be sustained by the social organism and how it must in return sustain the organism.

It is a question of the proletariat being able to save their labour-power so as to be capable of taking part in the spiritual life; and it is a question of the will being there to allow the worker sufficient leisure, to leave him sufficient labour-power, that of himself he can join in this spiritual life. The bourgeois economic order has allowed a deep cleft gradually to arise. What it produces spiritually is valid only for this bourgeois order and is out of touch with proletarian life.

Capitalism has brought things to the point where only labour-power is considered and not the leisure of the proletariat. Today these matters still seem abstract. It should be so no longer, for upon understanding these things rightly depends the sound human evolution both of the present and the future.

Now I have once again given a few indications as to the relation to social life of some of the fundamental tenets of Anthroposophy. It would be very desirable if such a spiritual movement as ours should, as a little social organism in itself, cease this unhealthy separation—developed to man's hurt by appalling bourgeois concepts—of the economic life from the spiritual, and should seek health by permeating the concepts of practical life with the concepts of Spiritual Science. The social organism must so organise its different members that there will no longer be men who cut off coupons and in this coupon-cutting become nothing less than slave-drivers, since for the coupons they cut off, a number of people, with whom they have no connection, have to perform hard work. Afterwards the coupon-cutters go to Church and pray God to be saved, or they go to a meeting and talk theoretically about all sorts of beautiful things; but they have no conception of the foolishness of living such an abstract spiritual life that they can seek, on the one hand, a connection with a God, and on the other hand share in slave ownership and the exploitation of labour by this coupon-cutting. They separate these things in a way that is not salutary by not attempting to discover the salutary. This is what is in question, what has been neglected and what must be changed: this separation between the religion and ethics that float in a cloud-cuckoo-land, and the external life thoughtlessly pursued in the form given it today by an unsound social organism. Above all it must be recognised that the misfortunes of the present-day have come about through this separation by the bourgeoisie of the abstract from the concrete. If efforts are made to drive out all that shows itself in an unsound and sectarian form, it is in just such a movement as ours that there can be a first setting-up of a kind of small social organism that is sound. In our Anthroposophical Movement there is nothing from which we have had to suffer more than the repeated appearance of a tendency towards sectarianism. Without noticing it people strive towards some kind of separation. But Anthroposophy must be the reverse of sectarian. It will then meet the subconscious and unconscious contemporary demands which truly do not run to creating sects, but cultivate something that develops out of the whole man for all men and out of all men for the whole man.

Just consider how you, in your own souls, can get away from sectarianism. In countless souls today sectarianism lives like something atavistic, an unhealthy inheritance, because the will does not exist to carry the true life of the spirit into the conditions of external life. Only through such sectarian sentimentality could it happen that the Appeal of which I spoke yesterday should meet with the reproach that it was just from this direction that mention of the spiritual had been expected! But I have never been able to refer to the spiritual in the sense of these enthusiasts. When, in the beginning of the nineties, there spread in America the Adler-Unold Ethical Movement, I opposed it with all my might, because a movement for ethical culture was to be founded based on nothing, and connected with nothing in life, but a desire to give out ethical maxims. The understanding of life, life in its fundamentals, is what contemporary men need, not the fashioning of phrases as to how things should be done. In regard to the social organism, the threefold order is above all something to be studied fundamentally, investigated and given consideration, something to be taken deeply to heart, so that it may be mastered in the same way as the multiplication table is mastered.

Notes:

1. See lecture 13.1.23 (Anthr.Qtly VI.1.)

I would like to respond to your kind invitation to speak here this evening by telling you something about how, through unmediated research, one can come to spiritual knowledge, and I would like to explain the educational consequences of that knowledge. At the outset today I would also like to say that I will be speaking primarily about the method for entering and researching super-sensible worlds; perhaps on another occasion it will be possible to impart some of the results of super-sensible research. Everything I have to say today will refer to the researching of spiritual, super-sensible worlds, not to the understanding of super-sensible knowledge. Supersensible knowledge that has been researched and communicated can be understood by ordinary healthy human understanding if this ordinary understanding has not lost its unbiased perspective. A biased view is present when the understanding takes as its starting point the proof or logical deduction appropriate for dealing with the outer world of sense. Because of this hindrance alone it is often said that the results of super-sensible research cannot be understood by anyone who is not a researcher of the super-sensible.

What will be imparted here today is the object of what is known as initiation knowledge. In previous ages of humanity's development this knowledge was cultivated in a form different from the form appropriate for today. As I have already said in other lectures, the things of the past are not to be brought forward again; rather the path of research into super-sensible worlds is to be entered upon in a way appropriate to the thinking and feeling of our age. When it comes to initiation knowledge, everything depends on the individual's ability to undergo a fundamental reorientation or revisioning of his entire soul configuration.

An individual possessing initiation knowledge is distinguished from those who have knowledge in the present-day sense of the word, not merely because his initiation knowledge is a step above ordinary knowledge. Of course, it is achieved on the foundation of ordinary knowledge; this foundation must be present; intellectual thinking must be fully developed if one wants to acquire initiation knowledge. However, a fundamental reorientation is then necessary. The possessor of initiation knowledge must come to see the world from a point of view altogether different from the way it was seen without initiation knowledge.

I can express the fundamental difference between initiate and ordinary knowledge in a simple formula: In ordinary knowledge we are aware of our thinking; indeed, we are altogether aware of the inner soul experience through which we, as the subject of knowing, acquire knowledge. For example, when we think and believe that we know something through thought we think of ourselves as thinking human beings, as subjects. We are looking for objects when we observe nature or human life or perform experiments. We always look for objects. Objects are supposed to present themselves to us. Objects should surrender themselves to us so we can encompass them with our thoughts, so we can apply our thinking to them. We are the subject and that which comes to us is the object.

With a man who strives for initiation knowledge an entirely different orientation comes into play. He must become aware that as a human being, he is the object; then, for this object, this human being, he must seek the subject. A situation exactly the opposite of ordinary knowing must occur. In ordinary knowledge we experience ourselves as subject and look for the object outside of us. In initiation knowledge we ourselves are the object, and we seek the corresponding subject; in other words, genuine initiation knowledge leads us to find subjects. But that would be the object of a later knowledge.

It is as though the mere definitional concepts already force us here to see that in initiation knowledge, we must actually flee from ourselves; we must become like the plants and stones, like thunder and lightning, which are, for us, objects. In initiation knowledge we slip out of ourselves, so to speak, and become objects that seek the corresponding subjects. If I may express myself somewhat paradoxically, I would like to say that from the point of view of thinking the difference is as follows: In ordinary knowing we think about the things; in initiation knowledge we seek to discover how we are being thought by the cosmos.

This is nothing more than an abstract guiding principle. But you will find that this abstract guiding principle is followed everywhere in the concrete methods of initiation. To begin with, if we want to receive initiation knowledge appropriate for today we must proceed from thinking. The life of thought must be fully developed if we want to come to initiation knowledge today. This life of thought can be especially well schooled through an immersion in the natural scientific development of the last centuries, the nineteenth century in particular.

People react in different ways to natural scientific knowledge. Some listen to the pronouncements of science with what I would like to call a certain naïveté. They hear, for example, how organic beings have developed from the simplest, most primitive forms up to the human being. They think about this development but have little regard for their own involvement in these ideas. They do not stop to consider the fact that they themselves unfold something in the seeing of external processes, something which belongs to the life of thought.

But someone who receives natural scientific knowledge with critical consideration of his own involvement must ask himself: What does it mean that I myself can follow the development of beings from the imperfect to the perfect? Or he could say to himself: When I do mathematics I create thoughts purely out of myself. Properly understood, mathematics is a web spun out of myself. I then apply this web to the outer world and it fits. Here we come to the great question, I would like to say the really tragic question: How do things stand with respect to thinking itself—this thinking that is involved every time I know something?

No matter how long we think about it we cannot find out how things stand with thinking; for thinking remains always stuck in the same place. We merely spin, so to speak, around the axis we have already built for ourselves. We must accomplish something with our thinking. With our thinking we must carry out what I described as meditation in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.³⁰

We should not think mystically about meditation but then neither should we think of it lightly. It must be completely clear what meditation is in the modern sense. It also requires patience and inner energy of soul. Above all there is something else that belongs to meditation, something that no one can ever give to another human being: the ability to promise oneself something and then keep that promise. When we begin to meditate we begin to perform the only really fully free act in human life. We always have the tendency toward freedom within us. We have also attained a good measure of freedom. However, if we stop to think about it, we will find we are dependent upon our heredity, our education, and our present life situation.

To what extent are we in a position to suddenly leave behind all we have acquired through heredity, education, and life? We would be confronted with nothingness were we to suddenly leave that all behind.

Although we may have decided to meditate mornings and evenings in order gradually to learn to see into the spiritual world, we can, in fact, on any given day, leave this undone. There is nothing to prohibit this. And experience teaches us that most people who approach the meditative life, even those with the best intentions, soon leave it again. In this we are completely free. Meditation is an essentially free act.

If we are able to remain true to ourselves despite this freedom, if we promise ourselves, not another but ourselves, that we will remain faithful to this meditation, then that is, of itself, an enormous power in the soul.

Having said that, I would like to draw your attention to how, in its simplest form, meditation is done. I can only deal with the basic principles today. This is what we are dealing with: An idea or image, or a combination thereof, is moved into the center of our consciousness. Although the content of this thought complex does not matter, it should be immediate and not represent anything from our memory. For this reason it is good if the thought complex is not retrieved from our memory but rather given to us by someone experienced in such things. It is good for it to be given to us, not because the one who gives the meditation wants to exercise any suggestion but because we then can be certain that what we meditate is, for us, something entirely new.

We could just as well find a passage for meditation in any old book that we know we have not read. What is important is that we not pull a sentence out of our subconscious or unconscious, which would then overwhelm us. We could never be absolutely certain about a sentence like that. All kinds of things left over from past feelings and sensations would be mixed in. It is essential that the meditation be as transparent as a mathematical equation.

Let us take something very simple, the sentence: “Wisdom lives in the light.” To begin with, the truth of this sentence cannot be tested. It is a picture. But it is not important for us to concern ourselves with the content in any other way than to see through and understand it. We are to dwell upon it with our consciousness. In the beginning we will only be able to dwell in full consciousness upon such a content for a very short period of time. But this period of time will get longer and longer.

What then is essential? Everything depends upon our gathering together our whole life of soul in order to concentrate all our powers of thinking and feeling upon the content of the meditation. Just as the muscles of the arm become strong as we work with them, so too soul forces are strengthened by focusing them on a meditative content again and again. If possible the content of meditation should remain the same for months, perhaps for years. For genuine super-sensible research the forces of the soul must first be strengthened, empowered.

If we continue practicing in this way, the day will come, I would like to say, the big day, on which we make a very special observation. Gradually we observe that we are in a soul activity entirely independent of the body. We notice that whereas previously we were dependent upon the body for all our thinking and feeling—for our thinking upon the nervous system, for our feeling upon the circulatory system, and so on—now we feel ourselves in a spiritual-soul activity that is fully independent of any bodily activity. And we notice this because we are now in a position to cause something in our head to vibrate, something that had remained entirely unconscious previously. We now discover the strange difference between sleeping and waking. The difference consists in this: when man is awake there is something vibrating throughout his entire organism—except in his head. What is otherwise in movement in all the rest of the human organism is, in the head, at rest.

We will better understand what we are dealing with here if I draw your attention to the fact that, as human beings, we are not these robust solid bodies that we usually believe ourselves to be. We are actually made up of approximately 90 percent fluids; and the 10 per cent solid constituents are immersed in the fluids, they swim around in the fluids. We can only speak of the solid part of the human being in an uncertain way. We are, if I may put it this way, approximately 90 per cent water; and to a certain extent, air and warmth pulsate through this water.

If you can imagine the human being this way—to the least extent solid body and to a greater extent water and air with warmth vibrating therein—then you will not find it so difficult to believe that there is something even finer and more rarefied within us. This finer element I will call the etheric body. This etheric body is more rarefied than air. It is so fine that it permeates us without our being aware of the fact—at least in ordinary life. This etheric body is what is in inner movement when we are awake—in a regular movement throughout the entire human body, except in the head. In the head the etheric body is inwardly at rest.

In sleep it is otherwise. Sleep begins and then continues when the etheric body also begins to be in movement in the head. So that in sleep the whole human being—the head as well as the rest of the human being—has an etheric body that is in inner movement. When we are dreaming, for example, just upon awakening, we are then still just able to perceive the last movements of the etheric body. They present themselves to us as dreams. We are still able to perceive the last etheric movements in the head; however, when we awaken quickly that cannot happen.

Someone who meditates for a long time in the fashion I have indicated arrives at a stage where he can form pictures into the etheric body which permeates the head when it is at rest. In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. I have called these pictures Imaginations. These Imaginations, which can be experienced in the etheric body independently of the physical body, are the first super-sensible impressions we can have. They bring us to the place where, entirely without regard for our physical body, we can behold, as in one picture, our life in its movement and its actions. What has often been described by people who were submerged in water and about to drown—that they have seen their lives backward in a series of moving pictures—that vision can be developed here systematically so that everything that has happened in our present earth life can be seen.

The first result of initiation knowledge is a view of our own soul life. This turns out to be entirely different from what one usually expects. We usually abstractly suppose this soul life to be woven from ideas and mental images. When we discover it in its true form we find that it is something creative and, at the same time, that it is what was working in our childhood, what shaped and molded our brain, what permeates the rest of the body and brings about a plastic form-building activity within the body as it enkindles and supports our waking consciousness, even our digestive activity. We see this inner activity in the organism as the etheric body of the human being. This is not a spatial body but a time body. For this reason you can describe the etheric body as a form in space only if you realize that what you are doing is the same as painting a bolt of lightning. When you paint a picture of a lightning flash you are, of course, painting only a moment of its existence. You are holding the moment in place. The human etheric body also can only be captured as a spatial form for a moment. In reality we have a physical body in space and an etheric body in time, a time body, which is always in movement. And it is only meaningful to speak of the etheric body if we speak of it as a body of time which we can behold. From the moment we are in a position to make this discovery we see it extending backward all the way back to our birth. This is, to begin with, the first super-sensible ability we can discover in ourselves.

The development of the soul, brought about through processes such as I have described, shows itself above all in a change of the entire soul mood and disposition of those people who strive for initiation knowledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that someone who arrives at initiation knowledge suddenly becomes an entirely transformed and different human being. On the contrary, modern initiation knowledge must leave a man standing fully in the world so that he is able to continue his life, when he returns to it, just as he once began it. But when super-sensible research is carried out man has become, through initiation knowledge, for those hours and moments someone different than he is in ordinary life.

Above all I would like to emphasize an important moment that characterizes initiation knowledge. As a person penetrates further into experience of the super-sensible he feels more and more how his own bodily nature disappears. That is, it disappears for him with respect to those activities in which this bodily nature plays a part in ordinary life.

Let us consider for a moment how our judgments in life come about. We grow up and develop as children. Sympathy and antipathy become solidly set in our lives—sympathy and antipathy for the things that appear to us in nature and for other people. Our body is involved in all of this. Of course, this sympathy and antipathy that, to a large extent, actually have their foundation in the physical processes in our body, are then placed and located in the body. In the moment when people about to be initiated rise into the super-sensible world, they live into a world in which, for the duration of the time spent in the super-sensible, the sympathies and antipathies connected with their bodily nature become increasingly foreign to them. They are lifted above that with which their bodily nature is connected. When they wish to take up ordinary life again they must again fit themselves, so to speak, into their usual sympathies and antipathies—something which otherwise occurs by itself.

When we awaken in the morning we fit into our bodies, develop the same love for things and people, the same sympathy and antipathy we had before. This happens by itself. But when we stay for a while in the super-sensible and then wish to return to our sympathies and antipathies, then we must exert an effort to submerge ourselves into our bodily nature. This condition of separation from our own bodily nature is a phenomenon that shows that we are really making progress. The appearance of wide-hearted sympathies and antipathies is, altogether, something that an initiate gradually makes a part of his being.

There is one thing that shows the development toward initiation in a particularly strong way: the working of the memory during initiation knowledge. We experience ourselves in ordinary life. Our memory is sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse; but we acquire a memory. We have experiences and later remember them. This is not the case with what we experience in super-sensible worlds. We can experience greatness, beauty, and meaning, but after it has been experienced it is gone. And it must be experienced again if it is to stand before the soul again. It is not imprinted in the memory in the usual sense. It is imprinted only if we bring into concepts what we have seen in the super-sensible, only if we can also bring our understanding along with us into the super-sensible world. This is very difficult. We must be able to think just as well on the other side but without the body helping with this thinking. For this reason our concepts must be strengthened beforehand; we must have become proper logicians before, so that we do not always forget when we look into the super-sensible world. It is just the primitive clairvoyants who, although they can see quite a bit, forget their logic when they are over there. It is just when we want to share super-sensible truths with someone else that we notice this change in our memory with respect to these truths. From this we can see how our physical body is involved in the exercise of memory, not in thinking, but in the exercise of memory, which always plays into the super-sensible.

If I may be permitted to say something personal, it is this: When I myself hold lectures it is different from the way lectures are usually held. People often speak from memory, they often develop from memory what they have learned, what they have thought. Anyone who really presents super-sensible truths actually must always produce them in the moment when he presents them. I can hold the same lecture thirty, forty, fifty times, and for me it is never the same. Of course, that would be so in any case, but it is even more so with this independence from memory that comes into play when a higher stage of memory is reached.

I have already told you about the ability to bring forms into the etheric body of the head. This then makes it possible to see through the time-body, the etheric body, all the way back to birth. It also brings the soul to a very special mood with respect to the cosmos. One loses one's own bodily nature, so to speak, but feels oneself living into the cosmos. Consciousness expands, as it were, into the widths of the ether. One can no longer look at a plant without becoming immersed in its growth. One follows it from the root to the blossom. One lives in its juices, in its blossoms, in its fruits. One can steep oneself in the life of animals according to their forms, but especially in the life of other human beings. The slightest gesture encountered in another human being leads one, so to speak, into the entire soul life of the other person. One feels as though one is no longer in oneself, but is out of oneself during this super-sensible knowing.

But it is necessary that we be able to return again and again, otherwise we are lazy, nebulous mystics, dreamers, and not knowers of super-sensible worlds. We must be able to live in super-sensible worlds while simultaneously being able to return at any time to stand firmly on our two feet. For this reason, whenever I explain such things about super-sensible worlds, I must stress that it is far more important for a philosopher to know how a shoe or a coat is made than it is to know logic, that he must really stand in life in a practical way. Actually no one should think about life unless he really stands in it in a practical way. This is even more so the case for someone seeking super-sensible knowledge. Knowers of the super-sensible cannot be dreamers or fanatics or people who cannot stand on their two feet; otherwise they would lose themselves, for one must, as a matter of fact, get outside of oneself. But this “getting outside of oneself” must not lead to the loss of one's self. The book Occult Science—an Outline was written out of knowledge such as I have described here.

Then it is important that we penetrate further into this super-sensible knowledge. This happens when we further develop our meditations. With our meditations we rest upon certain ideas or mental pictures or a combination thereof, thereby strengthening the soul life. But this is not enough to bring us fully into the spiritual world. It is also necessary that we practice the following: Beyond dwelling with our meditations upon ideas, beyond concentrating our entire soul upon these ideas, we must be able, at will, to cast them out of our consciousness. Just as, in the life of the senses, we can look at something and then away from it whenever we want, so too, in the development of super-sensible knowledge we must learn to concentrate on a content of soul and then be able to cast it out of the soul again.

Even in ordinary life this is not easy. Just think how little we have it in our power to drive our thoughts away at will. Sometimes they will pursue us for days, especially if they are unpleasant. We cannot get rid of them. This becomes much harder after we have become accustomed to concentrating on the thoughts. A thought content we have concentrated upon eventually begins to get a firm grip on us; then we really have to work hard to remove it. When we have practiced for a long time we can manage the following: We can remove, we can cast out of our consciousness, this entire retrospect of our life from birth onward, this entire etheric body, as I have called it, this time body.

This is, of course, a stage to which we must develop ourselves. We must first become mature for this step by ridding ourselves of this colossus, this giant being in our soul. The whole terrible specter that embodies life between the present moment and our birth is standing there before us. This is what we must do away with. If we can get rid of it then something will appear for us that I would like to call a more wakeful consciousness. Then we are merely awake without anything in the waking consciousness. Then it begins to fill. Just as air streams into lungs that need it, so too the real spiritual world now streams into the consciousness that has been emptied in the way described.

This is Inspiration. Now something streams in that is not a finer, more rarefied matter. It is related to matter as negative is related to positive. The opposite of matter now streams into the human being who has become free of the ether. This is the most important thing we can become aware of. It is not true that spirit is merely an even finer, more etherealized form of matter. If we call matter the positive (it really does not matter if we call it positive or negative; these things are relative), then in terms of the positive we must call spirit negative. It is as if I had the vast fortune of five dollars in my wallet. If I give one away then I will have four left. But say, alternatively, that I accumulate debts. If I owe one dollar then I have less than no dollars.

If through the methods described I have removed the etheric body then I come, not into a still finer ether, but into something that is the opposite of ether, in the same way debts are the opposite of assets. Now I know from my own experience what spirit is. Through inspiration the spirit comes into us and the first thing we experience is what surrounded our soul and spirit before our birth, that is before conception, in the spiritual world. That is, the preexistent life of our soul and spirit. Previously we had seen into the etheric realm back to our birth. Now we look back beyond birth, that is conception, into a world of soul and spirit and reach the point where we can perceive how we were before we descended from spiritual worlds into a physical body taking on a line of heredity.

For inspiration knowledge these things are not thought-out philosophical truth. They are experiences, but experiences which must only be acquired after a preparation such as I have indicated. So the first thing that comes to us when we enter the spiritual world is the truth of the preexistence of the human soul, that is, of the human spirit. We learn now to see the eternal directly.

For many centuries now European humanity has considered eternity from one side only, from the point of view of immortality. Europeans have asked only: What becomes of the soul after it leaves the body at death? Of course, it is the egotistical right of human beings to ask such a question. They are interested in what will follow after death for egotistical reasons. We will presently see that we too can speak about immortality, but immortality is usually discussed for egotistical reasons. People are less interested in what happened before their birth. They say: We are here now. What went on before has value only as history. But knowledge of history that has any value is only possible if we seek knowledge of our existence before birth, that is, before conception.

We need a word in modern languages that makes the eternal complete. We should speak not only of immortality but also of unborn-ness. For eternity consists of both immortality and unborn-ness; furthermore, initiation knowledge discovers unborn-ness before it discovers immortality.

A further stage of development in the direction of the spiritual world can be reached if we strive to free our soul and spiritual activities still further from the support given by the body. We can achieve this freeing by guiding our exercises, meditations, and concentration more in the direction of will-exercises. As a concrete example I would like to describe a simple will exercise that will allow you to study the principle under consideration. In ordinary life we are accustomed to think along with the flow of the world. We let the things come to us as they happen to come. What comes to us first we think first, what comes to us later we think later. And even if in more logical thinking we are not thinking along with the flow of time, still in the background there is the effort to stick with the external, “real,” flow of events and facts. In order to exercise our soul and spiritual forces we must get free from the external flow of events. And a good will exercise is this: We try to think back through the experiences of the day, not as they occurred, from the morning to evening, but backward, from evening to morning, paying attention to the details as much as possible.

Suppose we come to the following in this backward review: We walked up a set of stairs. First we picture ourselves on the top step, then at the one before the top, and so on down to the bottom. We descend the stairs backward. In the beginning we will only be able to visualize backward the episodes of the day's experiences in this way, say from six o'clock to three o'clock, or from twelve to nine, and so on, back to the moment of waking. But gradually we will acquire a kind of technique by means of which, as a matter of fact, in the evening or the next morning we will be able to let a tableau of the day's events, or the events of the day before, pass before our soul in reverse order.

When we are in a position (and everything depends on our achieving this position) to free ourselves entirely from the three dimensional flow of reality, then we will see how a powerful strengthening of our will occurs. The same effect can be achieved if we are able to hear a melody backward or if we can picture a drama of five acts running backward from the fifth, fourth, and so forth back to the first. We strengthen our will inwardly with all of these means, and outwardly we tear it free from its bondage to events in the world of the senses. Other exercises that I have mentioned in previous lectures can be added. We can take stock of ourselves and our habits. We can take ourselves in hand, apply iron will in order, in a few years, to acquire another habit in place of the old. As an example, I mention the fact that in his handwriting everyone has something that reveals his character. Making the effort to acquire another handwriting, one which is not at all similar to the former, requires a powerful, inner strength. Of course, the second handwriting must become just as habitual as the first. That is a small thing. There are many such things through which we can alter the fundamental direction of our will through our own energetic efforts.

In this way gradually we are able to do more than just bring the spiritual world as inspiration into us. With our spirit freed from the body we are really able to immerse ourselves in the other spiritual beings outside us. Genuine spiritual knowing means that we enter into spiritual beings around us when we behold physical things. If we want to know spiritual things we must first get out of ourselves. I have described this freeing of ourselves from the physical. But then we must also acquire the ability to sink ourselves again into spiritual things and beings.

We can only do this after practicing the kinds of exercises just described; then, as a matter of fact, we are no longer disturbed by our own bodies but can immerse ourselves in the spiritual side of things; then the plants no longer merely appear to us, but we are able to dive down into the color itself. We live in the process whereby the plant colors itself. By not only knowing that the chicory growing alongside the road is blue, but by being able to enter into the blossom inwardly and participate in the blue we dwell intuitively in this process. From this point we can extend our knowledge more and more.

