The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear friends,

We must now go on from the knowledge we have gained in one direction, of individuals who, although not exactly having intuition, do develop a perception of the spiritual world and who show certain aspects of behavior that to a physician may seem to be pathological but are in fact something quite different, something more. For as you have seen, the pathological condition remains with them in statu nascendi and there is continuous healing coming from the spirit. This is the case with such personalities as St. Teresa and Mechthild of Magdeburg,⁵ as well as with male visionaries.

When we study these individuals, we find that as a first stage the ego organization separates from the rest of the human organism. It then draws the astral body closely to it, in a certain sense away from the physical-etheric organism. This is in the waking state. What is the consequence of this? You can easily see that this puts the individual into a kind of dream condition. From a spiritual-scientific point of view the ego, by drawing the astral body to itself, is not allowing it to enter the physical and etheric bodies completely, and this brings about a kind of dream condition. But because of the special karmic density, both ego and astral body are strong, and they bring into the dream condition receptivity for the perception of the spiritual world. Dream is transformed into a state in which the individual is really able to see into the spiritual world and to feel the presence of spiritual beings.

Now let us look at the extreme opposite condition. Here the ego is weak, and the astral body draws it down too strongly into the rest of the organism—again in the waking state. Then there is not illumination, as with visionaries like St. Teresa, but the opposite: a darkening, a clouding, a lowering of consciousness—in the waking state—to a dream condition.

One cannot learn to know this second type of person in the way I have indicated for the first type. Individuals who feel the presence of spiritual beings, who come to such final stages as St. Teresa or Mechthild of Magdeburg, are much more numerous than one would think. One learns to know them if one has some particular opportunity or if one has cultivated the corresponding faculties. One learns to know them best by letting them tell about their conditions. They talk more interestingly than our ordinary contemporaries. Their narratives are much more interesting; above all, they speak of things one does not encounter in everyday life. So they are already interesting in the first stage.

The opposite individuals, those whose astral body is drawing the ego down, are also interesting if one lets them talk about themselves. To understand the first type of person requires the soul depth of the priest. To understand this second type of person—who often is even more interesting than the usual visionaries, who do not develop very far—really requires the sensitivity of a physician who comprehends the world with a good intelligence and a fair amount of intuition. For it is a matter of understanding what they do not tell one: what they do tell one is of little value. It is a matter of grasping what they say or do in such a way that one can think of it in relation to the human organism. Such persons, if one asks them a question, show a certain amount of stupidity, also unwillingness to answer a question. They begin to talk about something quite foreign to what one is asking. But if one catches hold of what they say about themselves—and some of them talk endlessly—one sometimes has the feeling that they possess an inner source of speech that gives them a special association of ideas such as the ordinary person does not have. They'll tell you if you let them ramble on—you mustn't ask questions, you must just snap up what they tell as it were by chance—For example a man might say: “Sure, ten years ago I was in a farmer's house and the wife gave me some coffee. The cup had red roses painted on it. She couldn't give me the coffee right away because she'd forgotten the sugar was in the kitchen and she had to go and get it. And she forgot the milk. She had to get the milk from down in the cellar. And then she poured almost half a cup of milk into the coffee. And she said, ‘My coffee is very good.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I think so too, farmer lady.’” And so he goes on and on. He tells incidents from far in his past, and goes into the most unbelievable details. You think, “If I only had a memory as good as his!”—forgetting that if you did have as