From certain symptoms we can tell we have really made progress with such exercises. I would like to mention two, but there are really many. The first symptom consists in this, that we acquire entirely different views concerning the world of morality than we had before. For the pure intellect the moral world is something unreal. Certainly, if he has remained a decent person during the age of materialism, a man feels himself obligated to do what the old traditions prescribe. Yet even if he does not admit it, he thinks to himself that doing the good does not make something happen that is as real as what happens when lightning flashes or when thunder rolls through space. He is not thinking of reality in this sense when he thinks of morality. But when he lives into the spiritual world he becomes aware that the moral order of the world has not only a reality such as is found in the physical world, but actually a higher reality. He gradually comes to understand that this entire age, with its physical ingredients and processes, can decay and be dissolved; but the morality that flows forth from our actions continues to exist in its effects. He becomes aware of the reality of the moral world. The physical and moral worlds, being and becoming are then one. He really experiences the truth that moral laws are also objective laws of the world.

This experience intensifies our sense of responsibility with respect to the world. It gives us an altogether different consciousness, a consciousness much needed by modern humanity. Modern humanity looks at the beginning of the earth, how it was formed from a primal plasma in space, how life, man, and—much like a fata morgana—the world of ideas arose out of this primal matter. Our present-day humanity looks at the cold grave of the universe that entropy will bring us to. According to this materialistic idea, everything in which human beings live will again sink into a great graveyard. Humanity needs knowledge of the moral order in the world, the knowledge that can be achieved through super-sensible sources. This I can only touch on in this lecture.

Another symptom of our progress must be mentioned: the intensified suffering that we experience. We cannot come to intuitive knowledge, to this submerging of ourselves in things external to ourselves, without having gone through an intensified suffering. This suffering is intensified compared with the pain involved in imaginative knowledge, the pain that always arises when we must find our way again into our sympathies and antipathies. The great effort required to find our way back always hurts. The pain now becomes a cosmic co-experiencing of all the suffering that rests upon the ground of existence.

It is easy to ask why the gods, or God, created suffering. Suffering must exist if the world is to arise in its beauty. We have eyes because, to begin with, in a still undifferentiated organism something organic was, so to speak, “dug out” and transformed into the power to see and, then, into the eye. If we were still able today to perceive the tiny, insignificant processes that go on in the retina when we see, then we could perceive that even those processes represent a pain that rests upon the ground of existence. All beauty rests on the foundation of suffering. Beauty can only be developed out of pain. We should be able to feel this pain, this suffering. We can only really find our way into the spiritual by going through pain. To a lesser degree this can already be said for a lower stage of knowledge. Anyone who has acquired even a little knowledge will admit to the following: I am grateful to my destiny for the happiness and joys life has brought me, but my knowledge has only been achieved through my pains, through my suffering.

If this is felt with respect to more elementary knowledge, it can then become an even greater experience when we overcome ourselves, when we find our way through the pain that is felt as cosmic pain to a neutral experience in the spiritual cosmos. We must struggle through to a co-experiencing of the events and essential nature of all things; then intuitive knowledge is present. We are fully within an experience of knowledge that is no longer bound to the body. We can then return to and live again in the sensible world until death but with full knowledge of what it means to be real, to be real in the soul-spiritual outside the body.

If we grasp this experience of intuitive knowledge, then, in a picture, we have knowledge of what happens when we leave the physical body at death, then we know what it means to go through the gate of death. The reality we encounter, that the soul and spirit go over into a world of soul and spirit when they leave the body behind—we experience this reality beforehand when we have ascended to intuitive knowledge. That is, we know what it is like in a world where there is no body to provide support. When we have then brought this knowledge into concepts, we return to the body. But the essential thing is that we learn how to live without a body and acquire thereby the knowledge of what it will be like when we can no longer use our body, when we lay it aside at death and step over into a world of soul and spirit. Once again, this is not a question of philosophical speculation concerning immortality based upon initiation knowledge. It is, I would like to say, an experience, a pre-experience of what is to come. We know what it will be like. We do not experience the full reality of dying, but we experience immortality. This experience also becomes a part of our knowledge.

I have attempted to describe how you can rise through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition and how, through this development, you can learn to know yourself in your full reality as a human being. In the body we learn to know ourselves for as long as we are in the body. But we must free our soul and spirit from the body, for only then can the whole human being be free. What we know through the body, through our senses, through thinking based on sense experience and bound up with the body's nervous system—with all this we can know only one part of us. We only learn to know the whole human being if we have the will to ascend to the knowledge that comes from initiation science.

Once again, I would like to stress that once the research has been done, then the results can be understood—just as what astronomers and biologists say about the world can be understood and tested—by anyone approaching them with an unprejudiced mind, with ordinary, healthy human understanding. Then you will find that this testing is the first step of initiation knowledge. Because man does not seek untruth and error but truth, we must first get an impression of the truth in initiation knowledge. Then, as much as destiny makes it possible for us, we will be able to penetrate further and further into the spiritual world.

In our day, and in a higher sense, the words which stood inscribed above the Greek temple as a challenge must be fulfilled: “Man, know thyself.”

Those words certainly did not mean that we should retreat into our inner life. They were, rather, a challenge to search for our being: to search for the essence of immortality, which is found in the body, to search for the essence of unborn-ness, which is found in the immortal spirit, and to search for the mediator between earth, time, and spirit which is the soul. For the true human being consists of body, soul, and spirit. The body can only know the body, the soul can only know the soul, and the spirit can only know the spirit. Therefore, we must try to find the spirit active within us so that the spirit can also be recognized in the world.

• 30. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, vol. 10 in the Collected Works, repr. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).

Also known as The Present Crisis in Man's Development and The Science of the Spirit, Education, and the Practical Life. From: Lectures on Spiritual Essence and Its Working. Lecture 13 of 18 from the volume: Man's Responsibility for World Evolution through His Spiritual Connection with the Planet Earth and with the Stars Above.

The times in which we live are so earnest that at present it is not in any way appropriate to think of personal matters. Allow me, first of all, to express briefly my heartfelt thanks to your esteemed president for her kind words and then to pass on to what I believe I must tell you, for it is a long time since we saw one another in Holland.

The times in which we live and its conditions are much more earnest than most people of the present are consciously aware of.

Here we can speak of these conditions of our times from those standpoints which result from a long study of the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. We know that we live in an epoch whose characteristic peculiarity began to be evident in the 15th century. It was then that it slowly began to develop its peculiarities. Those who are initiated into the spiritual conditions of human evolution and can therefore have an insight into this course of development, know that the second half of the 19th century indicates a specially low point of human evolution in the modern and particularly in European culture. This low point may be characterised as the rise of a particular inthrust of egoism in all branches of civilised humanity, an egoism of a kind that was never there before. This wave of a special course of development then sent its ramifications into the 20th century, and now these ramifications undoubtedly continue to hold mankind under their spell.

In saying that a wave of egoism came over the whole modern civilisation, I do not speak trivially of what one generally defines as egoism, but I speak of egoism in a special sense, into which we shall penetrate a little in the course of this morning's considerations, and in a way that will be evident to those who are initiated in the true mysteries of more recent human evolution.

We already know the members constituting human nature. We know that the soul-members of human nature have been engaged for a long time in a special process of transformation, in a special course of development. We know that when we go back to very ancient times of human evolution we have to do with a particular forming of man's etheric body, during a very old time of development in India; a particular forming of the astral body then began, and a certain intermediate course of development took place during that epoch of European development which began about the year 747 in the south of Europe and which closed in the first thirty years of the 15th century. That time was the beginning of that epoch of human evolution in which we are still living. In the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, began that phase of human evolution in which the so-called intellectual and understanding soul (Verstandes und Gemütsseele) unfolded. Everything that humanity still prizes to-day as Greek culture; developed through the fact that at that very time the intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. However, while the wonderful Greek culture was unfolding, that which we call intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. It had not yet reached its climax. For such points are always in a certain way times of probation for the evolution of humanity. For the sake of their development, the Greeks had to pass through what one might call the youthful freshness of the intellectual or understanding soul. The Greek culture, so much admired by posterity, came into being out of this youthful freshness of an intellect that was not yet permeated by egoism, out of this youthful freshness of the human understanding. Of the characteristics pertaining to the intellectual soul, the Latin and Roman culture then took over something that was in a descending line of development and decadent. Those who have a deeper comprehension for that which lived in Roman culture know: There the intellect already reaches its culmination; there the intellect rises to a high point. On that account the Romans developed such abstract ideas; on that account the Romans developed something that did not as yet exist in the whole ancient East, that did not even exist, in the sense known in Europe, in the Greek culture: The Romans developed the ideas of jurisprudence, the juridical concepts.

To-day we consider the world very superficially and we translate our thoughts on “Jus”, on jurisprudence, which, in reality are the outcome only of the Roman intellectual soul, into something which we assume to have already existed in the ancient East, for instance in Hammurabi, and so forth. But that is not the case. The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments as well as the contents of other documents of that time, were, after all, something quite different from that which constitutes our modern juridical concepts. These are something abstract, something that is no longer so close to the human soul. Everything that thus constitutes the development of the intellectual soul reached its climax during a period in the civilisation of Europe which has really been studied very little from an external historical standpoint, although it is extraordinarily important and significant for those who wish to study human evolution in the meaning of spiritual science.

That striking year to which we can draw attention as being specially significant for European development is the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha. The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha is the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It is that point of time when a fluctuating knowledge of the universe lived in Europe simultaneously with a fluctuating knowledge of humanity. These had nothing of the penetrating character of the knowledge of the universe that the Greeks still possessed and no proper comprehension of man's inner world.

We find instead that man sways either towards the longing for an extensive knowledge of the universe, or towards the longing for self-knowledge, knowledge of his own self. The human soul of the European peoples indeed passed through a great deal during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Roman life was then entering into its decay; it bequeathed to European humanity nothing but its language; it left behind its more or less fundamental material of culture. The life of humanity thus entered the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, lasting up to the 15^th century, when our present epoch began.

From the preceding epoch, in which most of us in some way passed through one or more earthly lives, we brought over—partly through physical heredity, but particularly through the fact that we ourselves formerly were those incarnated souls—into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and we took over this inheritance. This inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch lives in everything that constitutes our present civilisation.

We worked the intellect, the thinking, into our consciousness soul. That means a great deal. At the beginning of the fifth epoch, the consciousness soul enabling man to really permeate, really grasp his ego, first took hold of his thinking, his life of representations and his intellect. Humanity thus became intelligent and clever, but clever within the consciousness soul; within the evolution of humanity, this implies the finest possible elaboration of EGOISM.

We should not only rebuke this epoch of egoism, we should not only fall upon it with criticism, but in spite of the fact that it brings with it so many temptations and leads man into great soul-dangers and even into external danger, we should recognise this age of egoism as the one in which ego-consciousness comes to the fore with special incisiveness.

Man can thus take into himself a real feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is something that none of us possessed in our previous incarnations, in the earlier epochs of human evolution. We had to pass through egoism, that presents so many temptations, in order to reach that longing for freedom which is the prerogative of modern humanity. One of the most important things in Anthroposophy is the knowledge that we had to take in something in order to climb over an important stage in human evolution: the stage leading to the DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM. For this very reason we should be aware that this crossing over is connected, with many temptations, with many dangers of humanity, both soul-spiritually and bodily. A knowledge going in the direction of Anthroposophy must enable us to take in fully the feeling of freedom, but at the same time to ennoble it, to permeate it again with a spiritual knowledge of the universe, which—in spite of the now existing mature ego-feeling, mature ego-consciousness—induces mankind to solve tasks that are not only egoistic tasks, but tasks pertaining to the whole evolution of humanity, indeed to the evolution of the whole earth, to the evolution of the whole universe.

In this connection we are now facing a great turning point in the whole civilisation of more recent times. The time of probation has indeed come! Great tasks confront mankind. But the recognition of these tasks is extremely difficult and is rendered still more difficult through the fact that we have just passed through the age of the great egoism.

We say that we sleep from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. That is right. We are then in a state of dulled consciousness. Most of you know sleep only in its negative aspect, that it dulls consciousness. Yet we do not judge the waking state in the same way. The time of being awake, the time from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, was really quite different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. To-day people believe that they are awake in the same way in which, for instance, the people living about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were awake. That is not the case. Their whole soul-constitution was different. Man was then awake in a different way. He was much more strongly conscious of his body.

You see, modern man really knows very little indeed of his bodily processes. The Greeks, not the Greeks of a later time, but the Greeks of the pre-Socratic and pre-Platonic times, still knew a great deal of the processes of their own body. For example, the really cultured Greek looked up to the sun. From the sun he received the light. He received at the same time a feeling that he was drawing in something etheric, that the light was being led on into his inner being. And when he was thinking, he said: The light, the sun thinks within me. The Greek of pre-Socratic times still felt this in a living way. He did not think so abstractly about thinking as we do to-day. He thought: The sun thinks within me: it allows its light to be drawn in by me. The light that shines upon the things outside, that makes the things outside visible, is active within me, by reflecting itself, as it were, within its own being, so that thoughts spring up in me. For the Greek, the thoughts within him were the light of the sun. At the same time, they were for him that element which lived in the macrocosm thanks to the influence of divine-spiritual beings. At the same time, they were for him that which really raised him to the Divine, above his ordinary dignity as a human being. He felt himself lifted above the earthly, when he thus experienced the sun's light within him as thinking. And when a particularly cultured Greek ate, he indeed considered his food, in which he took in something that he did not receive directly from the sun, but that came from the earth, as a necessity of life, yet at the same time he felt himself changing into the food, that became he himself, as it passed through his mouth, his oesophagus and digestive organs. He felt that he was one with the food, in the same way in which he felt that he was one with the sunlight. While he was digesting, he felt the earth's gravity. He felt, as it were, similar to the serpent, that he did not as yet highly appreciate, but that he still observed rather timidly—the serpent that twists away from the earth and digests in a particularly visible way, after having swallowed its food. That is how the Greek experienced what went on in his body: whether he experienced what was thinking within him as the sun's bright light, or whether he experienced within himself what chained him to the earth; i.e. the taking in of food. Through the intimate way in which his understanding was connected with his body the Greek felt with particular energy that which also lived within him as physical human being. You may also deduce this from the following:

When we paint human beings to-day in the ordinary way, as numerous painters of the present generation have done year after year, decade after decade in painting portraits, we really lie. We look at people outwardly and believe that then we bring forth something of what we experience. It is not true at all that we can experience something in that way! We could experience it only if we were able to conjure up within us the whole way of identifying ourselves feelingly with the whole of Nature as human beings, as it was the case with the Greeks. First of all, we must learn this anew, along an entirely different path than that of the Greeks.

Since the middle of the 15th century, we have acquired in an abstract-theoretical way a soul-constitution that no longer allows us to really penetrate livingly into our body, but that lives instead in concepts that do not stand visibly before us, because we have conquered thinking for the egoity, for the ego. We should realise this. And we should realise that we must once more take in spirituality from an anthroposophical spiritual science, so that the ego may once more be filled with something, and so that that which really lives within us may once more—but now in a different way—enter our life: that which the Greeks experienced in an immediate, elemental way; but that could not continue.

When the Greek walked, he walked as if led by a necessity of Nature, like the lightning flashing through the clouds, or the rolling thunder! He knew nothing whatever of freedom, but he knew man! Indeed, he knew more about man than we think he did. For instance, he knew how to coin words clearly indicating that man still knew something of the connection between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical. The Greek words, or those derived from the Greek, indicate even to-day far more than those based on our therapeutic or pathological conceptions, that are no longer able to understand anything. Hypochondria for instance, means cartilaginosity of the abdomen. It is a name that the Greeks found through their full knowledge of the fact that in hypochondric people the activity of the soul-spiritual gives rise to cartilaginous formations in certain parts of the body. These names mean far more than modern men suppose, and more than can in any way be grasped through modern medicine, with its abstract way of thinking, even though it experiments, dissects, etc. We must first take up again everything that is real, that once more enables us to have an insight into the world! It is the task of a spiritual scientific deepening to reach once more real facts, realities.

You see, during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in which the human beings passed through what constitutes, as it were, a physical self-knowledge, an insight into the human body, during that time—one might say approximately, during the first third of that time, occurs the greatest event of the earth's evolution: the Mystery of Golgotha.

What is the condition of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred?—The further we go back, the more we find in ancient times—in the Greek epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Persian and the ancient Indian epoch—this immediate knowledge of the whole human being. Then, this knowledge of the whole human being disappears. The last remains of that knowledge may be found at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared. Something of that instinctive, ancient knowledge of man still existed at that time. For instance, the personalities described in the Gospels as the Apostles, or the Disciples of the Lord, still possessed something of that old instinctive knowledge, which lived in their souls altogether instinctively, not clearly. Others too possessed such a knowledge. At that time it was to a great extent decadent, but at any rate it still existed. It was dying away, burning out, but enough remained of that ancient knowledge to enable a great number of men of that time to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha accordingly. This is particularly evident when the apostle Paul entered the evolution of the times, the apostle Paul who was initiated by divine powers and to whom the spiritual world became visible.

All this gave rise to conditions of time which still enabled man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a certain naive, instinctive way. Many people had already entered a later phase of development. Particularly the cultured Greeks and the cultured Romans had concepts that were already far too abstract in order [to] grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a really living way. Yet certain people had preserved the last remains of an old clairvoyant knowledge, particularly clairvoyant traditions, and they were still able to grasp that a super-earthly power, the Christ, had connected Himself with an earthly man, Jesus of Nazareth.

The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, was, as it were, the year in which last stragglers of those who were still able to have a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could be found in Europe. But these stragglers could not understand it, for instance, through our anthroposophical spiritual science, for this did not, of course, exist at that time. They grasped it through an old knowledge that had remained from the Gnosis, and such like. A certain spiritual knowledge still existed. An ancient human inheritance lived in the human soul and this enabled man to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha.

What has remained of the Mystery of Golgotha? Intellectual traditions!—The Gnosis became theology, a mere logical way of grasping the divine. Theo-Logy: a mere logical way of grasping the divine, no longer a contemplation of the divine!

Since the year 333, the capacity of contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha in a direct way became more and more decadent, until the fateful time of the 9th century, when, in the year 869, the Eighth General Oecumenic Council at Constantinople gave out the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but that it is instead a Christian's duty to acknowledge that man consists only of body and soul, and that the soul possesses a few spiritual qualities. At that time, the trichotomy, as it was called, the only possible knowledge of the human being, according to which man consists of body, soul and spirit, was done away with dogmatically, and a dogma was enforced, according to which a Christian who truly believes must acknowledge that man only consists of body and soul.

Modern philosophers frequently state that their philosophy is based on an unprejudiced knowledge, and they speak on the one hand of the body, and on the other of the soul. They speak of the spirit in a very phraseological manner at the most, for they do not know the spirit. They would only know it, if they recognised the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. The “impartial philosophy” that is now being taught to such an extent—what is it, in reality?—It is the result of the dogma pronounced by the Eighth Oecumenic Council in the year 869.

We must see through this. We must be quite clear that when the modern civilisation arose, and even in the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, it was considered as dangerous to speak of the spirit and to draw attention to it. But at the present time it is necessary that we should draw mankind's attention to the spirit,—the spirit that has been declared to be the devil for a long, long time, within the civilisation of Europe! After the year 333, nothing but traditions remained of the old Christological knowledge—nothing but traditions!

Everything that constitutes art shows us even more clearly that it has remained tradition! Observe, for instance, Cimabue's paintings; there you will see a world that took on a completely different aspect in Giotto's paintings. In Cimabue's paintings lived something that may also be seen in Dante, something that could no longer be experienced by the human beings of a later time! Later on, this living within a spiritual world, that may still be seen in Cimabue, ceased. Later on, it was a hypocrisy to paint a golden background, but for a Cimabue this was quite natural. And now observe a Russian icon; it is not in any way painted after a model, for it is something in which the old traditions are still alive, traditions that come from a clairvoyance still existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and enabling man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha.

Then came the time in which the traditions were maintained by using external instruments of power. And then came the 19th century, in which the ordinary soul-activity that brought forth such significant results in natural science and technology, was also applied to theology. But what became of theology through this? Christ-Jesus, the incarnation of a Being that does not belong to the earthly became “the simple man of Nazareth,” looked upon indeed as the most perfect man, but not as the bearer of a super-earthly Being. Theology became naturalistic. The more our modern theologians look upon Jesus of Nazareth as a human being, the less they feel induced to pursue Christological ideas, and the happier they are! Even in theology they do not wish to rise beyond the description of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, they do not wish to rise to an understanding of Christ as a super-earthly Being that dwelt in the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

To-day, those who have an insight into world-events from a spiritual standpoint, must see many things differently from the way in which they are judged by people who only see them outwardly. Central Europe, that is now passing through such a tragic destiny, was able—among other things which cannot be discussed here—to accept Adolf Harnack as a great scientist; the very man who reached the point of saying that God the Son should not be included in the Gospels! They should be read, he says, in such a way as to find in them only the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and this man's teachings concerning God the Father. Harnack's theology was intended to do away with our feelings of reverence for the spirituality of Christ. The theology which Harnack established in Central Europe really signifies the negation of Christianity, the denial of Christianity; it signifies the setting up of a world-conception clearly stating that we do not wish to have anything to do with the spirituality of Christ. It is significant to observe what has thus swept over modern humanity, with the result that the most distorted views now exist concerning the most important ideas of human life.

To-day we know what sleep is, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. Yet we do not, as a rule, observe the other kind of sleep, in which we live from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, when we walk about in our everyday life, steeped in illusions and dreams in regard to its most important facts. Indeed, in these modern times, we do not only sleep when we lie in our bed at night (this is actually the better kind of sleep), but we are also asleep in the sphere of egoism, when we lock ourselves up in our inner being, unwilling to know our human body and, at the same time, unwilling to progress to a spiritual self-knowledge. We sleep another kind of sleep during the time from falling asleep to waking up.

In order to understand this, we must indeed observe the nature of sleep from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking up. What does then take place with the human being? Why does the modern intellect believe that as far as the human constitution is concerned sleep is the same for modern man as it was for the ancient Greeks?—The Greeks were not awake in the same way as we, and the Egyptians even less so, nor did they sleep as we do. This soul-constitution in particular should be studied for every epoch of time.

When, during sleep, the human soul, that is to say, the ego and the astral body, loosens itself from the physical and etheric bodies that remain lying on the bed—where does the soul, that is the ego and the astral body, really dwell while we are asleep?

Superficial explanations that a cloud may be seen hovering over the physical body (which is quite true, as far as an altogether external form of clairvoyance is concerned), do not suffice. This is not sufficient, for we must observe what takes place inwardly. We must observe what the soul really experiences from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. In these modern times, the human soul then passes through experiences that are also lived through by the souls that are not as yet incarnated on the earth. Consider the following: Take a case that came to my notice just now, before I began my lecture: A daughter was born to an anthroposophist; one year ago, this little girl lived in the spiritual world as body and soul, and has since then made the endeavour to descend to the physical world. All those decades, that make us so much older than this little newly born girl, during all those years it lived in the spiritual world. And while we were asleep, we lived from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, in the world in which the little girl dwelt before conception, or birth. That is the world in which we dwell, when we are asleep, and there, the souls that are not yet incarnated pass through many experiences. While we are asleep, we pass with them through the fifth post-Atlantean age and through events resembling their own experiences.

From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live, on the other hand, in a world that we sleep away during our waking life; we live in everything that we inherited from our past earthly existences. We live together with what has remained behind from ancient India, Persia, or Egypt; we live with what we have experienced spiritually here on earth, and this is cramped together egoistically in our inner being. We bring it along with us into our present incarnation. During the day, we live with all these things, and sleep away the present. Indeed, the present contains many things that can only be grasped spiritually. We cramp ourselves egoistically in ideas that come from the past and adhere to them obstinately even in our language, in our speech. Languages contain a great store of ancient crystallized wisdom. Yet we rebel against any kind of influence that may be exercised upon our souls by this ancient store of wisdom. For instance, to-day we use the words “Messer”, knife, or “Schere”, scissors. When we use the word “Schere”, scissors, we do not as a rule think that it comes from a kind of “Scheren”, or shearing, that is announced in every barber's shop! And when we use the word “Messer”, knife, we do not think that it is really based on a moral idea, for it is connected with “Maass”, measure, and “Zumessen”, to mete out, or cut to measure. When a knife was used in ancient times, it was really used to “mete out” a gift for someone. A store of wisdom lies crystallized in the words we use, and this ancient spiritual life that is contained in the words now uttered so thoughtlessly, lives in the depths of our being. Whenever we speak, we really experience the life of ancient epochs.

Spiritually, we pass through ancient epochs of the earth, from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, but we pass through them in a sleeping condition. And from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we pass through events that are connected with the descent of human souls to their life on earth.

You see, these are realities, these are truths. These realities should be well impressed upon us, if we do not only wish to become acquainted with the forces of decay, but also with the forces of growth and progress. It would be so much better if, before going to sleep in the evening, a greater number of people were to do other things than those which they are accustomed to do! Consider what many people generally do, as last thing, before they go to bed! Yet a modern man should say to himself: I wish to enter the world that contains the forces of growth and progress, it is the world in which I can experience those forces that lead the human souls down to the earth, a world in which I can experience those forces spiritually.

From the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up we experience the forces pertaining to the future. For that reason, we should have a kind of craving for the teachings that speak of a spiritual world and that enable us to be conscious of the experiences of souls that are in a condition (but consciously) resembling that of souls who are asleep here on earth. The impulses for the progress of civilisation, for the healing of civilisation, must come from that world! The spiritual, political and economic impulses that should unfold as healing powers for our civilisation must come from that world! It is necessary, at the present time, that we should once more acquire the possibility of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha, of grasping it in a spiritual way.

What is the essential, or let us say, one of the essential things (for there are, of course, many essential things in it), in the Mystery of Golgotha?—That a God, a super-earthly Being, took up His abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Beings of His kind have one characteristic quality: they cannot die. All those Beings of the higher Hierarchies, described in my “OCCULT SCIENCE”, the Angels, Archangels, etc. up to the highest Beings, the Cherubim, Seraphim, etc. do not die (read the description of their life's course in my books), they do not die as men die. What did Christ take upon Himself, Christ Who came from the higher Hierarchies?—He died within a human body. You see, here we have significant forces that pass over into the evolution of humanity upon the earth, Christ died in a human body; he passed through the experience of death, an experience unknown to the other gods who are connected with the earth. Up to the year 333, it was still possible to grasp this truth to a certain extent. Now we must learn to grasp it anew! We should grasp anew that a super-earthly Being shared with us the experience of death, thus passing over into the development of the earth. Yet at the same time we should have the great modesty of recognising that the experiences of this Being highly surpass what can be experienced through the soul-constitution of a human being.

The Christ descended from worlds where death is unknown. What Beings serve the Christ?—Among those who serve Him, there is not one who could make the same sacrifice, not one who could have come down to the earth, in order to pass through death. Beings that belong to the hierarchy of the Angeloi, right up to the higher Hierarchies, Beings connected with the evolution of the earth, are Christ's servants. We cannot perceive them, if we do not rise to a super-earthly knowledge of the higher Hierarchies. Through a knowledge of the spiritual worlds we should seek that which leads us to Christ. Spiritual science is needed above all in order to attain a new knowledge of Christ. For Christ is here, upon the earth, and He is surrounded by the world of the higher Hierarchies. Man's great temptation in modern times is the modern natural science with its great triumphs and its admission of purely external forces of Nature. Yet behind all these forces of Nature live the spiritual Beings! The assertions of natural science are certainly right, nevertheless the spiritual Beings that serve Christ live behind the forces of Nature, thinking and directing them. Christ lives in everything that constitutes the development of the earth. Super-earthly Beings serve Him—but these super-earthly Beings can only be recognised through spiritual science. Consequently an extremely important task evolves upon spiritual science: the renewal of Christianity.

All this shows you that to-day we cannot pursue spiritual science merely as a personal concern. To-day spiritual science concerns civilised humanity as a whole. Through an inner necessity, spiritual science was from the very beginning pursued in the circle that afterwards obtained the name of “Anthroposophical Society”, in a different way than in the Theosophical Society. The whole constitution of the Theosophical Society had, from the very outset, a sectarian character, something that reckoned with the egoism of modern times. Anthroposophy therefore had the task of taking into account the consciousness of modern times, that which constitutes the external culture of humanity, and of pouring into it the results of a spiritual manner of contemplation. Little differences and strifes are of no importance whatever in the face of such a task. It was essential for me to maintain the purity of a spiritual movement that reckons with the whole science of modern times. Whether this or that person may or may not accept one or the other truth, is of no importance to me. Even though the whole world may abuse spiritual science and criticize it, I do not consider this as essential, for the essential thing is that the spiritual science that I advance should really harmonize fully, with the modern, scientific mentality, with the moral conscience of modern times. For this reason, I had to publish my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” before revealing the truths of Karma. I have often listened with great pain to theosophists who said: If this or that man suffers, if he suffers socially and belongs to a lower class or caste, it is his Karma and he has deserved it. This interpretation of the idea of Karma corresponded to the egoistical requirements of men who lived in the 19th and 20th century. Yet they did not think that we do not only live through our present life on earth, but that we shall also live through a future life. To-day we should not always look back on what we once possessed in past lives on earth, but we should also consider that in future lives on earth we shall be looking back on what we are passing through now—and this will then be an entirely new experience. Freedom fully harmonizes with the idea of Karma ... Everything that appears in the account-book of life is karmically connected.

You see, if I reckon up the debit and credit sides of destiny and strike the balance, I obtain life's balance; but this does not entail that the single items are subjected to the necessity of Nature. Just as the single items of a commercial account book do not depend on diligence, and so forth, and finally enable us to strike a balance, so freedom can very well be connected with the idea of Karma. We should not adopt an easy fatalistic idea when advancing the view of Karma as a fully justified idea. Spiritual science should therefore be in full harmony also with the conscience and the moral attitude of modern humanity. For that reason it was necessary to work more extensively with spiritual science, also during the time in which the catastrophe broke out in regard to everything that has been caused by the egoism of modern humanity, both soul-spiritually and physically.

Would it have been honest and straightforward to continue preaching that spiritual science can help mankind, and yet advance no social ideas at a time when social requirements became as urgent as they are to-day? Would human love not have progressed in the direction of a social knowledge? Shall we content ourselves with declamations on human love? Or should we not rather progress to real social impulses?

The fact that we can only see Christ's ministering spirits, clearly when we look into the spiritual world, is a result and a fundamental knowledge of spiritual science, a result of what I have told you to-day concerning waking and sleeping, concerning sleeping wakefulness and the awakening from sleep through spiritual science. Spiritual science will also enable us to grasp once more the Mystery of Golgotha, in accordance with a modern mentality. And as a result, spiritual science must not restrict itself to some sectarian group, but if must be brought out into the world in the best possible way, according to our capacities and to our place in life! The centre at Dornach was not intended to be a sectarian centre, but one that renders fruitful every branch of science and life, social life and artistic life. Anthroposophy and its spiritual science must become a concern of the great masses of humanity, although its most important things and that which penetrates into the innermost depths of our heart, awakening our inner forces, are pursued within the narrower circles of our Groups. There, in those Groups, we gather forces, in order to develop a certain higher knowledge, which we must first take in there. It is a knowledge that must be developed, for to-day we live in a time in which mankind really does not know what it is seeking; it sleeps away the most important things of life. Nevertheless it is a time in which mankind seeks after a new knowledge of the spirit! Let us feel this deeply, as pioneers, I might say, of a spiritual renewal—as Anthroposophists.

For that reason I so warmly wish that also the Groups in Holland might pursue an earnest, diligent and untiring study of the knowledge that can be obtained in our movement, from out the spiritual worlds. I warmly wish that our Groups should study diligently. These studies should constitute the point of departure for bringing out Anthroposophy into the world—and each one must do this in his own way—so that mankind's longings may be satisfied through a spiritual contemplation directed towards Anthroposophy. For that reason, let us grasp the nature of the longings of modern man. Let us not think that we become materialistic, when we spiritualize matter! And let us clearly realise that mankind would face a great misfortune, if it fails to obtain the true knowledge that is able to avert that misfortune.

The Eighth Oecumenic Council of the year 869 drove away from human knowledge the contemplation of the spirit. Those who have an entirely materialistic mentality seek to prepare the next stage: they also wish to eliminate the soul and to establish the general dogmatic knowledge that man only consists of the body. Certain devilish initiates are now excogitating means of educating the human being materialistically, of preparing him materialistically as a body; they seek to attain their end not by means of psychic influences, but by means of ingredients and substances taken from Nature. They plan an experimental psychology and seek to adopt principles that are not those of the Waldorf School (for the Waldorf School principles are spiritual protests against modern materialism), and they already undertake all manner of experiments in order to test man's capacities. This is but a preliminary stage of what they really aim at. The child is no longer to be educated psychically, but with the aid of external, material means, so that its capacities may develop in a bodily way. Thus man would gradually become an automaton, unless we bear in mind at the right moment that the path that led to the elimination of the spirit must not be continued in the direction of the elimination of the soul as well. We must instead follow the opposite direction of the Eighth Oecumenic Council; we must once more follow the path enabling us to find the spirit anew, and to cultivate in human life, in every sphere of practical human life, only what we can discover through the spirit.

This is what I wish to implant into your souls, what I wish to implant into your hearts, my dear friends, after our long absence. Cultivate spiritual science first of all as a concern of the heart, in the way in which it should be cultivated individually, so that we may progress. Cultivate what you have thus taken in, and then bring it out to humanity in every sphere of life, bring out what you have thus taken in! You will then gradually find the path enabling you, in the present difficult and earnest time of probation, to do the right thing for humanity, according to your place in life.

My dear friends!

Today I would like to say a few words in advance about the thoughts that have come to me in the wake of the laying of the foundation stone of our building. Here in this place, we want to remember once more the man who is so intimately connected with everything that concerns our spiritual movement: Christian Morgenstern.

It is, my dear friends, not without an inner spiritual connection that Christian Morgenstern is commemorated precisely at the commemoration of our laying of the foundation stone. The last collection of Christian Morgenstern's poems, which was only published after he left the physical plane, is entitled We found a path. Christian Morgenstern found the path he refers to by approaching it, approaching it more and more, and finally standing completely within it in what we call our spiritual stream, our spiritual science and our spiritual life. And what is expressed in that volume is completely imbued with the feelings, with the living ideas that Christian Morgenstern experienced in connection with our spiritual movement. It meant a lot to him that he chose this title: We found a path.

But Christian Morgenstern also had a sense of how to express symbolically how he was connected to our movement. And that is what we also do when we commemorate the laying of our foundation stone. It did not come to that, but this last collection of poems, published with the passing away of Christian Morgenstern from the physical plane, should have included – in Christian Morgenstern's opinion – an illustration of our as yet unfinished main entrance. And we found that a path should have been able to find symbolic expression in the title picture, saying, as it were: He who enters into the feelings that are laid down here in this book will find the way through the gate through which one enters the Dornach building.

So Christian Morgenstern's soul is intimately, intimately connected with the one with whom we also feel so intimately connected. I don't know if all our dear friends have heard what I had to say in some of our branches, some time after Christian Morgenstern left the physical plane. It may sound so strange because it is perhaps too simple a word for the thing I mean: with Christian Morgenstern it came so vividly to my mind how one can get to know people in a completely different way than in the physical life, when one is able to see them after they have left the physical plane. There are many things that my soul now feels close to Christian Morgenstern's soul. I do not want to include the little poem that was added by Margareta Morgenstern on May 13, 1912, in the copy of the poems intended for me, with the beautiful features of Christian Morgenstern, written by him in pencil. But without offending modesty, I may perhaps share the last two lines of this unpublished poem in a certain context here, in connection with me. As I said, it is not out of immodesty, but because I want to come to an occult fact, be it said. In connection with me, insofar as I have to represent this spiritual movement to Christian Morgenstern through my personality. In this regard, the poem concludes with the words

And in my fourfold form
they wrote their cross as a silent stop.

Yes, my dear friends, it was one of the most beautiful, one of the most uplifting and exalted tasks of our spiritual movement to inscribe the Holy Cross, the symbol of our movement, as a silent hold in this four-fold form. And now I often find Christian Morgenstern meditating. And these lines, with those that precede this little poem, always form, so to speak, what is a mediation of the path to this soul. And this soul can be found meditating in many places. That was the peculiarity of this soul, that it really sought the spiritual path to our spiritual movement in the most dignified and earnest way through the gate, the symbol of which was to be on the last collection of poems. And that resonates, even now.

And I only needed to quote one poem that had already appeared in the collection published by Christian Morgenstern in 1911 to then find this soul in its current state. However, a poem that, in its unpretentiousness – I would like to use Goethe's word – “offenbar geheimnisvoll” (apparently mysterious), shows Christian Morgenstern's peculiar place in our movement. After all, Christian Morgenstern was basically as prepared as possible for our movement before he entered its reality, full of longing for the spiritual life, and at the same time ready to take it up to the full. I would like to say that this poem is the one that sheds light on the life of Christian Morgenstern, both before and after. It is so taken from his whole being, as this being was before he entered through our gate, and yet in the last line in such a way that it presents the glorious earthly end to the soul's eye in a certain way. This is the title of this poem:

The animal, the plant, these beings still had
the inhuman patience of the earth;
there was a year, which today is only a second.

Now nothing can happen fast enough for them.
Man began to become impatient.
She senses: Now at last the great hour has come:

I have been breeding myself for millions of years for this.
Now I no longer need to spare my body,
now I will soon be hanging on God's word as a ghost.

I had to emphasize, my dear friends, how the forms of our construction strive for our soul to cling to the mouth of the gods. The soul of Christian Morgenstern, characterizing its own destiny, speaks the words at the end of the poem: “Now I will soon be a ghost hanging on God's mouth.”

Indeed, this soul was well prepared to carry into the spiritual worlds what it was able to absorb to such a full extent here in the earthly world. And so Christian Morgenstern's spiritual body also appeared to me in such a way that woven into his spiritual garment now after death is that which he absorbed here on earth from our spiritual movement in terms of cosmic truths and secrets. This is now like his body, and it is one of the most profound experiences I have had in the spiritual worlds: to see what I strove to find in this earthly incarnation spread out in the spiritual worlds, as in an artistic painting, and to see it interwoven with Christian Morgenstern's spiritual garment. Just as a painting by a genius gives us something in addition to nature, so the spiritual body of a human being gives us something in addition to what is spread out in the field of spiritual life. Truly, this soul remains with us, that may be said, and also accompanies that which is to be the symbol of our spiritual life, the foundation stone of which we laid a year ago.

I wanted to preface this with these words, and now some of Christian Morgenstern's poems, inspired by the immediate spiritual life, are to be recited; and at the end, I will take the liberty of making a further observation that may be suitable to enliven our thoughts a little on this day of remembrance of the laying of the foundation stone.

[A recitation of poems by Christian Morgenstern followed.]

If my intention was to commemorate Christian Morgenstern today, it is connected with the whole way in which Christian Morgenstern, from his own intellectual life, which he lived through before he joined our current, approached this our intellectual movement. And this way of Christian Morgenstern's is, in a sense, only an isolated case, a representative case of impulses, of forces and elements that can be felt in the whole of modern intellectual life, and which were particularly on my mind when we laid the foundation stone for our building a year ago today.

At the time, at the site where our foundation stone was laid, I had to point out how something should be done, how something should be built with this building, that would meet the longings, the spiritual hopes of individual people in the present, and would do so more and more in the future. Unconsciously, it had to be emphasized, the longing for the spiritual life contained in our spiritual current hovers in the souls. The souls long for this spiritual life, they just don't know it. And something would be given, it was emphasized, not out of the arbitrariness of a person or a society, but out of the signs of the times, out of what the time is driving towards, what the souls of the time are striving for, unconsciously perhaps most , those souls who, even for this or that reason, behave very negatively towards the form in which the newer spiritual life, the newer spiritual current, must make its entry into world history.

When I had finished the second volume of my Riddle of Philosophy, the aim was that after almost thirteen years of our spiritual movement, the last chapter should contain a reference to our anthroposophy. Of course, on the few pages that could be devoted to actual spiritual science, only a few of the rich contents that have been on our minds for so many years could be hinted at. The question naturally had to arise for me: What is the most important thing that must first enter into the souls of modern people?

The most important thing that must move in is the realization that there is a spiritual life that dwells and weaves in man independently of the human body, and that this spiritual life is the same that unfolds from embodiment to embodiment in repeated lives on earth. If we leave aside everything else that has passed through our soul, these two truths are such that, one might say, they still move into modern spiritual life as something completely alien. They appear foolish and fantastic to the materialistic mind, contradicting all the scientific spirit of modern times. That is how they appear to the materialistic mind; but a soul that has truly participated in the longings and hopes, in the forces and impulses of modern spiritual life, drinks them in to the full. That soul has cheered ed for the return of spiritual proclamation, and who has suffered from the spiritual life of our time, from the impossibility of taking something from the outer life that justifies speaking of a spiritual world, despite all modern science.

Such a thing can only remain suspended in the spiritual atmosphere for a while, one might say. But then comes the age when such a thing penetrates into the sphere of everyday life itself. And here is the point where the matter of our spiritual movement is directly announced as that which must become the affair of the heart of mankind in the most intimate sense of the word. Today one can still speak as if our spiritual movement were only of interest to a few individual souls, as if it were only for those souls who could feel what must enter into modern spiritual life. But the time is already upon us when souls will become desolate because the spiritual atmosphere, under the influence of materialism, gives them no vitality.

You, my dear friends, have all reached the age where so much remains of the more or less spiritual impulses of a more spiritual past that your souls cannot yet be so desolate, that your souls are still searching for the spiritual world, but do not know the desolation that will come upon the next generation if the spiritual impulse of spiritual culture does not flow into humanity. Those who are young children today will face a life that will constantly ask them - not in theory, but in life itself - the question: What is the meaning of life? Why this bleak existence?

And in the future, the pale faces of those who are young children today, distorted by the hardships and worries of life, will stand before our souls in horror, unable to see anything in the material world that can comfort the soul in the face of the desolation that can only take hold in a person's life if materialism is the only thing that exists. Then, my dear friends, there comes that great compassion, that all-embracing sympathy that swells in the soul, that empathy with those who will come and who can only find the earth worth living in if the spiritual atmosphere of this earth is prepared by that which spiritual science can give.

I said: Among the most important things that humanity must first understand is the doctrine of repeated lives on earth. A time will come when man who does not know about repeated lives on earth, who has not heard of it, will face life as the most desolate. In individual souls, which are connected with the whole of modern spiritual life, this idea emerged; so it emerged, that if you want to describe how it emerged, you have to say: There are souls that ask themselves: How do we cope with life in the peculiar phenomena that confront us when we survey it? How do we cope?

Then there are souls who are immersed in modern spiritual life and say to themselves: Oh, at least in my imagination I must conjure up an idea of immortality that is initially very far removed from the materialistic consciousness of our time! This idea of immortality sometimes comes to us in the strangest places in modern spiritual life. I would like to point out one such instance as a symptom. On another occasion, I have pointed out to the same modern personality that this idea of immortality does arise in him. But you will see from the very first sentence how it arises!

Herman Grimm, the excellent actor of modern times, a personality with whom I was privileged to exchange many words, once wrote - one might say, strangely enough - the following words in an essay that was actually about a completely different topic:

It is conceivable that the spirit of a human being, released from the bonds of the body, might hover above the earth like a mere mirror of what is happening.

Now, one might say, the hesitation comes:

I am not stating an article of faith here, it is only a fantasy.

But this fantasy is necessary:

Let us assume that for some people, immortality takes this form: they float above the earth, unencumbered by what previously blinded them, and all the destinies of the earth and of mankind from the birth of the planet are revealed to them. The past would be a fabric of harmonious beauty to them. Every thought of a heart would be a necessary part of it, every deed that we call good or condemn, the falling of a tree leaf and the collapse of entire cities, under which the ground begins to move, everything would have the same rank among the events, because it was the same single force that moved everything. Now suddenly, let's dream on...

Herman Grimm does not dare to grasp the thought as reality –

... this spirit, which so freely surveyed things, would be forced to rejoin the body of a mortal human. If this human had the highest talents of every kind, would only the memory of the previous state be possible?

The idea of re-embodiment! Now he develops the thought of how the soul, which he first imagined hovering above the earth in a disembodied state, would have to return to an earthly body.

It would be born in a certain age. It would have a father and a mother, a fatherland, a class, a heart that loves and hates, vanities, pains, joys, vexation, despair, delight – when, even for a moment, would it be capable of the free clarity that was once its element? He would begin to doubt whether he had ever really enjoyed freedom, and the memory of it would soon be compressed into a dark presentiment, hidden deep within his soul. While he usually had the hearts of men before him like a glass beehive, where he saw thoughts flying in and out and working, now he must divine them as secrets.

And so on. These are the passages, my dear friends, in which we encounter the yearning of modern man for what we want, and which, in the form in which it must first appear before humanity, seems so unlikely to this humanity. Our building and our work on it is, as it were, the vow that we want to work devotedly to study the longings and hopes of modern man in order to find from the spiritual world that which can meet these longings, these hopes. I had to express this when the foundation stone was laid a year ago.

I would also like to quote from another passage, from Herman Grimm. Do people today look at the history of the past, at historical life and development, purely in terms of the course of external facts? And materialism has increasingly come to regard it in this way. If we compare what is called history today with what we are trying to describe as the successive life in the post-Atlantic era, it becomes clear how little can be understood in our materialistic times, even in historical matters. This is what must come and for which our building is intended to be a symbol. But the longing for it is there, the deep longing! In a little-known essay by Herman Grimm, there are words that are particularly valuable to me because they basically reflect a conversation I once had with Herman Grimm in Weimar. Herman Grimm said that an expansion of the concept of history was imminent:

A world-historical change is taking place before our eyes today, the like of which has not been seen in any period of history, as far as we are able to survey it. The peoples of Europe are suddenly demanding to be left to their own devices. The mutual influence of the races on each other is to be completely denied in theory and minimized in practice. And this new view is not the fruit of a doctrine propounded by the learned, but of a natural impulse that is shaking peoples to their very depths. It does not emerge in the individual, but moves the masses. Something has secretly ripened and the latest events are the storm that shakes it from the tree. There is a universal law by which great masses of people repel and attract each other, connected with their ability to bring about general spiritual progress either by coming together or by isolating themselves. What we today generally call history is the story of the coexistence of peoples, which the peninsula of Europe, attached to western Asia, has held over the course of the last three or four thousand years.

Regarding the conception of history, Herman Grimm once said that he foresaw a time when all those regarded as great in the 19th century would no longer be regarded as such, but quite different people would emerge from the twilight of time. History has developed in such a way that, in order to judge it today, a transformation of the human soul is necessary, a transformation that reaches down to the very roots of its life. From this point of view, I have emphasized this again and again, but it cannot be said often enough.

Yes, my dear friends, it is impossible to gain from what modern spiritual life has to offer without our spiritual science what we long for here. A new history is sought, a new view of historical development, which is characterized by the words I have just read. But this longing cannot be fulfilled anywhere because the elements, the forces, the impulses for it are lacking. One would like to say: As a yearning, it is present, present in the best of our time, which we strive for as the fulfillment of this yearning.

But what strikes me as particularly profound is the connection between this yearning and what we, in all modesty, strive for when I consider how art itself has taken this path through humanity; when I consider that to him [Herman Grimm] history was an evolution of the imagination. That there are imaginations in humanity that flow unconsciously into humanity in order to be realized in human activity, that history is based on inspiration and intuition, could not be realized by him. For him, it was the imaginative work of nations. He could only gradually replace Maya with what he called the imaginative work of nations, not with what must present itself to the human spirit if it is to find the way up from the physical world into the spiritual. Only later will we truly understand what it meant for the 19th century when Herman Grimm says: What can we find particularly interesting in the way history has presented Julius Caesar? Julius Caesar – Herman Grimm says – interests me much more as he is portrayed by Shakespeare. That is truer than anything a modern historian writes about him.

He repeatedly pointed out how much he likes to read Tacitus: because he is a person who knows how to bring to life what he has to describe, to transform it into the spiritual. And so, from such a premise, a wonderful thought arose, such as that which Herman Grimm wrote down in the nineties and which is in his book on Homer, a thought that really stands there as an anticipation of what was to come as a message from the hierarchies.

[Gap in the text]. How this art took its starting point from the spiritual revelations that came down to people in the primeval culture of nations from the spiritual fathers themselves, how then that which lay in the primeval culture of nations , by the Christ impulse, how this Christ impulse also made its way into artistic forms, but how we then came to a deadlock, to that deadlock in artistic development in particular, at which humanity now stands. It pains me to have settled into the lives of those artists who, from the bottom of their hearts, tried to find what would give modern art spirit again. The life of the serious artist in particular has become tragic, and it stands tragically even before world history, because there is the search for something that can also enter into forms, and because this search can only be met by that which comes from a real, genuine grasp of the spiritual world. How does human longing find itself, how it is rooted in the deeper feelings of precisely those who suffer from modern culture, how it finds itself in harmony with what our spiritual movement is able to give! We have to think back to the Stuttgart cycle 'Before the Gate of Theosophy', where I spoke of Christian initiation and gave the example of foot washing as the first stage.

Many years have passed since we spoke out of the spiritual, how the plant must incline towards the stone, as it owes it the ground of existence; in the same way, the animal inclines towards the plant, and the human being towards the animal, up to the hierarchies of the spirits! This also lived in Christian Morgenstern's yearning. It united harmoniously with what was spoken, and we hear an echo of what was given to the yearning, what spiritual science was able to give to the yearning. We hear it echo in the poem that we heard today, 'The Washing of Feet': 'I thank you, you mute stone...'

It gives me an idea of how what is the best of human longing in this modern age will grow together with what spiritual science has to give us. These longings will flow into our perceptions, into our ideas, into our entire intellectual life. But, as I said, it pains me to look at those artists who sought content for their art. Carstens, Overbeck, Cornelius: they sought to bring the Christ impulse into their art - but it was in vain. Just study a life as tragic as that of Cornelius, who was so close to Herman Grimm: He sought to find the living Christ-life in the form that Christianity had taken, in the form that could penetrate his soul and flow into his art. But he lived in the dead center. Just look at modern architecture: we are not walking through the artistically created, but through the preserved, prepared herbarium of old art styles. Only the living connection with the Christ Impulse will be able to infuse these art forms with life, but only the living Christ Impulse, which penetrates into the forms through what has flowed into people through the Mystery of Golgotha. For it is not by merely speaking of Him that the forms come to life, without which human life is dead in art as well.

All we have been able to do, both with our spiritual movement and with our building, is no more than a beginning; the very first beginning of a building style that is to come, that must come. But that is precisely what we are trying to do with our spiritual movement: to take up the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha into our souls, to take it up completely, and to take it up in such a way that future humanity will need it.

In this context, I must also mention a word that Herman Grimm has just spoken in an essay, in which he divides human development – I have already mentioned this in the Hague cycle – into three millennia: one before the Mystery of Golgotha, then the millennium of the Mystery of Golgotha, and one after. Today of all days, I would like to call to mind the words with which Herman Grimm characterized the second millennium, for these words once again show something of the longings of modern man. They are words that can penetrate deeply into the soul if one looks straight at what lives in the hopes of the new age and what, in essence, can only be fertilized by spiritual science.

The second millennium: Christ stands before us here in two forms. First, as the creeds of the religions allow him to appear:

[...] Christ cannot be placed in a row with other great men as an historical personality. He towers above them and is surrounded by an aura of inviolability. Therefore, many treat the great phenomena of history apart from Christ. They assume Christ's relation to everything else as being recognized. But we cannot avoid him, since he and the personalities connected with him are encountered at every turn, and since even the all-powerful spiritual forces that lived before Christ, I mention Socrates or Plato, can only be understood in comparison with him today.

A high-ranking man who admired him is said to have demanded that Christ be introduced into world history as the author of all human destinies. This demand, it is reported, caused the scholar to experience severe inner struggles, but was ultimately rejected on the grounds that the given explanation had to suffice. Christ appears to us in world history in two forms: as the founder of Christianity and as the superhuman Son of God, as the church teaches.

I consider this dual nature of Christ to be historically untenable. We do not have to explain Christ, but to accept him and the effect of his teaching as a fact. Christ's works are to be incorporated into the report of the course of world events. In Roman political history, the birth and earthly life of Christ belong as an event of world-transforming power, and should not be relegated to church history as a special chapter. The teaching of Christ has been effective from Christ's appearance.

Titus did not destroy Jerusalem only because of it, but it is to blame for the fact that from the reign of Augustus onwards Latin and Greek poetry and the fine arts moved down from the heights because the innermost lifeblood is missing from them from that point on.

Attempts to depict Christ as the most beautiful, most divine of men soon began, and reached their zenith in Raphael's paintings. This took many centuries, but the direction towards this goal is recognizable. Raphael's importance would be incalculable if history were conceived differently, while at the same time no one who conceives of recent history in this way, whether as a writer or a reader, would be compelled to confess or even hint at his own thoughts about Christ if he did not want to.

For it is our human right to do these things in private. Scholars whose work has consisted in investigating Greek history have looked at it in the broadest sense with such enthusiasm that zealots could accuse them of having pagan beliefs. Nothing could be less justified. The development of the Greek spirit is just as beautiful and worthy of knowledge as that of the moving universe, or that of a flower, or that of any law in the field of chemistry.

If we are looking for a reason why Ranke might have doubted for a while whether or not to hold on to the double historical figure of Chrisü, then perhaps it is also about particular inclinations that should be considered in every historian [...] He then easily lifts us up, but this height is not the highest [...] One should find out what he intentionally left unmentioned in his history of the popes [...] He may have been flattered by those who wanted to rise through him, but he renounced purchased praise and loved quiet, untrodden paths where he met no one. When a man like that, growing very old, takes in everything that has happened, his world view has lasting value. But the future does not reveal it.

We feel that new world conditions are forming. Nothing spiritual has remained untouched by them. A veil is already falling over the 19th century: a something that forms a perceptible barrier between us and the recent past. Again and again the question arises secretly and aloud: Where do we want to go, where do we have to go? This uncertainty prevails in all areas of human existence. It produces strange new considerations. Transformation is taking place before our eyes [...].

Consider, my dear friends: a person who strives to find spiritual life in the life of humanity, who even sees the Christ in two forms, but does not want to speak of the form that is not simply human! For Herman Grimm continues:

I believe that for the history of the future, the beginnings of the community he founded point to the Christ as a historically established power of the highest order, as the real living force in human history. The history of Christ, the growing authority of his ideas and general political progress form an intricate web. Raphael's inner urge to depict Christ himself and his experiences did not arise from any coincidences, but from his national-Italian nature [...] We are giving the book that is most widely read today, translated into all the languages of the world: the New Testament, compatible with other books of national origin. These other books are recognized at the same time as the Gospels as a source of our spiritual uplift and education, although there seems to be an unbridgeable gap between them and the Gospels.

These other books, in contrast to the dubious authors of the Gospels, have certain authors who live on at the same time as their works. The most distinguished of them were poets, others were visual artists, alongside them were philosophers who observed nature, and the series is concluded by statesmen and generals. These men of the highest national rank have ruled over nations stretching back to the distant past, and their relationship to national character and to the teachings of international Christianity determines their presence and future everywhere today. A wonderful contrast.

Christ knows only humanity without distinction, whose salvation he sacrificed himself for. [ ] The most powerful men known to the millennia of human history have been five poets living before and after Christ: David, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. An Oriental, a Greek, an Italian and two Germans. Their careers and poetic powers are very different, but their works have a scope and impact that continues to grow. They also resemble each other in that we can most deeply penetrate their souls critically. For these five we know best of all people's earlier lives. Yes, one could say we alone know them. For we do not know Christ. We gaze at him in awe.

But where is the possibility of presenting the Christ to humanity in a new form? - to present him in such a way that one will no longer need to say: “These five we know best of all people's previous lives. Yes, one could say that we alone know them. For we do not know Christ. We gaze at him in awe.

When humanity decides to accept the spiritual form of Christ in its hearts, the time will have come for which people yearn, because they cannot yet see the form that Christ must take if he is to fulfill their longings. When one enters the path that leads to spiritual science, one will find the possibility to speak about the Christ in such a way that life, content, and certainty will enter into human souls, that certainty which is at the same time the certainty of peace itself. For is it not like a question that is posed but still stands without an answer when Herman Grimm says: he believes that - for the history of the future - the formation of the first Christian community as the actual living element of human history points to the Christ as a historically firmly established power of the highest order.

Spiritual science is the answer to such questions, the answer that must be given today. For it is precisely with regard to the contemplation of Christ that humanity has arrived at a dead end. Herman Grimm felt it rightly when he said that he only had the questions but not the answers! The answers will have to be kept back as long as it is not firmly grounded in spiritual science.

But how it is also, my dear friends, with the placing of this Christ-figure in the culture of the present still! How far is still that, what pulsates through the present souls, from what we must seek as this Christ-figure! Indeed, it must be said that the unpleasantly that Herman Grimm spoke of in relation to the Christ biographers, confronts us more and more. For the way in which people of the present time seek to understand Christ on the basis of what external cultural life of the present still knows, has indeed more and more of the unpleasantly. The tones with which Christ was characterized in past centuries are worn out and can no longer live in the modern soul. New tones and new modes are needed for this very purpose. Therefore, we see how the representations of Christ become more and more unpleasant and unpleasant if these representations of Christ cannot draw from what spiritual science is meant to open up for humanity. They become increasingly unpleasant and unedifying the closer they approach the present day. I would say that we have experienced the most unpleasant thing in a portrayal of Christ in the very bad drama of a grand duke, which represents a blasphemy of everything that happened through and around Christ, and which so clearly demonstrates the low point in the portrayal of that which happened through Christ. How our spiritual life, according to the means of the present, leads to the impossible: this is precisely what this abominable Christ drama shows, which is actually an anti-Christ drama in its whole attitude. But from the spiritual life of the present, longings are developing that are good soil and are becoming more and more good soil from which to sprout what we strive to put into it as seeds, into this soil full of hopes and longings, in this soil in which the hopes and longings of those who already live as young children today must be transformed into certainties, and are condemned to live unhappily unless spiritual science comes among humanity.

We see the yearnings everywhere, we see them also in the soil from which the unfortunate Christ drama, of which I have spoken, sprang. We also see the yearning for an understanding of this Christ impulse, but we also see, so to speak, the lack of understanding that is shown towards this true yearning for true understanding. I must confess that it was quite a strange feeling for me when I read the words that Solowjow wrote. I only discovered them recently; they made a particular impression on me. You can guess why! Various attacks have come from this or that side in recent times: I have been called a Jesuit from one side; I have been denounced as a Jew in another place; I therefore had to have my baptism certificate photographed.

Well, my dear friends, that does not matter, these are necessary side effects of being forced to say, albeit only in stammering words, what humanity needs. But those others who speak of the longing for a correct understanding of Christ have also been able to report a strange understanding that has been shown to them. Hence the words of Solowjow, spoken in 1886: “I am literally persecuted, my writings are banned because they are said to be harmful to Russia and Orthodoxy. Today I am said to be a Jesuit, tomorrow a Jew, and so on... so that one must be prepared for anything.”

My dear friends, some of what needs to be said as that which comes from the deepest, but also the most necessary longings and hopes of life, some of it has already been found harmful, and it is believed that it must not be allowed! Only when people of the present time come to understand the painful events of the present as a test, and in the sense that I was able to hint at yesterday, allow themselves to be led to a spiritual life, only then will they also recognize the necessity of these painful present events and learn to judge them differently than according to their immediate impression. Yes, my dear friends, it will always be possible to communicate with people who speak like Solowjow, one will find the way to them beyond all national differences. But it is not me, but Solowjow, a member of the Russian nation, of whom I spoke yesterday, the same Solowjow, who spoke words for those with whom there is such a close connection to what afflicts us so painfully today. It is he who characterizes this clique with the words: “Our state, church, and literary scoundrels are so brazen and the public is so foolish that one must expect anything.” Of course, he is talking about those who “absolutely banned” his writings.

My dear friends, today, as we stand before the unfinished building for which we laid the foundation stone a year ago, let us renew our pledge that we will remain true to what spiritual science can give us. Let us absorb the awareness that spiritual science can meet the longings and hopes, the needs of humanity. Let us absorb the consciousness that spiritual science will make it possible for humanity to speak of the Christ impulse in a way that even free spirits like Herman Grimm did not dare to speak of, just as it is necessary to speak of it, especially in view of the painful events of today. And let us absorb the consciousness that if we learn to speak rightly about the Christ, we learn rightly to speak about human history. For the Christ does not belong to one people, the Christ belongs to all people, the Christ did not speak to the members of one people: “You are my brother...” He spoke to the members of all humanity. We then find the way to every human being and to the peace choirs of all higher hierarchies, and find the way to the Christ.

This, my dear friends, must also be a foundation stone that we want to lay in our hearts, on which we want to build the invisible structure, for which the visible structure is the outer symbol. May this outer symbol, in a primitive, elementary way, but at least to some extent fulfill that which we attempted to implore from the world powers a year ago! May it be fulfilled for our good, that in these forms one may see how the spirit, which has communicated itself to the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha, streams through our forms, takes hold of the forms, permeates them with the Christ impulse, so that the consciousness may permeate the soul, which is expressed in the words, which are still not understood deeply enough: Not I, but Christ in me! May this structure, too, upon people — even if it only imperfectly represents what is intended — may it at least to a small extent achieve what it wants: upon the human souls that enter it, make the impression: Not I, not my own is that which makes an impression on the eye through the outer forms... but the Christ wants to speak, who through the word of the higher hierarchies seeks an expression, a revelation. And the mouth shall be this structure!

May the souls, finding themselves in the spirit of this building, feel a little imbued with a similar feeling, which can be called: a feeling of the connection of the individual human soul with the soul of the earth, and of the feeling of how this soul of the earth lives today, how it has lived since the beginning of the earth, how it lives in all souls! May this soul then feel itself as a spirit at God's mouth, may this soul speak as Christian Morgenstern:

The animal, the plant, these beings still had
the inhuman patience of the earth;
there was a year, which today is only a second.

Now nothing can happen fast enough for them.
Man began to become impatient.
She senses: Now at last the great hour has come:

I have been breeding myself for millions of years for this.
Now I no longer need to spare my body,
now I will soon be hanging on God's word as a ghost.

May such feelings be able to enter the souls of more and more people when they become familiar with our designs! That is what our building is for. It should never be expected that it represents what it is supposed to be, even to a small degree of perfection: in its highest imperfection, it represents what it can represent of the hopes and longings of modern times. But even if we never dare to speak of the hour of laying the foundation stone as the great hour of world existence, but want to speak of it as the small hour of world existence, even if we say that we can only make a small, contribute a little to the great tasks of humanity, we still want to feel the great tasks of existence, to which, even with small means, we want to devote ourselves to what we laid the foundation for a year ago.

Let us begin, my dear friends, with the words well known to us that effectively indicate the path into the spiritual, the words which are spoken by the Guardian, as the person comes upon him, that characterize what a person can perceive on the threshold to the spiritual world.

From the wide expanse of the beings of space
Who in the light experience existence,
From the onward tread of the course of time
Which in creating finds itself expressed,
From the depths of the feeling heart,
Where in one's self the world is born anew:

There sounds in speech filled with soul,
There shines in thoughts filled with spirit,
The from godly healing forces
In world shaping powers
Welling working word of existence-awareness:
O Man, know yourself!

At first it is a matter of a person bringing to light in his thoughts the paths to be taken if entrance into the spiritual world is sought. If someone or other brings his thoughts to bear upon what the initiate goes through in reality on entry into the spiritual world, no one can say that a person who meditates, if he lives in his thoughts in sincerity and in earnest, does not experience, even if only in idealistic reflections, that he does not experience the very thing that is ultimately revealed for the soul of a person on real entry into the spiritual world.

Now, one should not say, let us leave entry to the spiritual world to those seeking initiation, to those seeking the ability to stay with their souls in spiritual reality, as a normal person stays with the senses in physical reality. One should say something quite different. Note that a person engrossed in thought, living in thoughts, can actually approach what is denoted here as the way into, the entrance into the spiritual world, can approach the actuality of confronting the spiritual world, but of course not while mired in superficial thoughts, but while fully feeling it, and being engaged in it. So really one should say, that such a person has more than an intellectual understanding of it. Such a person can have some of what rules when he does emerge from the world of appearance, from the world of the senses, and actually enters the spiritual world.

So, what I will be speaking about with you today, my dear friends, is not something merely brought forth good-heartedly, to be used in seeking the personal transformation that leads into the spiritual world, but rather it is something that is brought forth that allows an initial experience of this transformation in one's thoughts. And you all basically desire this, or else you would not be sitting here.

And so, the following must be said. Whenever a person makes observations in the sensory world, and life is made of such observations, whenever a person takes whatever he bumps up against in the sensory world as the cause for engaging his will, whenever he moves on from observation to action, allowing it to work on his heart and mind, in feelings composed of action and observational thoughts together, then a person stands, simply due to his being presently planted as a physical being of earth, a person then stands on a safe and effective foundation. Whoever does not have such a safe foundation will certainly seek it. He seeks everywhere, finding himself believing something or other, for actual facts taught about his belief. He examines experiences that substantiate it somehow. He does not normally take up anything with a will if it has not been substantiated by external experience of some sort. So, a person stands firmly on a foundation, so he says to himself, on the things that are true, that he has seen, on the things that are real, that he has grasped hold of. It is certainly through the world itself, through the orderliness of the world, that certainty is gained in human life. And as these things are certain, so argues the person, as they are actually necessary for normal life between birth and death, they may be used to distinguish truth from illusion, truth from appearance, truth from dreams. In this manner of proofreading life, if such a person cannot verify something, then it is rated as illusion. And in normal life only that which he can rate as truth, as reality rather than illusion, will lead him with certainty through his life.

Now just imagine, my dear friends, going through sensory life in the normal way, making your rounds between birth and death, so that you nearly never can know with certainty whether something or other that you come upon is truth or illusion. You cannot check whether a person that you meet, who speaks to you, is actually a real person or whether he is some sort of semblance, some sort of simulacrum. You cannot distinguish whether any specific incident or happenstance is something you have simply dreamed up, or in interconnected detail is actually in the world. Now just think about what uncertainty, what terrible uncertainty, can come into life.

However, you may get a certain feeling that you are correct in evaluating life at every turn, correct about whether you are dreaming or whether you are actually confronting reality. It is just so when a student initially stands at the portal, at the threshold of the spiritual world; the most significant experience at the threshold of the spiritual world is noticing at once that this threshold is in actuality the spiritual world.

We have seen that at first merely darkness streams out from the spiritual world. But the very thing that wells up here and there, glowing and beaming out on first experiencing it, within which the guardian of the threshold allows his words to sound, as we heard at the last lesson, on first experiencing it can initially in no way be distinguished from all that has been experienced in the physical world of sensory knowledge, through intellectual insight. One cannot distinguish whether the present experience is that of a real spiritual being, a real spiritual actuality, or merely a simulacrum.

That is the very first experience that a person has in regarding the spiritual world, that appearance and reality are intermixed. Distinguishing between appearance and reality is at first quite problematic. Exactly this should most definitely be considered, not in the regular scholarly manner, but rather by means of elemental forces emerging in such things as convulsive events and sicknesses in various ways. Exactly by experiencing such elemental forces as an impression of one sort or another from the spiritual world, exactly this should be well considered, but not judged at the outset as being the actual spiritual world, for it might very well be something presenting as a flash out of the spiritual world that is really a mere illusion. Therefore, the first thing a person must learn, above all, in order to enter the spiritual world in the proper manner, is that what a person experiences in the physical world is quite removed from the real ability to distinguish truth from error, reality from illusion. A person must acquire a totally new way of distinguishing truth from illusion.

In our times, people certainly no longer care very much for the illumination flooding in from the spiritual world. This has been forsaken by people in the common civilization completely and emphatically, in favor of whatever can be grasped in one's hands and what can be seen with one's physical eyes. In these times, in which people wish to remain completely and emphatically within external certainty, as presented in the life between birth and death, in these times it is extremely wearying to attempt to distinguish truth from error, reality from appearance, as one becomes properly attuned to the spiritual world. So, in this undertaking, the very most serious effort is needed.

Now how has this come to be? Try to see what is happening. As a physical person bumping up against the external world, a person formulates thoughts about the external world. With such thoughts in hand, one simultaneously comes upon new impressions of the external world. These impressions of the external world run virtually under and through the thoughts and carry them. You don't need to do much at all in this regard, in order to live in reality. For reality carries you along, insofar as the reality is physical.

In the spiritual world it is very different. In the spiritual world you must first grow into it. In confronting the spiritual world, you first need to acquire a proper sense of true inherent reality. Then by and by you can come to the possibility of distinguishing truth from error, reality from appearance.

If you sit on a stool, exactly at the moment that you fail to fall to the floor, but rather sit solidly on the stool, then you know that the stool is in the physical world as a real stool, and not merely as an imaginary stool. The stool itself arranges that you come to this realization of its reality.

But that is not so in the spiritual world. Now just why is it this way in the physical world? In the physical world, basically, it is so because here in the physical world your thinking, your feeling, and your willing are carried by the physical material body as a unity. You are a three-limbed person in being a thinking person, a feeling person, and a willing person. All these, however, are joined together by the physical body.

In the blink of an eye as a person enters the spiritual world, he immediately becomes a three-parted being. His thinking goes its own way; his feeling goes its own way; his willing goes its own way. This division, this cleavage into three, he undergoes as soon as he gains entry into the spiritual world. And in the spiritual world you can think, can have thoughts, that simply have nothing to do with your will, but then these thoughts are illusions. You can have feelings having nothing to do with your will, but then these feelings are something that contributes to your destruction, not to your advancement.

Such is one's state of being at the instant of approaching the threshold of the spiritual world. It actually happens there, that as your thinking flies off into the depths of space, your feeling is directed back into its memories. Pay attention to what was just said. Try to understand that memory is actually something that presents rigorously on the threshold to the spiritual world. Just think about what you experienced ten years ago. It springs back in memory. The experience stands there. You are content, rightly content within the physical world, if you come upon a right lively memory. Whoever enters the spiritual world, however, for him it is really so, as though he were piercing through memory, as though he were going further than memory reaches. This is most important, that he goes beyond the limits of his memories in the physical world. He goes back beyond birth.

And when someone gains entry into the spiritual world, he feels at once that feeling simply does not stay with him. Thinking at least still goes out into the presented world. It takes off effectively into the world around. Feelings go out into the world, yet one must say to himself, if he wants to traverse with feeling, "Well, just where are you now?" When in life you have become 50 years old, in this manner you have certainly traveled back more than 50 years in time; you have traveled back 70 years, 90 years, 100 years, 150 years. Feeling carries you completely out of the time that you have witnessed from early childhood on.

And willing, if you fasten onto it in earnest, carries you still further back, into previous lives on earth. This is something that occurs, my friends, as soon as you really step in upon the threshold of the spiritual world. The cohesion of physical life ceases. In the abyss you no longer feel encased by your skin, but rather you feel split apart.

A person senses, when his thinking radiates out, thinking previously held together within awareness, when one’s thinking radiates out into the wide reaches and thoughts of the world, a person senses, immediately on entering the spiritual world, a person senses himself going back with his feelings to the time he had undergone between the last death and the present return to life on earth. And a person senses himself in previous earth-lives with his willing.

Directly this fissuring of the human being, which I have written about in my book, How to Know Higher Worlds, directly this fissuring of the human being creates difficulties on entry into the spiritual world, for thoughts spread themselves out. Thoughts that previously were held together now fly all over the world. But at the same time, they no longer can be taken at face value. And so one must acquire the ability to properly discern these thoughts that have so widely outrun themselves.

Feelings are now no longer intermingled with thoughts, since thoughts have departed from them to a certain extent. Your feelings must simply turn in a demeanor of reverence, devotion, and prayer to those beings accompanying a person during the life between death and birth. And if a person has marshaled such venerable feelings toward the spiritual world during his life, that is just what happens.

But in the blink of an eye when a person abandons himself to his willing, and so is carried back to previous earth-lives, then he settles into a great difficulty, for an immense force of attraction to all that is ignoble in his being develops. And working most strongly here, as I have previously said, is that it is difficult to distinguish between appearance and reality. A person develops a real inclination to abandon himself to appearance. I will clarify this.

If and when someone begins to meditate, when with inner devotion he really engages with and practices his meditation, he wants this meditation to proceed in the most care-free manner possible; he does not want to allow the meditation to tear him away from the comforts of life. Now such an effort, to be as quiescent as possible, as far as possible to remain within and not to be torn out of the comforts of life, this effort is a robust carrier of illusion, a robust carrier of mere appearance. For if someone devotes himself with complete honesty to the meditation, then out of the depths of the soul there inevitably emerges the conviction that there is some sort of evil complex within. One will simply not be able, during meditation, during immersion within oneself, a person will simply not be able to avoid really feeling, deeply feeling, that the potential is there to do anything and everything, to perpetrate in actuality whatever he or she is capable of doing. The stark intensity of the effort, just in admitting this to yourself, is such that instead you settle into the illusion, the illusion that in all certainty you are a good and righteous person in your inner complexities.

The correct experience coming out of meditation is quite different. It shows someone how he, as an individual, can be engulfed by all manner of conceit, how he can be engulfed by all manner of self-over-evaluation of his own intrinsic worth and under-evaluation of the intrinsic worth of others, how he can be thoroughly beset by this, by the conviction that people just don't have anything to offer, and that rather than experiencing them as having something to say, he really wants to just bask in other people's esteem. But that is the least of it. Whoever really and truly meditates, will see what sort of impulses are actually living in his soul, in regard to all that he certainly might be capable of. And so, the lower nature of man steps forth starkly before the inner gaze of the soul. And this honesty must be present in meditation. And when this honesty is present there, then reflected back is certainly what is in everyone’s impulses of will, just as it is also certainly reflected back in the words that have already come before our souls. Something is reflected back, chiseled into the words:

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
The bone-locked head, the withered body,
Dull blunt blue is its skin.
Your fear of spirit-creator-being
Produced this monster in your willing.

And because this is so, because a person through an addiction, so to speak, in surrendering to this sort of illusion, gobbles down this inevitable striking impression in meditation, thence arises the inward impetus, the intention toward mockery of the spiritual world. But only by dealing with this as a counterforce can honest continuance in the spiritual world proceed. And so, the second beast now makes its appearance at the threshold:

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Contorts its face, and lies in scornful mockery,
Yellow with grayish cast is its body;
Your hatred of spirit-revelation
Produced this weakling in your feeling.

That is the way it is. That is the way it is, if we cannot emerge to pursue world-thoughts, if we remain powerless in rendering the thoughts that we held fast to otherwise in our heads during life on earth. That is the way it is for us, out of powerlessness in soaring with our human thoughts into world thoughts, that the third beast appears:

Behold the third beast, with long-split mouth,
Glazed eye, and slouching attitude,
Dirty red its form appears to you;
Your doubt in spirit-light-dominion
Produced this specter, this ghost in your thinking.

The less we withdraw into an illusion about this trinity, produced by our own being, the more we may enter the state of actually finding within us the nature of a true human being, a true human being who can receive the light coming from the spiritual world, who can henceforth perceive the enigma and comprehend as much as possible on earth of what is given to us in the words, "O Man, know yourself!" For from this self-awareness springs a true awareness of the world, through which you can direct your life in the proper manner. And so this disruption into three, which one experiences as thinking going its way, feeling going its way, and willing going its way, which were all held together through outer existence, is allowed to be referred to by the words which the Guardian of the Threshold speaks, to seekers drawing near:

The third beast’s glassy eye
Is the bad contrary-type
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking spirit powers
That held it before its earth-life
Living in spirit in spirit fields.

The second beast, the mocking face,
It is the bad contrary-force
Of feeling, that hollows-out suitable soul
And in it fashions living emptiness
Instead of spiritual worth, which was
Illuminating it before its earth-existence
By means of spirit’s sunny might.

The first beast, the bony mind,
It is the bad creative-might
Of willing, that estranges suitable body
From your soul's domain
And devotes it to adverse powers,
Who would rob world-existence
Of gods-existence in times to come.

These are the words, the words which will be spoken in admonition by the Guardian, so that we know just how entry into the spiritual world should not be gained. On entry into the spiritual world, we must choose quite another manner, feel in another manner, commit to becoming accustomed to another manner, other than what ruled us in the physical world. And for this it is required that we grapple with this trinity in us, that we turn our gaze strongly within, in order to take note of how thinking presently is, how feeling presently is, how willing presently is, and how they must become so that we can step over the threshold into the spiritual world, even if this happens only within our thoughts. It is so, that the gods in the serenity of absolute knowledge have established this obstacle and demand that it be surmounted.

We may immediately infer from having these daunting, perhaps chill-inducing words coming down from the Guardian, of which I have spoken to you today in recapitulation, that henceforth the Guardian will be adding others, which will tell us what we should do. Right now, the concern is that our first lessons in this class become simple practical means handed down to us, that can be applied in our thoughts and feelings and force of will, so that we may gain entry into the spiritual world in the right manner.

And the clarion call should in turn be three-membered, and as such should stream into us, so that we can live with it. For as we live with it, we launch ourselves along on the way into the spiritual world. So, as we eat and drink, so as we show and share, so should something in us gain dominion through all this, which the guardian of the threshold, who stands before the spiritual world, intones to us in his austere countenance. And he says at once in the first verse:

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance¹ you experience,
Self-awareness² hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor³
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

Let us elucidate this clarion call. A person, living in the sensory world, in the life between birth and death, feels himself to be in his physical body. He knows that his legs carry him through the world. He knows that his circulating blood gives him life. He knows that his breathing awakens him to life. He entrusts himself, in his breath, in his circulating blood, in the movement of the bulk of his limbs, to what carries him through the world. He entrusts and gives himself over to these things. By doing this, by giving himself over to these things, he is a physical being taking part in earth existence. Just so, just as a person entrusts himself to the physical stuff in the physical world that made life on the earth possible in limb movements, in blood circulation, and in breathing, just so a person must entrust himself to, must give himself over in soul to the guiding powers of the spiritual world, if the person would take part in the spiritual world, if he would gain entrance there with awareness.

Just as I had to say for one's health in physical existence, that one’s blood must circulate just so, one’s breath must come with regularity, just so must I advise someone who similarly seeks to remain in health in the spiritual world, that his soul must align with, must be infused with, must be led by his spirit's guiding beings. [The first stanza, "Look upon your web of thoughts" was now written on the blackboard backwards, beginning with the last word of the stanza.]

Your own spirit’s guiding beings

However, my dear friends, you are attached to your blood through the grip of nature, you are attached to the movements of your musculoskeletal system through the grip of nature, and just so for your breathing. You cannot be beholden in this way to your guiding essence in the spiritual world. You must approach it there with inner activity. You do not get hold of it in the way you get hold of breath through the movement of your lungs, you get hold of it insofar as you honor it in reverence, [Over “guiding beings” was now written, "honor", so that what now stood on the blackboard was:]

honor

Your own spirit’s guiding beings

honoring it in reverence with the most profound part that is rooted in you, with the core of your selfhood, your self-aware-presence, your self-awareness. [Before honor was written, "Self-awareness," so that what now stood on the blackboard was:]

Self-awareness honor

Your own spirit's guiding beings

Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

[With the speaking of these two lines the missing words "should" and "your" etc. were added, so that the last two lines now stood complete on the blackboard.] And so we have the facts of the case, the means by which you must stand within the spiritual world, as given in words, in the words spoken by the guardian.

And how do you stand within? You don't stand within in the same manner as when you stand with your legs on the physical surface of the earth. You don't stand within in the same manner as when you infuse the physical warmth of life in your blood. You don't stand within in the same manner as when you draw in your breath. You stand within by feeling the half spiritual ether being, the ether essence that whirls and wafts through you. [The third line from last was now written down.]

Ether being whirls in you;

That is the inner feeling, to stay within the spirit, as if one were oneself a small cloud, wind-blown all over and around by spiritual wind, as if one were taken around and about by this windy blowing back and forth, as when selfhood's core, namely your own true I, reveres, honors the guiding essence of your soul that approaches in this windy whirling wafting from all around. In submersion into this, we will be led. But what happens initially? So long as we simply remain within our meditation in all that I have just highlighted, we live in appearance; we must dive, dive beneath this semblance in full consciousness, diving into the whirling wafting wind with reverence, into the spirit's guiding being that appears as semblance. [The fourth line from last was now written down.]

Plunge beneath appearance:

Why should we do all this? Well, it is true, that in earthly life we initially have an unremarkable feeling in regard to our ego. Self-hood-existence, self-awareness, which we indicate with the word "I", is however an unremarkable, darkened presence, a feeling, that hides itself from us. [The fifth line from the last was written down.]

Self-awareness hides from you;

Of this one knows but little. And the little that one does know, that a person in thoughts, that a person becomes aware of and takes the measure of, is certainly not real world-existence, but is world-semblance. [The sixth line from the bottom was written.]

World of semblance you experience,

All this becomes for us, as we come upon the clarion call of the Guardian of the Threshold, [the seventh and accordingly first line was written down.]

Look upon your web of thoughts:

all this becomes for us our own moving thinking weaving, our thoughts weaving.

At this point we have the first mantric declamation, which should give us strength to approach the clarion call to self-awareness in our thoughts, which at first is spread out before our souls merely as words.

Look upon your web of thoughts:
World of semblance you experience,
Self-awareness hides from you;
Plunge beneath appearance:
Ether-being whirls in you;
Self-awareness, it should honor
Your own spirit’s guiding beings.

There it is, a challenging clarion call to us concerning the retrospection of our own thoughts. If you retire from the outer world and look back upon how thoughts are flowing within yourself, and then you meet the challenge that lies in these seven lines, then you have fulfilled the first of the requirements placed upon us by the Guardian of the Threshold. At this point, we have arrived at what the Guardian has to say about your feelings.

Embrace your stream of feelings:
Where semblance and substance mingle,
Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:
And world soul forces are in you;
Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

And exactly as we arise in thinking through the first mantric declamation, so we arise through the second into the inner world of feelings. [Now the second stanza was written on the blackboard.]

Embrace your stream of feelings:

Refrain from thoughts and seek within, wending your way back into your own feelings. In thinking, all is mere appearance. If we get down into our feelings, just there is mixed, is mingled appearance and reality. We should realize this at once.

Where semblance and substance mingle,

By itself our "I", the true self, will not go willingly into the reality. It is used to the outward appearance of the senses; it will not go willingly into reality. It is drawn to what seems apparent in the brilliance, it yearns yet for the commotion of the sensory world,

Aware-self leans toward semblance;
So plunge beneath appearance:

into what is present in feelings, present fundamentally in one's life of feelings. It is the apparently real, a brilliant mixture of appearance and reality.

To plunge beneath appearance is the way, the way along which we will feel, if we really give ourselves over to the overall sense of these four lines, the way along which we will feel seriously and solemnly as we plunge into existence,

And world soul forces are in you;

Previously you yourself sought to honor in sinking into your thinking; now the aware-self seeks to consider well. The thought should be carried down under into feeling. We will come upon the following, affirmed for us by existence:

Aware-self should consider well
Inherent in soul the powers of life.

No longer semblance, now there are powers of life. The gods bestow upon us, even though our own essential nature, our "I" would like to lean toward semblance, the gods bestow upon us in the depths of feeling this rock of existence.

Now, if you really want the declamations to become mantras, it is good to keep in mind certain corresponding passages. [Words previously delineated and inscribed were now underlined on the blackboard.] First there is honor, and then consider, and we will see in the third stanza, how this is augmented. First you experience just semblance, then semblance and substance mingle. In the first there are guiding beings, and intrinsic powers of life in the second. In the first there are beings who lead us through the ether, and in the second that are powers of life leading us backward into pre-earthly existence-awareness. In this way we approach the meaning, the feeling. If we wish to make it into a real mantra, however, you must incorporate still something else.

So let us look at the first verse, "Look upon your web of thoughts.” I would like you to appreciate that it is clearly constructed in trochaic rhythm, in the trochaic voice. The emphasis is strong, then weak, and the feeling is emphatic, then retiring. When this proper etheric flow is present in your soul, in which to properly allow the enshrinement of higher beings, then you may be carried over into the spiritual world. [Macron and breve markings to indicate the trochaic rhythm were placed on the blackboard over the beginning of each of the seven lines.]

Lōok ŭpon your web of thoughts:
Wōrld ŏf semblance you experience,
Sēlf-ăwareness hides from you;
Plūnge bĕneath appearance:
Ēthĕr being whirls in you;
Sēlf-ăwareness, it should honor
Yōur ŏwn spirit’s guiding beings.

It is quite different in the second verse, "Embrace your stream of feelings." [Breve then macron markings indicating the iambic rhythm were placed on the blackboard at the beginning the seven next lines, along with the speaking of the corresponding emphasis.]

Ĕmbrāce your stream of feelings:
Whĕre sēmblance and substance mingle,
Ăwāre-self leans toward semblance;
Sŏ plūnge beneath appearance:
Ănd wōrld soul-forces are in you;
Ăwāre-self should consider well
Ĭnhērent in soul the powers of life.

The manner in which these words are taken in by your soul, whether trochaic or iambic, as here [first stanza], where there is a definite trochaic signature, and here [second stanza], where there is a definite iambic signature, the manner in which these words are taken in, gives the soul the proper stride.

Of course, the idea is not to simply achieve some sort of intellectual meaning in the soul, as if the soul could tread the path into the spiritual world merely in thought, but rather the idea is to approach universal existence with the right respiratory pattern and in the right rhythm. If you take up a rhythm that is iambic in your striving for admittance to universal thinking, you have misunderstood the Guardian of the Threshold. If you take up a ceremonious cadence that is trochaic and not iambic for entry into the wider world of feelings, you have again misunderstood the Guardian of the Threshold.

The third into which we must immerse, is the will. And for willing, the Guardian of the Threshold has again given us a ceremonial cadence. And after the first two have passed before our souls, we will be able to understand the last fairly well. [The third stanza was now written on the blackboard.]

Let reign in you the thrust of will:
It climbs from all apparent being,

It is not an article here, but relates to what emerges, to what climbs out when letting willing’s thrusting rule in you.

With autonomous existence⁴ well-equipped; ⁵

Out of the will it burgeons out, manifesting, presiding, fashioning, creating, rising to that, which to its autonomous inherent existence gives substance, meaning.

Turn to this throughout your life:
Filled it is with world-spirit-might;
Your autonomous existence, it should grasp
World-maker-might into spirit-I.

Again, feel the progression. [The appropriate words of the third stanza previously written down were now subsequently underlined.]

honor
consider well
grasp

First one is distant, one looks on, one reveres from outside. Then one comes near with thoughts, and is already walking in. Finally, one grasps. This is the climax; one walks in and takes it. One honors, then considers well, and then grasps:

first Guiding beings
then powers of life, and finally
World-maker-might,

which finally appears as such, in the line's beginning words, corresponding to the reality, the un-ambiguously effective manner of the force of will.

You will have a perception of the three as mantric speech, if you attend to the trochaic here [in the first stanza], the iambic here, [in the second stanza], although here [in the third stanza] you have two equally emphasized syllables. Here you have the spondaic. [Over the beginning of the lines on the blackboard the spondaic rhythmic markings of two macrons were inscribed along the with corresponding spoken intonation.]

Lēt reīgn in you the thrust of will:
Īt clīmbs from all apparent being
Wīth aūtonomous existence well-equipped;
Tūrn tō this throughout your life:
Fīlled īt īs with world-spirit-might;
Yoūr aūtonomous existence, it should grasp
Wōrld-māker-might into spirit-I.

All this is what one should attend to. You must tear yourself away from merely intelligible material, and attend to the trochaic, iambic, and spondaic cadences. In the blink of an eye, as we emerge from a sense of understanding into surrendering to the rhythm, in this blink of an eye we have the possibility of leaving the physical world and really entering the spiritual, for the spiritual does not open up if we turn to a mundane delineated sense of the words, but rather if we grasp the possibility of carrying the rhythm of these meaningfully delineated words out into the full warp and weft of universal life.

In this way the three-faceted rhythmic introspection of thinking, feeling, and willing will be enabled to work on the soul. This will certainly affect the soul in the right way, if the soul experiences this as it experiences eating and drinking in life, as it experiences the circulation of the blood, the breathing, as it experiences here just what can move you within, in the rhythm of the words.

Lōok ŭpon your thinking weaving:
Wōrld ŏf appearance you experience,
Sēlf-ăwareness hides from you;
Plūnge bĕneath appearance:
Ēthĕr being whirls in you;
Sēlf-ăwareness, it should honor
Yōur ŏwn spirit’s guiding beings.

Ĕmbrāce your feelings streaming:
Ĭt mīngles semblance and substance for you,
Ăwāre-self leans toward semblance;
Sŏ plūnge beneath appearance:
Ănd wōrld soul forces are in you;
Ăwāre-self, it should consider well
Ĭnhērent in soul the powers of life.

Lēt reīgn in you the thrust of will:
Īt clīmbs from all apparent being
Wīth aūtonomous existence well-equipped;
Tūrn tō this throughout your life:
Fīlled īt īs with world-spirit-might;
Yoūr aūtonomous existence, it should grasp
Wōrld-māker-might into spirit-I.

At first your blood is just passive in the words. Then as words appear in the corresponding rhythm, your blood is in motion. Seek the sense of the rhythms, let them dwell and live in your souls, and you will see, that you will then be able to approach ever more closely to the initial admonition the Guardian has brought to us, that I conveyed to your souls, my friends, at the first of these lessons.

Where on grounds of earth, color upon color,
Life developing reveals itself,
Where out of stuff of earth, form on form,
All without life takes shape,
Where feeling creatures, strong in will,
Delight in the warm glow of their existence,
Where you yourself, O Man, derive
Bodily life from earth and air and light:

There you enter your own being’s
Deep, night-bedecked, cold inner darkness;
You’d ask within the dark expanse
Never, who you are, and were, and will become.
For your true existence the day dims
To the night of the soul, to darkness of spirit.
And you turn yourself, soul-searching,
Unto the light, that from darknesses strengthens,

And if we will wend our way to the light, that from darknesses appears, we will find it, if we seek it by means of this three-faceted cadence, enthused with this holy blood of life in our souls, which will be present along the way to true knowledge of spirit and of God.

• 1. Schein is subtly different from the English word shine, for it is the sheen of superficial appearance, the semblance, the mere appearance.
• 2. Selbstheitsein is a derivative of Dasein, existence-awareness, and when applied to oneself, it is self-awareness, awareness of one’s intrinsic existence, awareness of one’s self. The word selfhood is archaic and must be used with caution.
• 3. Verehren in the sixth line of the first stanza should not be revere, which is to regard with respect tinged with awe and veneration, but rather to honor, which is to hold in high respect for worth, merit, or rank. Revere is to put at some distance, to still look upon, as in the first line, whereas we want to plunge, to connect, to be part of, to hold dear to us the guiding beings. Plunging beneath is not to revere, but to honor.
• 4. Eigensein (a derivative of Dasein, existence-awareness) is willing that exists in and of its own self, naturally inherent autonomous existence. This follows the usage of Kant in section 3 of his 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, “Clarity is gained, from most basic to most esoteric usage, by this principle: autonomous existence of willing is the nature of willing, a quality it is equipped with in and of itself, independent of the nature of the objects of willing.” (Es könnte sich um einen Satz aus der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitte handeln: Autonomie des Willens ist die Beschaffenheit des Willens, dadurch derselbe ihm selbst (unabhängig von aller Beschaffenheit der Gegenstände des Wollens) ein Gesetz ist.)
• 5. Erschaffened auf: The will is well-equipped, constituted, fashioned with Eigensein, autonomous existence that is inherent.

In our time, outside the circles of the anthroposophical movement, there is little understanding of how to arrive at a true view of the soul. I am saying something that may sound incomprehensible to some people, because it is often assumed that one knows what soul is, what one is dealing with when one speaks of the soul, and so on. And on the other hand, such a statement can in many cases be taken for granted in the sense that centuries- and even millennia-old views of the human soul have finally run their course and that a view of the human soul must wait until scientific research is so advanced that it is able to provide information about the soul.

Now, however, I would like to counter these two objections today with nothing more than the assertion of the recently deceased linguist Fritz Mauthner, whom I have mentioned several times: that people in the present day often believe that they have an insight into this or that, whereas in fact they only have words. And it is for this reason that Mauthner wrote a “critique of language”. He wanted to show that today's civilized humanity in particular has an inherited language. We have expressions for all sorts of things. But if you look more closely at what is behind the words, there is actually nothing there. We have the word, we think we are designating something with the word, but in reality we are not designating anything.

Now, of course, it is nonsense to apply this criticism of language to scientific knowledge. For no one will be of the opinion that, whether one knows much or little, let us say, about a horse, one could be misled about the thing horse by the expression “horse” in some language. Everyone knows perfectly well that you cannot ride on the word horse, but you can ride on the real horse. And that makes it clear from the outset that, with regard to things that exist in nature, a critique of language is rather inconsequential, because one will always know the difference between the word and the thing with regard to external observation. I do not believe that someone who wants to ride out will sit on the word 'white horse' instead of the real white horse.

But it is really different with everything in our present civilization that, on the one hand, refers to the soul, to the life of the soul, to the facts of the life of the soul, and, on the other hand, refers to the ethical, to the moral demands of humanity. Here one must indeed say: there is actually only a belief that realities lie behind the words. Therefore, one can also understand that Mauthner thought deeply: Should one even still use the word “soul”? There is nothing real behind it, as when a person speaks of a horse with the word horse. People no longer have any insights into the life of the soul. Therefore, one should not only omit the soul from the science of the soul, as a 19th-century psychology of the soul did, one should completely eradicate the word soul, and speak of “spiritual phenomena” in such a way as to refer to something indeterminate. If one wants to say that there are three entities, Karl, Fritz, Hans, who are sons of the same father and the same mother, and wants to refer to them superficially and sweepingly, then one says: siblings. Why should one, Mauthner asks, say soul when one only knows so little about mental phenomena? The word soul designates nothing; one should say “Geseel”. If this view were really to gain currency, the delusion would be done away with that in speaking of the soul one had something more or other behind it. For in the future one would no longer say that man has an immortal soul. During his life on earth man has a soul within him, I am touched in my deepest soul, and so on.

Things are indeed extremely serious for those people who are seriously seeking a view of the spirit, much more serious than one usually thinks. In any case, they prove how much people should listen up in the present when it is asserted somewhere that the right means should be sought again to reach the reality of the soul.

Today we say that the soul abilities are mainly thinking, feeling and willing. But people should just honestly realize what they mean by these terms thinking, feeling and willing. It would soon dispel their belief that they are looking at something real. Today I would just like to speak about how anthroposophy can clarify that with ordinary consciousness one is not at all able to look at something fully real in this respect. And what I would like to hint at today in this regard, I will then explain in more detail in the next lecture, because today it is still my duty to point out another aspect.

If a person looks honestly into themselves today, they must admit that what they carry within them in terms of thoughts is mostly taken from the outside world. These thoughts are more or less only mirror images of what makes an impression on the human senses in the external physical-sensual reality. Just try to do the self-observation experiment clearly and ask yourself: How many thoughts are there in this human consciousness that point to something other than the words we have: thinking, feeling, willing, God, immortality and so on, that point to something in the spiritual life of ordinary civilization that is not mirrored from the outside world? People only strive to understand everything in terms of how it can be mirrored by the external world. And if you want to explain the spiritual to many people today, they actually demand visual aids for the spiritual as well, perhaps a film or something similar, because they say: if it is not illustrated to us, if we are not presented with sensory images, then we do not understand anything about the spiritual!

In such moments, when people demand that the spiritual be clothed in sensual images, they are more honest than when they speak as experts on the soul. If we take together much of what I have often discussed here in this house, then we will be able to realize that when we look back on our thinking, we have only one side of this thinking. In this sense one can even speak of a reality — but one can speak of a reality in this way, as when one gets to know a person only from behind. Imagine the grotesque thing: you only know a person from the back! Then you know him, but you do not know his nature. At most, you can sometimes grasp something of his nature. But then cases like that of the student who once came to Heidelberg as a young badger, registered with the famous Professor Kuno Fischer, and now, in his great joy, before going to the lecture hall, rushed to the barber's, had himself dressed up, and because he is so full of the fact that he is going to hear the famous man, also talks to the barber about it. The barber says, “Yes, today Kuno Fischer is writing something on the blackboard!” The student asks him, “How do you know that Kuno Fischer is writing something on the blackboard today?” Yes, when he writes something on the blackboard, he has his hair parted at the back before the lecture; that's when he turns around!

Well, when there are such clear signs that the character is expressed in the parting of the occiput, then one can indeed learn something about the inner personality, even if one only gets to know it from behind. But firstly, it is perhaps not particularly significant, and secondly, it is the case with most people that one does not learn very much.

With regard to our thinking, the most important part of our soul for life on earth, we only perceive, if I may put it this way, the back side. The front side escapes ordinary observation. For when one approaches the observation of human beings with anthroposophy and asks oneself: Is it all about thinking, that one forms abstract ideas about the external things grasped by the senses? — then one comes to the conclusion that this is not all about thinking, but thinking, apart from representing this sum of abstract thoughts, is also still another sum of forces. Thoughts cannot actually do anything, and one actually thinks best when one does nothing, when one sits quietly, when one cultivates calm. Thoughts are powerless, like mirror images are powerless. But if you now follow the human being, from infancy until he has grown taller, and if you later follow the growth processes that are still present in the human being - even if the human being is no longer growing taller, growth processes are still there - if you look at what the forces of growth are in the human being, then these are the same forces, now seen from the other side, that show themselves backwards in abstract thought. Man sends abstract thoughts outwards; inwards they are the forces that shape his brain. In the early childhood years, the brain is formed plastically. The forces that otherwise work as growth forces are the forces of thinking. And just as you have to imagine the front side if you see a person from behind – if you are allowed to imagine that they are a complete person – you have to imagine the concrete, real power of thought that goes into the human being and works on the human being in addition to abstract thinking.

That is the essence of a pedagogy based on healthy anthroposophy: the teacher knows that it is not enough for the child to receive this or that abstract idea from this or that person. There is a big difference between whether the child receives a living, pictorial, active idea or a dead idea. The dead idea has a retarding effect on the growth processes, the living idea has a promoting effect on the growth processes. And so we come to the fact that thinking shows one side, which, powerless, only reflects the outer world, and, when we look inward, we see a living side that permeates the whole organism of the human being and that is only the other side of his growth, the spiritual counter-image of his growth. And if one continues to research, one finds that what is represented by the other side - in relation to the human being it is the rear side, but in relation to thinking it is the front side - is not brought down by dead thinking, which only appears to us from the front, but by living thinking from its pre-earthly existence.

In fact, the transition from the pre-earthly existence to the earthly existence is such that, in the pre-earthly existence, the human being freely develops a system of forces that works in all directions in the spiritual world. Then he descends into the earthly existence. There this thinking, which is active and ruling in the spiritual world, transforms itself into the inner organizing forces of the body, and outwardly it sends, as it were, the reflecting surface onto which the earth projects its images. That is the fact. But now it is indeed the case that after a person has completed the time between death and a new birth in a satisfactory manner, he then has no task for this living thinking in the spiritual world. This living thinking has its great task in the time between death and a new birth. When this task is completed, the phenomenon occurs over there, which I have often described to you: the soul turns to earth life. But then this thinking has a new task: the task of forming the human body. And that is the significance of man's earthly thinking, of man's thinking that comes from the spiritual, that it is directed towards the human body in a formative way. Thus, in our true, in our real thinking, we have an heirloom from the spiritual world, but one that is only something on earth, because in the spiritual world it has lost its purpose. We have to thank this for the fact that our thinking can become so clear on earth. If this thinking still had a task as it had in the spiritual world, it could not become so clear on earth.

But let us turn to the other faculty of the human soul, to feeling. You will all notice - quite apart from what I myself have said about it here in this room: feeling is not as clear as thinking. Feeling is something that occurs in a different form, but in the same way as dreaming. The state of mind during feeling is basically the same as during dreaming, except that feeling occurs in a completely different form. Why is that so? Well, in feeling, just as in thinking, we only have the back side for this earthly life. But the front side is not only directed towards the human body, but, as man descends to earth from the pre-earthly existence, from the existence between death and a new birth, he also retains what lies behind feeling as an heirloom. But that still remains turned towards the spiritual, it does not just have an earthly task. Therefore, every night when a person falls asleep, he does not take his thinking with him into sleep, but he does take his feeling with him. And if you look at dreams in the right way, they are images because logical thoughts do not live on; but feelings live on. With every sleep, a person delves into the whole spiritual world. Man does not take his thoughts with him, but he does take his feelings, and even more so his volitions.

Understandably, during the day there is nothing to be done with the will. I have often said that a person can make a plan, he has a thought. But how the thought slides down into the body, how the will to move the hand continues to work, remains as dark as the state remains dark in sleep. But for that, a person retains the most from the eternal for his will. And again, one can see from the activity of the human being, for if the human being does not move, there is not a will present, but only a desire. Seen from the other side, the will represents something completely eternal. Thinking also represents something eternal, but it has been transformed into an earthly activity. The will, however, remains in the Eternal and is active in man's destiny through repeated earthly lives, in Karma.

I just wanted to give you an introduction to how one penetrates to a real teaching of the soul, so that behind the words thinking, feeling and willing there are realities, so that one points to reality. Just as the word horse refers to the outer physical horse, so when one penetrates anthroposophically into the life of the soul in this way, one can come to reality, to realities. That is the way, and on this way will come at the same time what I emphasized at the end of the last lecture here: that Anthroposophy will never will be understood when it is theory, but only when, in acquiring the anthroposophical, the human being becomes a different being, the human being is truly transformed; when he becomes a different being altogether in ethical and human relationships.

What is being striven for in this way is now confronted with something else. And now I come to what I am obliged to tell you, because Anthroposophy is already in the world and one must be alert to what is happening. We must not always have closed windows, but must also look out, and so it is a spiritual and intellectual duty to speak about these things. For everywhere today, where people believe that they have obtained clear concepts only from science, anthroposophy is dismissed with the assertion: that is fantasy, speculation, that is fantasy. And those people say that they alone have clear thinking. Apart from the fact that when one approaches anthroposophy, one naturally gains inner certainty from the truth by pursuing the anthroposophical, one must sometimes also look at how clear today's thinking actually is! I would like to discuss this with you first of all using an example, for the reason that the anthroposophist should be aware of what is today's culture or civilization. I will take an example that says something. If, let us say, one examines the logic of a person who writes in the newspapers, not much is said by that. But I take a prominent naturalist of the present day and say explicitly that I do not want to say anything malicious or disparaging, because I fully recognize that we are dealing with an important naturalist and with a serious matter that he discusses. And in this regard, I would like to draw your attention to the clarity that prevails in this regard.

In October 1910, the well-known naturalist Max Rubner gave the rector's speech at the University of Berlin, entitled: “Our Goals for the Future”. He talks about the spiritual goals of the future, and it is not just anyone who speaks, but someone who is immersed in research and who must be seen as a serious and diligent researcher from the point of view of today's civilization. At the end of his speech, he also addresses the students and tries – well, in a way that is beautiful in his own way – to make it clear that they should study. But he does this with the “clear” concepts — I mean “clear” in quotation marks — that are possible for such a researcher today, based on today's thinking. I would like to draw attention to a few points. First of all, he says, addressing the students: “We all have to learn; we come into the world with nothing but our instrument for intellectual work, a blank page, the brain, differently predisposed, differently capable of development; we receive everything from the outside world...”

So, an often-encountered view today, which says: Look, if you want to talk about the soul life, look at your brain, which is a blank slate that has to get everything from the impressions of the outside world. So when we are born, we have our brain as a blank slate, we have to expose ourselves to the impressions of the world, then they go into us, then the slate is written on. So, he says to his students, just expose yourselves to the impressions of the world with freshness, courage and vigor, and then the page you brought with you will be written on.

In the next sentence, he tells them how to do it. He says: “No brain wants to grasp everything that its ancestors have experienced and learned, what billions of brains have considered and matured in the course of human history, what our spiritual heroes have helped create...”

So the students should only pay attention to what the spiritual heroes have created. But now the spiritual heroes are suddenly creating, so now the unwritten brains have to oppose the written brains of the spiritual heroes! You see, as soon as you put two sentences together, one on page 23 and the other on page 24, they are no longer correct! For if the heroes of the mind were also blank brains, it would not be possible to speak of their impressions on the blank brains in such a way as to suggest that these brains have created anything, for that is precisely what is being denied: everything must be received from the outside world. But now the outside world is also considered to include what human brains create. One must indeed go into such things.

But then it goes on to say: “What has been learned provides the basic material for productive thinking.” Now, put the two sentences together: “We receive everything from the outside world,” and the second: “What has been learned provides the basic material for productive thinking.” This is not the speech of an ordinary newspaper writer, this is the speech of a truly meritorious researcher of the modern age. You see, it is basically irrelevant if you now want to point out the way in which such a personality characterizes how the brain works. “[...] there is always something refreshing about working in a new, previously untilled field of the brain.” That is why he tells his students to sometimes look around for other subjects that they have not yet looked at: “[...] some areas of the brain only yield results when they are repeatedly plowed, but ultimately bear the same good fruit as others that open up more effortlessly.”

Well, after all, the soil that is plowed does not produce the plow. If you want to dwell on these thoughts, you can no longer grasp any thought at all. But now Rubner finds that this thinking is quite natural.

In order to show you the significance of what he is saying, I would like to say something in advance. When someone does sports, we see him in various movements. If you are particularly interested, you can even take a snapshot of these movements. But if we take an unbiased view of things, we have to admit that if we follow the internal organic processes that take place while someone is doing sports, what happens inside between nerve and muscle as a kind of process of destruction and restoration is, firstly, much more important for what it means to be human, but also infinitely more interesting than what can be captured in a snapshot. I am not saying anything against sport as an external physical exercise. But what the athlete is inwardly is truly much more interesting than what he is outwardly. It is only in what he achieves within the organism that it begins to become interesting.

Now it so happens that the opposite is the case with the movement of the human limbs as it is with thinking. In thinking, what is done, what happens, what the fact is, is the essential, and what lies in the organization is the unessential. In sports, what takes place externally in the facts is the less interesting part; what the organism does internally is the more interesting part. In thinking, what is interesting is what thinking presents itself as, what thinking really is; what the organism does in the process is something more or less simple. Therefore, when you understand things, you can no longer speak of thinking in the same way as of muscle movement.

But if all this becomes superficial, external, what do you say? Then you explain things like this: “Thinking strengthens the brain, and the latter (the brain) increases in performance through exercise, just like another organ, like our muscle strength, through work and sport. Studying is brain sport.

You see, our civilization is caught out in its most important element, in thinking about things, if you grasp it in such a place. You don't wake up to what is actually happening in the present through something else.

Now I would like to introduce you to a personality who, through her way of thinking, which can truly be called ingenious within certain limits, has some excellent negative thoughts about our present civilization, and who understands how to characterize it well: how it is ultimately an impossible formation and shaping of thought that has brought our civilization to decay and ruin. And I must say: the man who wrote the book about the “decay and reconstruction of culture”, Albert Schweitzer, is in a position to judge such things. Anyone who is familiar with Albert Schweitzer's book “The History of the Life-Jesu Research,” published in 1906, for example, and the way in which Schweitzer knows how to address even the most apocalyptic of subjects, so that he is already well ahead of the other theologians, must admit that Schweitzer can have a sound judgment of what contemporary intellectual life is actually worth. Now he has written this book, the first part of which has just been published. The first chapter is entitled: “The Fault of Philosophy in the Decline of Culture.” And truly razor-sharp are the sentences that are intended to characterize our present intellectual life, our life of civilization. The very first sentence is: “We are living in the era of the decline of culture. The war did not create this situation. It itself is only one manifestation of it. What was spiritual has been translated into facts, which in turn react on the spiritual in every respect in a deteriorating way.” A person who has insights into the worthlessness of present-day culture! And further: ”We lost our way in culture because there was no reflection on culture among us... So we crossed the threshold of the century with unshakable illusions about ourselves.” And now he asks himself: Why is this symptom of the decline of culture there? Why are we living in a cultural decline? And he says to himself: If we look back just a short time, to the time when intellectualism was in its first stage of flowering, people still had a “total worldview.” They still spoke of ethical and moral goals in such a way that they lay in the same sources as the laws of nature. They contemplated the laws of nature and then ascended to the sources of morality with the same views, thus having a “total worldview” that encompassed both the moral and the natural.

You will remember how often I have pointed out that the decline of our culture has been caused by the fact that we have a one-sided view of nature, which posits the Kant-Laplace theory or something similar at the beginning of our existence on earth, where everything has formed out of a primeval nebula. Man also formed out of this primeval nebula, then what is called moral ideals arose - illusions - and when the heat death occurs one day, which must occur according to purely physical laws, there will be a large field of corpses, but what emerged as cultural ideals or moral ideals will be buried with them. Thus, our morality is no longer part of the world view. It is no longer part of it; it has become something that can only be captured in abstract thoughts. Schweitzer also knows that basically this has become the case around the middle of the 19th century. He is quite clear about it: “Now it is obvious to everyone that the self-destruction of culture is underway... The Age of Enlightenment” - by this he means the period when intellectualism first flourished - ”and rationalism had established ethical and rational ideals about the development of the individual into true humanity, about his position in society, about its material and spiritual tasks, about the behavior of nations towards each other and their absorption into a humanity united by the highest spiritual goals... But around the middle of the nineteenth century, this engagement of ethical rational ideals with reality began to decline. In the course of the following decades, it came more and more to a standstill. The abdication of culture took place without a fight and without a sound. Its thoughts lagged behind the times, as if they were too exhausted to keep pace with it."

And now Albert Schweitzer wants to make it clear that if people no longer have effective thoughts, culture must perish. Since effective thoughts seem to be contained in philosophy, he attributes the reason for the decline of culture to philosophy. He knows, and expresses it in this book, that although Flege and Kant are read by only a few, their ideas dominate the ideas of thousands, because they pass unnoticed through all possible into the broadest masses of humanity, and one does not exaggerate when one says today: If only the most popular books have begun to be read by the simplest mountain farmers, then Kant is already in them. One only believes that philosophy works on those who read the philosophers. That is just outer Maja.

That is why Schweitzer says: “The decisive factor was the failure of philosophy.” But now he treats this philosophy with some compassion and says to himself: Philosophy should have thought, but since thinking had gone astray, since thinking had been forgotten, one need not be surprised that philosophy could no longer think either. So he treats philosophy a little more mildly. “It did not become clear to philosophy that the energy of the cultural ideas entrusted to it was beginning to be questioned. At the end of one of the most outstanding works on the history of philosophy published at the end of the nineteenth century - the same one that I once discussed here - “this is defined as the process in which ‘step by step, with ever clearer and more certain awareness, reflection on cultural values has taken place, the universal validity of which is the subject of philosophy itself’. In doing so, the author forgot the essential: that in the past, philosophy not only reflected on cultural values, but also allowed them to be transmitted as active ideas in public opinion, while from the second half of the nineteenth century they increasingly became a guarded, unproductive capital for it.

But now he becomes mild. After all, what can the philosopher do if he no longer thinks because everyone else does not think: “That thinking did not manage to create a world view of optimistic-ethical character and to base the ideals that make up culture in such a view was not the fault of philosophy, but a fact that arose in the development of thought. But philosophy was guilty of our world because it did not admit this fact to itself and remained in the illusion that it really maintained a progress of culture."

Schweitzer no longer blames the philosophers for no longer being able to think, since it has become a general habit of people not to think anymore. But he does blame the philosophers for not having noticed this at all. They should have noticed it at least.

"According to its ultimate purpose, philosophy is the leader and guardian of general reason. It would have been its duty to admit to our world that the ethical ideals of reason no longer found support in a total worldview, as they used to, but were for the time being left to their own devices and had to assert themselves in the world through their inner strength alone... Philosophy philosophized so little about culture that it did not even notice how it itself, and the times with it, became more and more cultureless. In the hour of danger, the guard who was supposed to keep us awake slept. So it happened that we did not struggle for our culture.

Well, I think I have already told you many things about this sleeping from a variety of points of view.

In the next chapter, Schweitzer discusses the elements in us that inhibit culture. He comes to some very interesting conclusions. He finds, for example, that man has become unfree as a result of what he has absorbed as culture in recent times. Well, one can sympathize with him on that point, because people have gradually come to really only follow certain bellwethers, to swear by the authority of science, and so on. But now Schweitzer claims that the human being is not collected in his thinking. I don't think we need discuss this much either; Schweitzer is probably right that the power to collect has really declined a lot in our civilization. But then he calls the human being incomplete. Now, people will say, if he already finds us unfree and so unsettled; that we are not even supposed to be whole people, we cannot concede that to him! But he means it this way: What a person learns today, that is a specialty, be he a scholar or be he somehow a different person, so that only certain sides of his abilities are developed, not the total human being. Therefore, we go around as incomplete, not at all as complete people. And then he finds, as a fourth, that humanity has decreased to the highest degree. He cites beautiful examples. But he is generally of the opinion that unfree, uncollected and incomplete people do not develop humanity in their ethical lives either. He also finds a culture-inhibiting element in over-organization, in the eradication of human individuality. How much does the individual still depend on today? It depends only on what is prescribed by any organization. Schweitzer rightly accuses our time of over-organization as a particular tendency.

But now he also wants to move on to answering the question of how to achieve culture again. What must be done to achieve culture again? He then asks: What must the culture we achieve be like? — And he says: It must be ethical and optimistic. Now, imagine you want to build a house for yourself. You go to a builder who says: You have to describe to me what the house should be like so that I can make the plans for you. — So you tell him: The house should be solid, weatherproof, beautiful, and so that you can live comfortably in it. — Well, you can't make plans with that, but you think you have said something when you say: The house must be solid, weatherproof, beautiful and so that you can live comfortably in it. But you can't do anything with these statements. Nor can you do anything with the statement: A worldview must be ethical and optimistic. It's the same, exactly the same.

Once, when I was a little boy, there was a court case in a village where I lived. Some chickens had been stolen from a prominent member of the community. The judge wanted to know what the sentence should be and needed a description of the chickens. So he asked the man concerned what the chickens were like. “Well, they were beautiful chickens.” Yes, that's not enough. You have to tell us something so that we can get an idea of what the chickens might have been worth. Well, they were really quite beautiful chickens. Yes, but, you have to know whether the chickens were skinny or fat... – Well, they really were quite beautiful chickens. – And so it went on, nothing at all could be elicited from the man except that they were quite beautiful chickens. |

Now here we have a quite outstanding spirit who trenchantly characterizes the decline of culture in an extraordinarily fine and apt way, who even knows a great deal that people today do not even want to admit to themselves. For example, he knows the following – it is good that it is also said by someone other than just the anthroposophist: 'The summary of knowledge and the assertion of its consequences for the world view is not his concern. In the past every scientist was also a thinker who had a certain significance in the general spiritual life of his generation. Our time has arrived at the ability to distinguish between science and thinking. Therefore we still have freedom of science, but hardly any thinking science at all.” It is indeed good to hear it from someone else for a change. But you see, despite all this insight, he does not get any further than the beautiful chickens. Extremely characteristic! Something that reappears as a truly fruitful worldview must be ethical, optimistic, firm, weatherproof, beautiful, and such that one can comfortably live in it!

Yes, he gets very far in this negative characterization. He notices that there are people who have already felt that this thinking, this brain sport, does not lead to the sources of existence. Therefore they said: Well, let us give up all this thinking and arrive at the truth by way of feeling or belief, by a mystical path. He sees that, and being a keen thinker himself, to a certain extent, he asks a remarkable question. The question is: “Philosophical, historical and scientific questions, which he was not able to answer, overwhelmed his earlier rationalism like an avalanche and buried him on the way. The new thinking world view must work its way out of this chaos. Let everything that actually is take effect on itself, passing through all kinds of reflection and recognition” - yes, if only he went through a little recognition and reflection now: the house should be beautiful and weatherproof - ”it strives towards the ultimate meaning of being and life, whether some of it can be unraveled,

The final knowledge, in which man comprehends his own existence in universal existence, is said to be mystical in nature. By this is meant that it no longer comes about through ordinary reflection, but is somehow experienced.

But why assume, he says, that the path of thinking ends at mysticism? Reasoning, as practiced up to now, has always stopped when it came close to mysticism...

Now one asks oneself: What does Anthroposophy want? To start from clear, mathematically clear thinking, not to stop at mysticism, but to penetrate, thinking, into the regions that are to be opened up for the eternal. Even then people still say that the house should be solid, weatherproof and comfortable to live in – when it is already standing in front of their noses, but they cannot find their way into it. This can be said without any modesty, but these are not the worst, these are the best, these are the sharp thinkers! We must not close our eyes to such things. We must not keep beating about the bush, saying that we must make this or that person understand what anthroposophy is, when people talk like this.

But further: “Thought carried to its conclusion thus leads somewhere and somehow to a living mysticism that is necessary for all human beings to think...” Right building leads to the good house, the way I want it! Now, he finds that people are unfocused, and so he wants to make it clear what people should do to get beyond this terrible state that culture has fallen into: “In itself, reflecting on the meaning of life has a meaning. If such reflection arises again among us, the ideals of vanity and passion, which now proliferate like evil weeds in the convictions of the masses, will wither away without hope. How much would be gained for today's conditions if we all just spent three minutes each evening looking up thoughtfully at the infinite worlds of the starry sky...' It does not say in the footnote: 'The details can be found in “How to Know Higher Worlds”, oh no, but it says that somehow we have to get to the point that there are people who take three minutes to collect their thoughts - “..look up thoughtfully to the infinite worlds of the starry sky and, when attending a funeral, would devote themselves to the mystery of death and life instead of walking behind the coffin in thoughtless conversation...”

It then concludes with the following, after first drawing attention to the fact: But something, which is now a world view, should not actually be said to people; we do need such a world view - I just want to know what we need it for if we are not supposed to say it to people! “The great revision of the convictions and ideals in which and for which we live cannot take place by talking into the people of our time different, better thoughts than those they have..."

It is not right that one should speak better thoughts into the minds of people than they have, but rather one must leave them to themselves! Reflect, think of other things when you walk behind a coffin, reflect! - Yes, then people will just continue to do what they have been doing so far: they will not know what to reflect on in the three minutes and so on.

"Previous thinking sought to understand the meaning of life from the meaning of the world. It may be that we have to resign ourselves to leaving the meaning of the world open to question and to give our lives a meaning from the will to live, as it is in us... “It may be! - “Even if the paths by which we have to strive towards the goal still lie in darkness, the direction in which we must go is clear. Together we have to think about the meaning of life, to struggle to arrive at a world- and life-affirming worldview in which our drive, which we experience as necessary and valuable, finds justification, orientation, clarification, deepening, moralization and strengthening, and then becomes capable of setting up and realizing definitive cultural ideals inspired by the spirit of true humanity. — They'll be beautiful chickens!

No one will be able to say that I want to practice caustic, deliberately negative criticism. I chose the first example of Professor Rubner because I wanted to choose a personality whose scientific achievements would be recognized. I chose the second example so that I could say that I regard the person who wrote this book as one of the sharpest thinkers, as a personality who is most justified in speaking in this way. I do not want to criticize adversely, that is far from me. One must endeavor to point out characteristically what is. But when Albert Schweitzer says: Philosophy should have been on guard, but it was asleep, then we can't help but say: He continues to sleep.

Let's wait and see what the second part is like, but the first part promises that the second part will not be much different. He continues to sleep, only dreaming out of his sleep. They are desires, they are not realities. Our striving must be to go beyond mere illusions, beyond phrases, to arrive at realities. You see how the words of our language have been squeezed dry. So we have to proceed as we started this evening, by talking about the soul, then we will put content back into the words. Otherwise, as Schweitzer says: philosophy is not to blame for the decline of culture, but it is to blame for not having noticed it. Well, of course Albert Schweitzer is not to blame either for the fact that our words have been so squeezed out that they no longer contain any concepts or realities. But he is to blame for not noticing this at all. He does not notice that he is talking in completely squeezed-out words.

I felt obliged to draw attention to the cultural decline in such a cutting way in response to Albert Schweitzer's recently published cultural act – I don't mean this maliciously, I mean it quite seriously. I was obliged to point out what the situation must actually be like in order to gain a real judgment of what is not happening on the one hand and should be happening on the other. After we have gone through this episode, we want to continue talking about specific topics of anthroposophy.

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of a question?

Questioner: Doctor was kind enough to tell us what it is like when the spirit has left the body. The last lecture was very clear to me and my colleagues. But in “Theosophy” there is a sentence that says that when the spirit is separated from the body, the soul still retains desires. That is still a very hard nut for us to crack.

I have another question, something completely different.

Dr. Steiner: Very well, tell me the second question too.

Questioner: By chance I came across a brochure by a Dr. Heuer. I assume that Dr. Steiner has read the brochure, so that we already know that. This Mr. Hauer presents Dr. Steiner as if he were saying nothing new, as if we already know everything that he says about anthroposophy, that we already know all of this. And then, among other things, he says that the most incredible thing about anthroposophy for him is the story of the two Jesus children.

The questioner must also say, however, that this is also incomprehensible to him about the two Jesus children, how the one Jesus child comes from another world.

Dr. Steiner: I also have the brochure, I just haven't cut it open yet.

The questioner continues: If it is not immodest, he would like to ask the doctor to say something about the Jesus family.

Further question: I have been asked by my colleagues in the last few days about the Christ-being. It would be very dear to me if the doctor could say something about the Christ-being.

Dr. Steiner: Is there perhaps another question to be asked so that we can deal with it in context?

Now, I would first like to address the first question about desires. The fact of the matter is this: if you look at what a person experiences differently from how a plant or a stone experiences things, then you will find that a person experiences their world of thoughts. A plant does not show that it has a world of thoughts. Thoughts are there, living in the plant. But to look for conscious thoughts in a plant would be nonsense.

However, something remarkable has come about in the external way in which science partly proceeds today. Today there are all kinds of scholars, and since there are also those who cannot quite believe that there are only physical processes everywhere, that there are only mineral, inanimate processes, they at least assume that there is something spiritual. But since they know nothing about the spiritual itself, they say: the spiritual expresses itself in the fact that some being performs this or that.

There are plants that behave in the strangest ways. For example, there is a plant called the “Venus flytrap” because of the way it behaves. This Venus flytrap has rosette leaves that bear a leaf blade at their broadened stem. It consists of two parts. There are three bristle-shaped outgrowths on both sides of the blade. When an insect alights on the leaf and touches these outgrowths, the two wings of the leaf fold together so quickly that the small insect is trapped. So that is how it is.

Those who only talk about the soul in an external way and know nothing about it, they say: just as there is a soul in a human being, there is also a soul in a plant. I always have only one thing to say to these people: I know a little instrument into which you put a little bacon that has been browned a little: a mousetrap, and when the mouse sips the bacon, the mousetrap closes by itself. So anyone who draws conclusions from such things, as with the Venus flytrap, must assume that there is a soul, and should also say: the mousetrap has a soul because it also closes by itself. It always depends on the reasons for assuming the matter.

You see, that is precisely the characteristic of anthroposophy: it starts from reasons in everything, whereas the others, if they do assume a soul, know nothing about the soul and ascribe a soul to a plant like this, when something similar happens to it as to a mousetrap when an insect comes near it. But in anthroposophy there is nothing of outward appearances that lead to it, but there is the real realization of the soul. Part of this realization of the soul is that man develops desires. It is desire when, for example, he is thirsty. When I am thirsty, I have the desire to drink water or something else. Now, fine; the thirst is satisfied by the water. All of this is desire, where you wish for something from within your organism, want something; that is always desire.

You see, there is something people never think about. They do not think about the mental state that underlies when a person wakes up. Not true, when a person wakes up, now examine the people, how much more carbon dioxide in the blood and so on, that is, they examine only the physical conditions. But the truth is that man wakes up because he has desire for his physical body. When you fall asleep at night, you no longer have any desire for your physical body. It is completely filled with fatigue substances. There is no longer any good in there. The soul, that is, the ego and the astral body, want to recover outside of the physical body. In the morning, when the physical body has recovered, which the soul, which is outside the physical body, notices from the condition of the skin, because it is close to it, the soul goes back into the physical body because it desires to be inside the physical body as long as the physical body is able to live at all. So the soul has the desire throughout life to live inside the body.

Take something else: you cut your finger and it hurts you. There is the finger (drawing $. 202). Now you cut into it, and it hurts you. What has happened? Yes, the physical body is torn a little bit apart. You can cut into the physical body, but not into the astral body. I will now draw the astral body into the physical body. If I draw it large, there is a gap where the astral body is. But it wants to be able to enter the place where the physical body is torn apart as well. It has the desire to be inside the body and cannot do so because the body is torn open. That is what the pain is all about.

Now imagine that if the soul has this desire for the physical body throughout life, then something must happen after death.

If as a child you develop the craving to eat as much sugar as possible, then you develop the craving to get sugar. And if at a certain stage in your life someone finds it useful for you to eat less sugar, you still have the craving for sugar. Let's say you have developed diabetes, and you are therefore no longer supposed to do it – yes, it takes a long time to get rid of that habit! You always have the craving for sugar and have to slowly get rid of it. You know, if someone drinks a lot, he develops a craving for it; he has to slowly wean himself off it. If someone eats opium, as I told you the other day, and they are weaned off it, they will go crazy with desire for the opium.

Now, throughout life, there is a craving for the body in the ego and astral body. After death, the soul always wants to wake up back into the body. First it has to get out of this habit. This process takes about a third of the whole life. In fact, sleep takes a third of the whole life. On the first day after one has died, one wants to go back. You want to do what you did on the last day of your life; on the second day you want to do what you did on the day before that, and so it goes on. So you have to get rid of the desire for this third of your life. So after death you don't have any thirst or hunger cravings, but you do have a constant craving for everything you experienced through your physical body. After death, it is like this: you have grown fond of the area around your hometown all your life. You have always seen that. Yes, you have seen it through your physical body. Only a Turk believes that he has something much more beautiful in terms of meadows and flowers and so on after death than he has here on earth. So you have to get out of the habit of all that. And it is precisely this getting out of the habit that makes it necessary to say that the desires still remain. Is that not understandable? (Answer: Yes!)

So after death, the desires for the physical body and for life in general remain, but not hunger and thirst, because for that you need a stomach; you no longer have that, you put it in the coffin. But after death, you still have the desire to see everything that you saw during your life.

But now something else is added: after death, one can see just as little in the spiritual world, into which one has now entered, as a child here in the physical world can immediately see. One must first acquire this. One must first grow into the spiritual world. So that the first state after death, one third of life, consists of being still blind and deaf to the spiritual world, but still longing for the physical world. That occurs after two or three days, during which, as I have related, the dead person looks back. And only when he has given up that, does he grow into the spiritual world and can then perceive in a spiritual way. Then he no longer has any desire for the physical world. So anyone who can judge the soul's life can also judge what remains of the physical life. And of course it is not only pleasant things that remain. If someone had the desire to constantly beat people, the desire to beat people remains, and then he must slowly get out of the habit of doing so. These are the things that one can see.

Anthroposophy is concerned with recognizing what can actually be seen of the soul, that is, what is actually visible. That is what it is all about.

As for the other question, the question of Christ Jesus, we will deal with it today, so that nothing remains unsatisfied in you. However, I must first say something about history.

I have told you about various conditions on Earth in very ancient times. Now it is like this: we have conditions on earth that are actually no older than about six to eight or nine thousand years, according to scientific observations, so let's say six to nine thousand years. I have already drawn your attention to this. Before that time, you could not go very far from here, because you would enter the so-called glacial region. Switzerland was where you can walk around today, all the way down, covered by glaciers. The glaciers flowed in valleys where the rivers are now; the Aare, the Reuss and so on are only the thin, diluted glacier streams that remain from the distant, distant past.

But this period, in which a large part of Europe was covered by these glaciers, was preceded by a very different time. Because the earth is constantly – you just have to consider large periods of time – rising and falling, rising and falling. If, for example, there is sea here (he draws) and land up there, then this land is floating in the sea. All land floats in the sea. Can you imagine that? It is not that it goes down to the bottom, but that the land, all the lands, float in the sea. There is also sea under the lands.

Now you will say: Why doesn't it float back and forth like a ship? I will tell you something else first. In fact, the countries are floating in the sea, but suppose it were Great Britain, England (it is drawn). England is an island. It actually floats in the sea, but it floats near Europe, and the distance does not change. But even according to scientific views, it was not always the same as it is now, but there were also times when the water went up over it. Then England was under the sea. If you crossed this bit of sea, you naturally came to the ground. So the thing is that there were times when England was under the sea.

Yes, it's even like this: if you examine the soil of England, you will find certain fossilized animals in this soil. But they are not all the same. If you examine a piece of soil from England here and further up, you will find very different fossilized animals, and even further up there are yet again very different fossilized animals and even further up yet again very different fossilized animals. Four successive layers of fossilized animals can be found in the soil of England!

Where do these fossilized animals come from? When the sea floods a land, the animals die. Their shells sink, and the animals are fossilized. If I find four successive layers in a soil, the land in question must have been flooded by the sea four times. A layer was always deposited there. And so it is found that the land of England has been four times above water and four times below. Four times England was above water, it rose again and again.

Now you may ask: Why does such an island, which is actually floating in the water, not go back and forth like a ship? Yes, because it is not held by the earth. If it were only a matter of the earth, it is impossible to imagine how everything would be shaken up! England would soon be dashed against the coast of Norway, then it would be dashed against America and so on, and all the countries would be dashed against each other, if it only depended on the earth. But it does not depend only on the earth, but the constellation of stars in the sky sends out the forces that hold a country in a certain place. So it is not the fault of the earth. It is the star constellation. And you can always prove: when the situation has changed, the star constellation has changed – not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. Those who do not want to know about this world do the same as people who say that the powers of thought come from the brain alone. If I have the soft ground and just make my footprints, and someone comes down from Mars for my sake and thinks that the footprints come from the earth, the earth sometimes throws up the sand, sometimes pulls it down – it is not at all the case, I pushed in from outside. And so the convolutions of my brain have also come from outside, from mental thinking. It is the same with countries that have come over the earth: they are held by the star constellations. So we must not only see spirit in people on earth, and on earth in general, but in the whole universe.

Such things, gentlemen, just imagine, older people knew them, but in a completely different way than we do today. I will give you a proof. There is a great Greek philosopher who lived several centuries before the birth of Christ, his name was Plato. He knew a great deal. He tells us that one of the wisest of his countrymen, Solon, the lawgiver of Greece, was once a guest at the home of an Egyptian. The Egyptians were the more advanced people at that time; only the Greeks behaved more cleverly than we do. The Greeks revered the Egyptians, as we shall see, but they did not learn Egyptian, the ancient language of the Egyptians. The Greeks did not learn Egyptian! Our scholars must all learn Greek! The Greeks were much cleverer. We do not imitate what they did with it; but we do imitate their language. Our scholars become narrow-minded precisely because they do not grow into what is original to them on earth, but are distracted from what is peculiar to human beings by having to find their way into a very old language. Now, in Switzerland they are fighting against this; but it took a long time. Our boys, if they wanted to become doctors, first had their heads turned by having to learn Greek. I'm not saying this because I also had to learn it, I love the Greek language very much. But that's what some people should learn who want to get something out of it, but not those who want to become doctors or lawyers, and forget it again later in life.

Plato recounts that Solon visited an Egyptian, who told him: “You Greeks may be an advanced people, but you are still children, for you know nothing of the fact that the lands are constantly being pulled out over the sea and submerging again, that upheavals are always taking place.

The ancient Egyptians still knew it; the Greeks no longer knew it. Only Plato still knew it. He knew that there was land out there in the Atlantic Ocean, where ships now sail from Europe to America, that the west coast of Europe was connected to the east coast of America by land. But the old truths have been forgotten. And that was because people had even more unconscious knowledge. We have acquired abstract knowledge. We need that for our freedom. For people in those days were not free; but they knew more. And Lessing, I told you, gave something to the fact that these ancient people knew more than the later.

So we come to say to ourselves: It is the case that there were ancient times when people, through their own nature, knew that there is a spiritual reality everywhere. People have known this for quite a long time.

There is, for example, a Roman emperor, Julian, in the 4th century AD. This Julian was taught by people who still had some knowledge of Asian wisdom. And this Julian said: There is not one, but there are three suns. The first sun is the physical sun, the second is a soul sun, and the third sun is a spiritual sun. The first is visible to us, the other two are invisible. That is what Julian said.

Now something very strange happened. Julianus was vilified throughout history because he did not believe in Christianity. But he believed in what people knew before Christianity. And when Julian once had to lead an Asian campaign, he was suddenly murdered. It was a kind of assassination attempt. But this assassination was carried out by those who hated him because he had appropriated the old knowledge.

You must remember that even in ancient times, things were handled quite differently than they are today. The Egyptians were terribly clever people, as I have already mentioned. But they did not have a writing system like ours, they had a pictographic writing system. The word was always similar to what it meant. And the people who were scribes in Egypt were taught: Writing is something sacred; you must imitate things very faithfully. And do you know what happened to anyone who made a mistake in copying pictographs out of negligence? They were sentenced to death! Well, today people would look on in amazement if someone who made a spelling mistake were sentenced to death because of it. But human history does not go as one dreams it would. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were wise and cruel in some respects. Of course there is progress in humanity. But just because writing was something so sacred to them, we must not deny that they were wise in other respects and knew things that are only now gradually emerging in anthroposophy, in a completely different way. They dreamt it, and we know it; it was a completely different way.

Well, you see, Julianus was right. It is actually the case that just as you have soul and spirit in your body, so the sun has soul and spirit. That is precisely what the one who knows the soul says. He is not saying that the Venus flytrap has a soul, because it is nonsense to say that everything that moves in some purposeful way has a soul. But he knows that when the light shines, it has a soul, it moves soulfully; because he perceives that. And so it was known: the sun contains a living being.

Now you know that it is said: In Palestine, at a certain time, Jesus of Nazareth was born. You see, gentlemen, Jesus of Nazareth grew up - you can actually verify today what is in the Gospels, so it is true - as a fairly simple boy. He was the son of a carpenter, a joiner. That's right. He grew up as a fairly simple boy. Now he still had a great deal of ancient wisdom. Therefore, it is based on truth that at the age of twelve he was able to answer the scholars very cleverly. It still happens today that a twelve-year-old boy gives more sensible answers than a “disinstructed” scholar! But from this it was clear that he was a very gifted boy. Now he grew up, and when he was thirty years old, something suddenly changed in him. That is a fact; something changed in him all of a sudden.

What changed in him when Jesus was thirty years old? When Jesus was thirty years old, he suddenly realized, prepared by his earlier great knowledge, what was no longer known at the time, which only a few hidden scholars had from an ancient wisdom, of which Julian later found it. He realized through an older knowledge: The whole universe and the sun contain soul and spirit. He was imbued with what lived in the universe by knowing this. If you know it, you have it.

Now in those days, in those times, people had to be taught things in pictures. What I am telling you today can only be expressed in this way from the 15th century onwards. Before that, we did not have these concepts. So it was expressed in such a way that it was said: a dove descended, and he received the Holy Spirit within him. Of course, those who were able to perceive it knew that something had happened to him. That is how they expressed it, and in one gospel it says: “Then a voice from heaven was heard: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.” Translated correctly: “This is my beloved Son, today I have given birth to him.” That means that what happened at the age of thirty was correctly understood as a second birth. With Jesus' birth, only Jesus was born, who was more talented than the others, but who did not yet have this feeling within him. This was felt to be something extraordinarily important. And that is the baptism of John in the Jordan.

There was something that caused me great concern at the time. In science, there are such concerns, gentlemen! You had, as you know, the four Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Don't you think everyone knows today that these four Gospels contradict each other? If you start reading in the Gospel of Matthew and read about the family tree of Jesus, and compare it with the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, they contradict each other. People say: they contradict each other. But they don't think any further about why it contradicts itself. At most, they say: one invented it, the other invented it; one just invented something different from the other, that's why things can contradict each other.

But that is not the case. It is like this: Goethe, for example, says of himself: “I have the stature of my father” — that is, he looked a lot like his father.

From my father I have the stature,
The serious way of life,
From my mother, a cheerful disposition
And the desire to tell stories.

Now, maybe at the age of three, Goethe was not yet able to tell stories; but maybe at the age of nine he could. Then he had to say: “Beautiful, from my mother I have the desire to tell stories, it has been passed on to me from my mother, it has come into me from my mother.

I tell you this because it will help you understand how my concern about the contradictions in the gospels has been resolved.

Now I have taken these two gospels, the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unless someone carelessly says that it is invented, no one can understand why these two things contradict each other. And I have now examined the spiritual science behind it and found that not just one boy was born, but two Jesus boys were born. Both boys had the name Jesus. There is no need to be surprised about that; for example, if a boy in Austria is named Joseph, then there is no surprise if another boy born at the same time is also named Joseph. There is no need to be surprised if two boys are named Seppl or Franz. So there was no reason to be surprised if two boys were named Jesus at the time. And both lived together until they were twelve years old. And then something strange happened: because they lived together, the gifts that one of them had suddenly appeared in the other. Just as a son can inherit from his mother, so one of the Jesus boys inherited gifts from the other. And the one Jesus boy, from whom the other had inherited the gift, did not live on, he died at twelve years of age, he died soon after. So the one was left and, through the shock that the other perished, had the wisdom of the other shine within him. This is precisely how he was able to shine before the scholars.

His parents could say: Where did he get all that? — If you ascribe it to psychic influences, then that is also explainable. And such psychic influences simply exist. One of the Jesus boys did not have the wisdom until he was twelve; the other died, and the wisdom was transferred to the one Jesus boy, partly because of the shock of his death, partly because they were friendly with each other. And he went through the baptism in the Jordan. Two Jesus boys were born, not one. In the twelfth year, one of them died, and the other was suddenly awakened by this shocking event and gained the wisdom of the other.

And then you find out: the one evangelist, Matthew, described the one Jesus boy for the childhood of Jesus, and the other, Luke, described the other Jesus boy. And so the two agree with each other. I didn't make that up. It was the result of my research. And that's why I'm talking about the two Jesus boys, precisely because of a certain science that the others don't have.

And from this you can see that the same principles that are followed in natural science, that when the causes are there, the effects occur, are also followed in spiritual science. You don't just assume that you say: Well, yes, two people have invented something, the one Jesus child of Matthew is invented, the other Jesus child of Luke is invented. At the time when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, there was no question of such an invention at all. People spoke figuratively; but they did not invent anything, because the things were taken so seriously that a few centuries earlier in Egypt, anyone who wrote down something that was not true was sentenced to death. We cannot be so reckless as to say that people in earlier times invented anything. They expressed things in pictures, but it would never have occurred to them to invent anything. He who says that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke could have been invented is speaking as one who knows nothing. But that is what today's scholars and theologians say. Since they cannot explain the contradictions otherwise, they have to admit that they are contradictory. But the fact that we know there are two Jesus children, one the Jesus child of the Gospel of Matthew and the other the Jesus child of the Gospel of Luke, clarifies the story in the best possible way.

Now Mr. Hauer, who is a private lecturer in Tübingen and also a traveling teacher, has come forward – speaking for anthroposophy does not bring in any money today, but speaking against anthroposophy does – and has come forward against anthroposophy, this Mr. Hauer now comes and finds: That is something strange. — Yes, gentlemen, it is of course something strange because no one has thought of it! It is of course something strange if I claim that there were not one but two Jesus children; one of whom died at the age of twelve. That is of course something strange, of course. There is no need to be surprised that it is something strange. But it is precisely because not everyone said it that it is strange. That is why Hauer finds it strange. This can be found on one page of Hauer's book.

On the other page, you will find: Yes, Steiner says nothing that was not already known. Yes, gentlemen, what Mr. Hauer did not know, he finds strange. He complains about that. On the basis of what he has gleaned from somewhere — because the old wisdom has been had, and today it is of course recorded everywhere — I do not glean it, but he does! — he comes to the conclusion: Yes, Steiner says nothing that others have not already said. So you are at the mercy of these people. Whenever something needs to be said, they say: He says nothing new. If I write a geometry book, I naturally have to include the Pythagorean theorem; it was discovered by Pythagoras 600 years before the birth of Christ. Of course, if I have a number of new things in it, I must also have the Pythagorean theorem in it; today I will prove it somewhat differently, but it is in it. One cannot be reproached for that, that what was already there is rediscovered after it has been forgotten! And so it is that many of the things that spiritual science claims today, in a different way, because it is not the case in the same way, can be found in a different way in the writings of the ancient Gnostics, who are the writers of an ancient time. At the time when Christ was around, there were still such Gnostics, and even later. They wrote down such ancient wisdom, but not out of science, but out of ancient knowledge, not like anthroposophy. Now people compare what anthroposophy says and what the Gnostics say. This is a little bit like what happens with the Gnostics again, because it is true. And then they say: Well, he is saying nothing different from what the others have said! But with the two Jesus children, Mr. Hauer cannot say: Steiner came upon something that the others already knew! Because he has no idea that anyone has ever known that.

I have not yet cut open the whole book, but what I have seen of it is full of such contradictions. It does not make sense at all when you compare one page with another. But that is how today's scholars do it. On the one hand they say: Others have said that many times before. - And on the other hand they say: He is not saying anything new, we already knew all that! Yes, but if they already knew all that, why are they grumbling about it? And on the other hand, when something comes that they didn't know, they find it incredible.

But you see, after I had found this, really found it through spiritual research, of the two Jesus children who lived side by side until the twelfth year, I knew nothing but this, that it is a fact. Then we once saw a picture in Turin. The picture is very strange. It shows the mother of Jesus and two boys, one of whom is not John, because John is known from all the pictures where Jesus and John are together, but there are two boys in it who look quite similar, but still cannot be brothers, because they look alike, and yet not alike. It is quite clear that they are two little friends. Whoever first found that there were two Jesus children would then have to consider what this picture means. This picture was created relatively late in the centuries; but when it was still known that there were two Jesus children, an Italian painter painted the two Jesus children in one picture.

If Hauer had known today that this was still the case from ancient knowledge, he would now say: Steiner simply saw the picture in Turin! He would say that he already knew that anyway. Then he would say at the same point: Steiner is not claiming anything new, he is only claiming the things that have been known anyway. - Such are people!

It is actually quite dreadful when you look into these apparently stupid contradictions with which people today fight anthroposophy. On the one hand, what I say is supposed to be pure invention, invented by me. Now, let us assume that it is invented by me; but then the same person cannot say in the same book: He is not saying anything new! — Because he himself claims that I invented the things I say, and reproaches me for it. And then he says that others have known this all along. It is, in fact, sheer madness what is being done. Whereas if one really approaches the Christ event and investigates it as one otherwise investigates facts, then it becomes clear: this tremendous gift, which the boy Jesus already had, came about through the interaction between the two boys.

I will prove to you that such an exchange can take place, unbeknownst to other people. Let me tell you about such a case. There was once a little girl who already had older siblings; these other siblings learned to speak quite well. This girl did not learn to speak properly at first; but a little later, when the other children learned to talk, she began to talk. But she spoke a language that none of the adults understood. She invented a language for herself. For example, she said “Papazzo,” and when she said “Papazzo,” she meant the dog. And in a similar way, she invented names for all the animals. These are scientific facts. These names are not found anywhere.

Now this girl had a little brother after some time. And the little brother learned this language very quickly from his sister. And they spoke to each other in this language. The little brother died when he was twelve or so, and the sister stopped using this language and also learned the language of the others. She then married later and became a completely ordinary woman who told people that this was the case. She went through it herself. It is so. The two children communicated with each other in this language, talked to each other in this language; no one else understood it. Gentlemen, that can be the greatest wisdom! Only the two of them understood and agreed with each other.

From this you can see how one is influenced by the other. Why should not the one Jesus boy, who died at the age of twelve, have known something that no one understood at all! You still experience that when you know the facts.

So, nothing else is being claimed than what, in the most eminent sense, can also be truly scientific. Now, people who do not accept this as scientific are simply unable to piece together the facts. The person who knows that something like this exists, that two children speak this language that no adult understands and share spiritual things with each other in which the adults do not participate, he who understands this, he understands everything I say about the two Jesus children up to the twelfth year. And that this was an extraordinary event is not surprising. It does not happen every day. And in the form in which it happened, it has only happened once in the history of the earth, that this tremendous enlightenment comes to this man at the age of thirty.

Now, you see, here the story of Christ is transformed into real science, into real knowledge. And you can't help it; it transforms itself through knowledge.

Now you can say: All right, so at the age of twelve, Jesus was already enlightened to a certain extent by the other one who died. But at the age of thirty, yes, he suddenly became a different person again, which the evangelist expresses by saying: A dove flew down and settled on him.

Yes, gentlemen, the fact is that he has become another. What has happened then? I have already explained to you: when a child is born, the germ is there. The spirit of the universe must act on the germ. It is no wonder that the spirit of the universe is at work there when it has even worked on the island of England, as we have seen. What happened to Jesus in his thirtieth year could not be explained from the earth. Just as a human being is created through fertilization, in that one thing influences the other, so at that time the whole universe had an influence on the thirty-year-old Jesus, fertilizing him with soul and spirit, and through this he became Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, to put it better. For what does it mean? Christ means he who is enlightened. And Jesus is an ordinary name, as it was common in Palestine, just as today in Austria one is called Sepperl, Joseph, or in Switzerland so and so, where one also finds similar names in every house. So Jesus was the name of many, and he was called the Christ because this enlightenment occurred.

Yes, gentlemen, when you read my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” you will find it demonstrated there: This enlightenment has been artificially produced in certain people before, only to a lesser extent. These were then called mystery ways. The difference between those who were educated in the highest wisdom in ancient times and the difference between them and Jesus Christ was that these mystery wise men were taught by others in the schools that were called mysteries in those days. With Jesus, it happened by itself. Therefore, it was a different process.

In the ancient mysteries, those who ascended to the highest knowledge simply became “Christ”; just as today you need not be surprised if someone has studied until the age of twenty-five - before that he was the very ordinary Joseph Müller, but now he is suddenly a doctor. That is how one became a “Christ” in the old mysteries, although not in such an innocent, that is, simple way; because of course you can be the biggest idiot and still become a doctor at the age of twenty-five! That was not possible in the old mysteries; there it was a deep, deep wisdom. There you became the 'Christ'. It was a title given to the highest sages, as the title 'doctor' is given today after a certain course of study; only in those days, when it was done properly, it was real wisdom. And with the Christ it just came naturally. But that means that what was otherwise given by the earth, by people, was given from the farthest reaches of the universe. This only happened once. As a result, world history took a different turn. And no one can deny this secret, not even those who are not Christians, that world history has taken a different turn.

The Romans did not take this into account, they did not know it. Christianity was founded in Asia Minor by Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Romans advanced from the old republican state to the empire, and they persecuted the Christians. The Christians had to make themselves catacombs underground. There they reflected on what their Christianity was. What was done above ground? The circuses were built, and people, the slaves, were tied to the pillars and burned as a spectacle for those sitting in the circus. That was above ground. And down in the catacombs, the Christians practiced their religion, which at that time was just for enslaved people. Religion just means connection - religere = to connect -; down there, the Christians practiced their religion.

And what about a few centuries later? The Romans are no longer there in the old way. What they used to watch in the circuses for their own pleasure, the burning people, was gone, because the Christians had taken its place. That is how it is in the world.

And so it will come to pass: those people who today speak as Dr. Hauer, whom you mentioned earlier, will be swept away. And that which today, though not physically but spiritually, must work in the catacombs, will indeed work! But one must only realize how it is a matter of real science; and how those who do not study much today are annoyed that something like this comes out!

When I come back, I will be able to continue with that. But essentially, you will already have understood which path this is taking.

A view of the world, as it is intended to be in spiritual science, must prove itself by giving people support for what they need in life. The support for life must be what we can call moral strength. But the support for life must also include, among other things, what we can call the inner soul-condition that can arise in a person from feeling that he is a member of the great cosmic whole, from feeling so incorporated into the cosmic whole that it corresponds to what one can call one's religious need. As for man's inner moral strength, Schopenhauer spoke an excellent word, even if the further remarks he made on these words in his own way seem quite disputable. He said: It is easy to preach morals, but to found morals is difficult. This is indeed a true saying of life. For in general, to recognize what is good, what the moral life demands of us, is relatively easy as a matter of intellect. But to draw from the primal forces of the soul those impulses that are necessary in man to place himself in the fabric of life as a morally powerful being, that is difficult. But that is what it means to found morality. To found morality is not merely to say what is good, what is moral. To found morality is to bring to man such impulses, which, by absorbing them into his soul life, become a real strength, a real efficiency in him.

Now, at the present stage of civilization, man's moral consciousness is embedded in the world in a very unique way, in a way that is not always fully consciously observed, but which is the reason for many uncertainties and insecurities that prevail in people's lives. On the one hand, we have our intellectually oriented knowledge, our insight, which makes it possible for us to penetrate into natural phenomena, which makes it possible for us to absorb the whole world into our imagination to a certain extent, which makes it possible for us, in an admittedly very limited way, as we have seen in the last two reflections here, to also make ideas about the nature of man.

Alongside what flashes up in us as our cognitive faculty, as everything that is, I would say, directed by our human logic, alongside all this, another element of our being asserts itself, the one from which our moral duty, our moral love, in short, the impulses for moral action, arise. And it must be said that modern man lives, on the one hand, in his cognitive abilities and their results, and on the other hand, in his moral impulses. Both are soul contents. But for this modern man, there is basically little mediation between the two, so little mediation that, for example, Kant could say: There are two things that are most precious to him in the world: the starry heavens above him, the moral law within him. But precisely this Kantian way of thinking, which lies dormant in the modern human being, knows of no bridge between what leads to knowledge of the world on the one hand and what moral impulses are on the other. Kant regards the life of knowledge in his Critique of Pure Reason and the moral life in his Critique of Practical Reason as if by chance.

And if we are completely honest with our sense of the times, we must actually say that there is an abyss here between two ways of experiencing human nature. Today's science, in forming ideas about the course of world evolution in the most diverse fields of knowledge, regards the workings of nature from the simplest living creatures, indeed from inorganic nature, right up to the human being. It forms ideas about how this world, which is directly before us, came into being. It also forms ideas about the processes by which the former end of this world, which is immediately before us, could take place. But now, from within man, who is nevertheless interwoven with this natural order, there wells up what he calls his moral ideals. And man perceives these moral ideals in such a way that he can only feel himself valuable if he follows these ideals, if there is agreement between him and these ideals. Man makes his value dependent on these moral ideals. But if we imagine that the forces of nature, which become accessible to man through his knowledge, are once upon a time approaching their end, where does today's sense of time leave what man creates out of his moral ideals, out of his moral impulses? Anyone who is honest, who does not shroud today's consciousness in nebulousness, must admit that, in the face of present-day scientific knowledge, these moral ideals are something by which man must guide himself in life, but by which nothing is created that could once triumph when the earth, together with man, comes to an end.

It is, for today's consciousness, one must only admit it, no bridge between the cognitive abilities that lead to natural knowledge and the abilities that govern us by being moral beings. Man is not aware of everything that goes on in the depths of his soul. Much remains unconscious. But what rumbles unconsciously down there asserts itself in life through disharmony, through mental or even physical illness. And anyone who just wants to see what is going on today without prejudice will have to say: our life is surging, and there are people in this life with all kinds of mental and physical contradictions. And that which surges up wells up from a depth in which something is indeed active that is like those weak human powers that cannot build a bridge between the moral life and the knowledge of nature. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science addresses these questions in the following way. It must abandon everything that is, on the one hand, only a theoretical view of external reality. It must therefore recognize everything that, as I explained in the last two lectures here, would like to exclude the human being from this view of nature, so that a true objectivity can arise.

What I characterized as the path to the spiritual world is presented, to summarize what I said earlier, in the following way: First of all, anyone who wants to enter the spiritual world must devote themselves to a certain inner soul-spiritual work. In my books, I have summarized this inner practice, this inner spiritual-soul work, as meditation and concentration work. This work enables people to relate to their imaginative life differently than they do in ordinary life when we observe natural phenomena or even social life. It is a complete being-with-the-ideas, which otherwise only accompany our outer impressions like shadows. Just as I said, we usually face people or nature or anything else in physical life with our feelings, with our sympathies and antipathies, and we face facts with our will emotions. How these ideas arise, that disturbs us, that challenges our sympathy and antipathy, that stimulates our entire life force. This becomes our destiny. While we are outwardly quite calm, inwardly we are going through something that is by no means weaker than what we otherwise go through as life's destiny in the outer world. We are, so to speak, doubling our lives. While we usually get excited, develop sympathy and antipathy, and assert volitional impulses only in the outer life, in relation to outer events, we carry what otherwise only occupies us in this outer material world into our inner life of thought. If we can do this — and everyone can do it if they practise as I have described in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' or in my 'Occult Science' —, if we can really carry this out, then there comes a moment for us when in which he not only has images of the world when he opens his senses, when he hears or sees, but where he has images purely from the life of imagination, so full of content images, if I may use the expression, so full of sap, as they otherwise only come to us through sensory perception. They come through this thus intensified and sharpened life of imagination. Without sensory perception, we live in a world of images, as they otherwise only come to us through sensory perception.

But another significant experience is linked to this – these things can only be understood as experiences; abstract logic, so-called reasoning does not lead to them. Another experience is connected to this: We learn through such practice what it means to develop a spiritual-soul activity independently of the physical activity. The moment comes for the human being when he can rightly admit to himself, if I may put it this way, that he is a materialist, however strange and paradoxical that may sound. At this moment he can say: yes, in ordinary life we are completely dependent on the tools of our body. We think through the instrument of our nervous system. But that is precisely what characterizes this outer life, that we traverse it only by developing the soul and spiritual when it avails itself of the bodily instruments. But the soul and spiritual is not dependent on merely availing itself of the bodily instruments. Through the efforts described, it can free itself from the physical tool, can become free of the body. No matter how much speculation and philosophizing one does with materialism, if one only brings against it what can be known from ordinary life, one will never refute it, because for ordinary life, materialism is right. Materialism can only be refuted through spiritual practice, by detaching the soul-spiritual from the bodily in direct experience. One visualizes – I called it imaginative visualization in the books mentioned – one visualizes, but outside of the body, whereby the “outside” is of course not to be imagined spatially, but independently of the body. This is one side of what one must get to know within anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in order to really build the bridge that cannot be built in the way we have described. What one attains in this way as the content of imaginative knowledge is not in the human body, but outside of it. This provides the practical explanation that our innermost being was in the spiritual-soul world before it clothed itself with this body. For one is not only outside of the body, one is outside of time, in which one lives with the body. In this way, one really experiences the prenatal, or let us say, the pre-physical conception in man. Just as a light from outside shines into the room, so our prenatal life shines into our present life in this imagination.

What shines in is not just thoughts, it has a living content. This living content reveals itself as something very special. It reveals itself as a certain, I might say, intellectual content. So, as we cultivate, sharpen and strengthen our imaginative life in the way I have described, we come out of ourselves into a will content that has something living about it at the same time. It is the will content that creates in us what clothes itself in the physical body, what we do not have through heredity, what we do not have at all from the physical world.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not arrive at the realization of immortality through speculative processing of ordinary life, but rather through the cultivation of a cognitive faculty that is initially not present in ordinary life. What is particularly important for us today, however, is that in this way we reach beyond our physical body, even beyond the time in which our physical body lives. There one arrives at ideas that are still difficult for most people today to imagine, but which must become an important link in the evolution of humanity towards the future.

And now something very strange comes to light when one not only exercises on one side, that of the life of imagination, but also when one exercises on the side of the life of will. We human beings live, I would say, as Faust goes through life, saying, “I have only run through the world.” We run through the world. Of course, we undergo a development between birth and death, from month to month, from year to year, from decade to decade; but we undergo this development by, as it were, abandoning ourselves to external objectivity. Hand on heart, how many people do it differently than letting themselves be carried by life, be it by childhood, where adults educate them, or by later life and its fate? They become more perfect because the world makes them more perfect. But what do most people do differently, other than just abandon themselves to the stream of life? However, by abandoning oneself to the stream of life, one does not come to the spiritual path meant here. It is necessary that one takes self-discipline into one's own hands, that one actually works on oneself in such a way that one not only develops through the life that fate brings one, but that one develops further by making up one's mind: you want to implant this or that attitude. Now one works on implanting this attitude. One can undertake something on a small scale, one can do something on a large scale. But there is a big difference between just carrying out something in yourself, in the training of your own nature, by abandoning yourself to life, or taking this training of your own self into your own hands. By taking it into your own hands, you get to know the will in its effectiveness; because you learn to recognize what kind of resistance stands in the way of this will when you want to cultivate it in self-discipline. Oh, one gets to know all kinds of things in this way, one strengthens above all one's own powers of the spiritual-soul, and one will very soon notice when one exercises such exercises in self-discipline – but one must practice them for years – that one then acquires inner powers. These inner powers are of such a nature that we do not find them in outer nature. They are of such a nature that we do not find them in the ordinary life of the soul that we have carried within us before our exercises. We discover these forces only when we engage in such an inner exercise with ourselves. These forces are capable of something very definite: they are capable of absorbing into our own self, in a much more conscious way, the moral impulses that otherwise arise in the soul as if they were instinctive, as if they were indefinite and separate from the cognitive faculties. But understand me correctly, not into the self that we develop in our body, but into the self that we develop when we step out of our body with our imagination in the way described earlier. We cannot get the true form of the moral impulses into our sensual body, into our sensual perception; but we get what stands there so isolated that Kant presented it quite isolated as the categorical imperative, we get that into our self that has separated from the body.

And then what I have described earlier as imagination, as pictorial representations, becomes imbued with what one can call the objective power of moral impulses; it becomes imbued with moral inspiration. We now recognize that what wells up in us as moral imperatives, as moral ideals, is not rooted only in us, but in the whole of the world. We learn, by being outside of our physical being, to recognize that which does not appear in its true form within the physical organization, but in this true form, we recognize it through imaginative beholding, as objective forces of the world.

Such a vision can open up to a person who, with his or her healthy common sense, properly takes in what the spiritual researcher is able to say from his vision of the spiritual world. Anyone who imbues themselves with such a vision feels something very special about what today's popular public lectures are. It may sound strange when I say it, but I would like to say: anyone who unreservedly absorbs this inspiration in their imagination, which coincides with the moral forces that are present in human life, and imagines how can see through something like this in the present through spiritual knowledge, would like to think: if only such knowledge could take hold of people, at least as strongly as they are seized when they hear that X-rays or wireless telegraphy have been found! In view of what is taking place in the soul of a spiritual scientist, one would like to say: it is very necessary for present-day civilization that people should come to appreciate the spiritual forces for human strengthening that can be found in this way, just as much as what can be useful and beneficial in the outer life.

I believe that we have touched on an important challenge of civilization in the present day. The spiritual-scientific insights are, I repeat, not speculation, they are experiences. And the fact that so few people today accept them is because most people allow themselves to be blinded by materialistic scientific views, let their own prejudices stand in their way, do not apply their common sense, and therefore cannot properly

examine what the spiritual scientist says. They always say: we cannot see for ourselves what the spiritual researcher says. I would like to know how many people who believe in the Venus transits have ever seen a Venus transit! I would like to know how many people who say that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen have ever observed in a laboratory how to determine that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen and so on. There is a logic of common sense. Through it one can check what the spiritual researcher says. I certainly cannot paint illusions before those who use their common sense, nor can I talk fantasies to them, because they can use their common sense to see whether I speak like a dreamer or whether I speak in logical contexts, whether I speak like someone who puts forward one idea after another, as one does even in the most exact science. Anyone who acquires such a healthy knowledge and understanding of human nature will be able to distinguish whether he has a fantasist in front of him or a person who, by knowing how to clothe his view in healthy logical forms and not giving the impression of a dreamer in other ways, is to be taken seriously. We have to decide many things in life in this way; why should we not decide in this way the most important thing: insight into the order of the world? There is no other way for someone who cannot become a spiritual researcher themselves – but everyone can become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent, as I have explained in the books mentioned – to determine this; because spiritual science is something that is experienced, something that must be experienced, not something that is only achieved through logical conclusions.

So if you study worldviews, I would say the combination of imagination and inspired morality, you get to know something else, you learn to recognize what the contradiction is between so-called natural causality, natural necessity, and the element in which man lives as in his freedom. For it is only in the element of freedom that we can live with our moral impulses. We look out into the outer nature. Overwhelming for the view of nature that has developed over the last three to four centuries is what is called the necessary connection of the following with the preceding, what is called general causality. Thus, nature, including the human condition, presents itself as if everything were seized by a natural necessity. But then our freedom would be in a sorry state; then we could not act differently than the natural necessity in us compels us to act. Freedom would be an impossibility if the world were as the scientific view that has become popular in the last three to four centuries wants it to be.

But once we have gained the point of view that I have just described, the point of view of observation outside the human body, then everything that is permeated by necessity is, so to speak, presented as a kind of natural body. And this natural body produces a natural soul and a natural spirit in all possible places. The natural body is, as it were, that which has cast and thrown off the nascent world; the natural spirit, the natural soul, is that which grows into the future.

Just as, when I see a corpse before me, this corpse no longer has the possibility of following anything other than the necessities that have been determined by the soul and spirit that dwelled in it, so too that which is corpse-like in external nature has nothing in it of impulses as necessities. But in every place, what grows into the future springs forth. Our natural science has only been accustomed to observing the natural corpse, and therefore sees only necessity everywhere. Spiritual science must be added to this. It will see the life that is sprouting and has sprouted everywhere.

Thus man is placed, on the one hand, in the realm of natural causality and, on the other, in that which is also there but contains no causality. This contains something that is the same as the element of freedom we experience inwardly. We experience this element of freedom as I have described it in my Philosophy of Freedom when we rise to inwardly transparent, pure thinking, which is actually an outflow of our will activity. You can find more details in my Philosophy of Freedom.

Thus, what we gain by creating a possibility of knowledge for ourselves outside the human body carries us into a world where the contrast between natural necessity and freedom becomes explicable. We get to know freedom itself in the world. We learn to feel ourselves in a world in which freedom resides.

When I describe something like this to you, I do not do it just to show you the content of what I am describing, but I want to present it to you show you how man can enter into a certain frame of mind by absorbing knowledge drawn from such regions, by invigorating himself with such knowledge.

Just as we are imbued with joy when we experience an extraordinarily joyful event, as some people, when they have drunk so and so much Moselle wine, are completely imbued with the mood that comes from the Moselle wine, so too can a person's entire state of mind be seized by something so truly spiritual that it permeates the person. When has a person's state of mind been gripped by something, at first only in the outer life, but then in a shadowy way? When the categorical imperative or conscience moves in the face of moral obligations. But the content of this conscience now becomes clear and it will also take on a different emotional nuance. For what has actually happened – whether a person is a spiritual researcher himself, or whether he absorbs what the spiritual researcher brings through his common sense and incorporates it into his soul as insights – what has happened to the person? He has merged with something, has united with something, with which one only comes together when one goes out of oneself, when one alienates oneself from oneself. You will find no better, more realistic definition of love and the feeling of love than that which can be described as the state of mind that overcomes one when one penetrates, free of the body, into the entity of the outer world. If moral imperatives otherwise appear as a constraint, they can be cast in such a form that they appear imbued with the same mood that must permeate spiritual scientific knowledge. These moral impulses, these moral imperatives, can learn from the soul-attitude that comes to us through the assimilation of spiritual science; they can be warmed through by what must live in spiritual science in the highest sense: by love.

I tried to show this again in my Philosophy of Freedom, that love is the most dignified impulse for moral action in man. Within the modern development of the spirit, these things have already been spoken of more instinctively than can be the case today, when we can, if we want, have progressed in spiritual science. Kant once spoke of the compelling duty, of the, I would say, humanly restraining categorical imperative, which allows no interference of any sympathy. What one does out of moral duty, one does because one must. Kant therefore says: Duty, you exalted, great name, you carry nothing with you that means ingratiation or the like, but only the strictest submission. Schiller did not consider this slavish submission to duty to be humane. And he countered this Kantian argument with what he expressed so beautifully and so magnificently in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”.

But we need only take a small epigram that Schiller coined in opposition to this rigorist, rigid concept of duty as propounded by Kant, and we have an important humanistic contrast with regard to the moral life: “I gladly serve my friends,” says Schiller, “but unfortunately I do it reluctantly. And so it often rankles me that I am not virtuous.” He believes that in the Kantian sense, one should not gladly serve one's friends, but rather submit to one's duty in obedience. But that which can make human life truly human is when we fulfill what Goethe says in a few monumental words: Duty, where we love what we command ourselves. But the mood to love what one commands oneself can only be kindled from that state of the human soul that comes about in the acquisition of spiritual science.

So when one delves into spiritual science, it is not something that runs alongside life, like preaching morals, but there is a development of strength within it that directly takes hold of the moral will. It is a grounding of morality. It is there that which pours into the human being the moral love. Spiritual science does not merely preach morals; spiritual science, when taken in its full seriousness, in its full power, grounds morality, but by not giving words of morality, but giving strength for virtuous love, for loving virtue.

Spiritual science is not just theory, it is life. And when one acquires spiritual science, it is not just a matter of reflection, it is something like absorbing life, like breathing. This is what spiritual science can offer modern civilization in the moral sphere, what it must offer. For in ancient times, as I indicated the day before yesterday, people also had a spiritual science, but it was instinctive. Where did the spiritual science of the ancient, millennia-old developing Oriental wisdom come from? It was a dull, dream-like visualization of the world. It came from human instincts, from human drives. This spiritual science was instinctive. People saw into nature through a kind of clairvoyance. And this clairvoyance was connected with their blood, was connected with their outer physicality. But the moral impulses of that time were also connected with this blood, with this outer physicality. Both came from one source. Humanity is undergoing a development and believes that we can be like people thousands of years ago; this is the same as believing that an adult man can be like a child. We can no longer stand on the standpoint of the primitive clairvoyant arts of the ancient Orient or ancient Egypt. We have advanced to Galileism, to Copernicanism. We have advanced to the point of observation that arises in the intellect. In those ancient oriental ways of looking at things, the intellect had not yet developed. But for that, we must also get the impulses for our moral action from the spirit, not from instinct. That is the worst thing today, that people, when they talk about ideals or impulses for life, always make everything absolute. When some party member or enthusiastic theorist appears on the scene today, dreaming of a thousand-year Reich, they say: I want this or that for humanity and they think to themselves that what they are saying is good for humanity in all times to come and for the whole earth. That it is good in the most absolute sense. Anyone who really looks into the life of developing humanity knows that what is good, what is valid for the world view, is always only appropriate for a certain age, that one must know the nature of this age. I have often said in earlier lectures here: spiritual science, anthroposophically oriented, as I express it here, does not imagine that it is something absolute. But it does believe that it speaks from the heart of the present and the near future, that it says for human souls what these human souls need in the present and in the near future. But she knows full well that this spiritual science: if in five hundred years someone will again speak of the great riddles of the world and of the affairs of humanity, he will speak in different tones, in a different way, because there is nothing absolute in this sense, nothing that lasts forever.

We are effective in life precisely because we are able to grasp it in its liveliness, in its metamorphosis, even where we stand in it. It is easier to set up absolute ideals in abstractions than to first get to know one's age and then, from the essence of this age, to speak what is appropriate for it. Then, when, through the assimilation of spiritual-scientific impulses, man, as has been said, permeates himself with what comes to him from the spirit, then he will know that he is spirit as man, is soul, then he will know that he lives through the world as spirit and soul. And then he will address every other human being as spirit and soul. One would be inclined to say that something tremendous will come about when this becomes spiritual science in human life, when it becomes an attitude that permeates human life to such an extent that one consciously encounters another human being as a riddle to be solved, because with each person one looks into infinity, into spiritual depths and abysses.

What emerges from this real observation of our fellow human beings as spirit and soul will give rise to social and moral forces that must form the basis for a real treatment of the burning social question of our time. I cannot imagine that those who see through the whole essence of the social question and at the same time let today's human condition take effect on them do not suffer certain mental anguish. We live in a time when the social question needs to be resolved in a certain way. We also live in a time when the promoters of the social order are inspired by the most anti-social instincts, when the demand for social organization of life seems to be in opposition to what lives in human souls as anti-social instincts. No matter how beautiful the programs may be that are drawn up, no matter how beautiful the ideas that are entertained as to what should be done to solve the social problem, a way to solve it can only be found when the spirit is seen, felt and sensed among people, when people treat each other with respect, protection, honor and love, and not just the physical part of their fellow human beings.

That is why I have called in my book “The Essentials of the Social Question” for the separation of spiritual life from the rest of social life, so that this spiritual life can be placed only on its own foundations, independent of the state and independent of economic impulses, purely of human nature. Only such a free spiritual life will truly spread social instincts, social views and attitudes among people. Social morality also depends on people taking in their spiritual state what can become them in the pursuit of what can be said from the research of spiritual science.

And that in which man must rest as a whole, worthy and dignified, so that he does not feel as a mere lonely wanderer, but as a member of the world, the religious element, can, in the sense that modern man needs it, only be kindled and fanned by that which is attained as an inner mood in the pursuit of spiritual science.

The events of the world order or of human development that religious feelings point to stand there as fact. The Mystery of Golgotha, for example, stands there as fact. What took place in Palestine at the beginning of our era, when the Christ came into the flesh in Jesus, is a fact. One must distinguish this fact, this objective fact, from the way in which man approaches the understanding and contemplation of such a fact. In the times when Christianity first spread, it was able to flow within the human attitudes that still came from the ancient Orient. What happened in Palestine as the event of Golgotha was understood with the ideas that in a certain way came from ancient times, from primitive human attitudes. For centuries, those who were able to do so were honest and sincere in their understanding of the event of Golgotha through such ideas. But then came the time when Galilean science arose, when Giordano Bruno overcame space in such a remarkable way for the human conception by showing that what is up there the blue firmament is only that which lives in ourselves, the boundaries that we ourselves set, while in a far-flung sea of space the stars are in infinity. All that Copernicus brought, all that has been brought to the newer world-picture of externals by the spirits who have lived up to the present day, has come. In this time men have inwardly become accustomed to a different way of looking at the world than that through which Christianity was first comprehended. In this time a new relation must also be won to the religious foundations of the evolution of mankind. The point is not to shake the facts on which the religious development of humanity is based. But the point is to appeal to modern human conscience in such a way that the man of today, out of his state of soul, can understand the Christ event as he must.

Those who say that a new path must also be sought to the old facts on religious ground mean it most honestly and reverently with regard to religion. Spiritual science, oriented towards anthroposophy, will be the best preparation for understanding Christianity or other religious content in a modern way. Those who do not honestly mean it with religious life do not admit this, because they want to preserve ways to the foundations of religious life to which man today, when he otherwise pays homage to the views of his time, cannot pay homage.

We have come to materialism in modern times. Certainly, different types of people have become the instigators of materialism; but among these people there are also those who have retained certain old habits of life in the development of humanity, habits of life that have led to a monopoly being given to the denominations for everything that can be said about the spirit and soul. Because the confessions alone had the right to decide what should be believed about the spirit and soul, natural science was left without a spirit to guide its research. Today, natural science believes that it has taken on this form because it had to, when researching nature, one must exclude the spirit. Oh no, natural science has become so because in earlier times it was forbidden to research nature with spirit, because the church had to decide about spirit and soul. And today, people continue the habits and even trumpet them as unprejudiced scientific judgment.

One only has to look at such researchers, who in the sense of materialistic research must be highly praised, as for example at the Jesuit priest and ant researcher Wasmann, the excellent materialistic researcher in the field of natural science, a researcher who, however, does not allow a grain of spirit to flow into what dogma is. Spirit and soul must be excluded. Therefore: external science is materialistic. The founders of the religions of the book are not in the least the originators of modern materialism. However paradoxical it may sound today, it is true: because the church did not allow the spirit to be brought into the contemplation of nature, natural science has become spiritless. The others have only adopted this as a habit. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must bring the spirit back into the study of nature. Let me say once more: this spiritual science is not based on the idea that spirit only makes occasional or brief visits, as in materialism, so that man can convince himself that there is a spirit. No, this spiritual science wants to show that in the small and large, in all material things, there is always and everywhere spirit, that one can always and everywhere follow the spirit. But because spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy always and everywhere investigates spirit in the most material form, it shows that there is no such thing as a material substance that is independent of spirit, just as there is no ice that is independent of water. Ice is transformed water, water that has cooled down; matter is spirit that has solidified. One must only explain it in the right way in each individual case. By showing, as everywhere, where there is matter, where there is outer life, there is spirit, and by leading man to connect with the ruling spirit, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science also provides the impetus for a real religious deepening today.

But one experiences many things in this field. You see, an experience of a man who is even well-intentioned is the following. Someone says: I cannot examine spiritual science as Steiner presents it; it may contain truths, but it should be kept very far from all religious life, because religious life must represent a direct relationship, a direct unity of man with God, far from all knowledge. And now the person in question says, very strangely: in our time we have too much of religious interest, of religious experience; people just always want to experience something religious. They want to have religious interest. You don't need any of that in religion. In religion, you only need direct unity with God. Away, says the churchman in question, with all religious interest, with all religious experience.

Now, an unprejudiced person must say today that even if people still long for an unclear religious experience, even if they still awaken an unclear religious interest in themselves, that is precisely the beginning of the yearning to really find a way into the religious element, as I have described it to you now. Whoever is honest and sincere about religious life should take hold of that urge for religious interest and religious experience. Instead, the clergyman condemns religious experience and religious interest. The question today is whether real religious understanding is to be found in those who speak as they do or in those who try to speak as I have spoken to you today. However, you also have to recognize people by their fruits.

In a recent lecture, a man who is also a churchman, but also a university professor, tried to refute anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Two young friends of mine were in this lecture, and they were able to speak afterwards in the discussion. Because of the context, these two young people, who had absorbed the impulses of spiritual science well, brought forward words from the Bible to prove how what is written in the Bible, if properly understood, agrees with what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has to say in this area. And at one point the chairman, who was a real churchman, didn't know what else to do but say, “Here Christ errs!” It could be retorted, “So you believe in a God who errs!” A fine religious sentiment. It produces strange blossoms today. Religious sentiment is only genuine when it enters into real moral life. There one certainly has strange experiences. I now find it pretty much the most disgusting thing that can be said about what appears as a social consequence in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, from beginning to end, and that it has been lied about by a whole series of German newspapers. But people today find it compatible with morality to say that the following can happen as a moral consequence of religious practice. Recently, a canon, that is, a churchman of the Catholic kind, gave a lecture in a city about the spiritual science presented here, and at the end he said: find out from the opposing writings what kind of worldview the man represents, because you are not allowed to read his own writings and those of his followers. The Pope has forbidden Catholics to read them.

The recommendation to get to know something from the evil-intentioned, from the most malevolent opposing writings, is the moral consequence of some religious practices of the present day. No wonder that what we have experienced in the last five years has poured out over the world from such underground life. Or was it not a surfacing of lies and hatred of humanity and much more that was rooted and still is rooted in the depths of human souls? Should not the fact that one has experienced give cause to seriously consider whether a thorough re-education is not necessary? Has not something like world-historical immorality come to the surface of world history in the present? Or is it religious sentiment that has been acted out in the world in the last five years? Those attitudes that have not had centuries, but millennia, to work on improving humanity, are now seeing their fruits! Nineteenth-century theology no longer recognizes anything of the spirituality of the event of Golgotha. This spirituality, this divine Christ in the man Jesus, will be rediscovered through the path of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. From there, he will again enter into human souls, to prompt them not merely to preach morality, but to establish within themselves the right instinctive motivation for moral action and work in the world. Is there not an obvious need for renewal and reconstruction? Does this necessity not emerge when one looks at the events of the last five to six years? Do we not see the fruits of that which has been living under the surface for centuries and has now come to the surface? Should this not be proof that thorough religious and moral work is necessary?

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to collaborate on this work, the necessity of which any unbiased person must admit today if they are not asleep in their soul within the great events of the time. And anyone who wants to criticize it, who wants to condemn it, should first raise the fundamental question: does it honestly want to collaborate on the real progress of humanity? And only when he has conscientiously informed himself about it so that he can form an opinion about it, will it become clear to what extent this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has the right to participate. Because it wants to honestly and sincerely participate in the necessary progress, in the necessary rethinking and relearning of humanity.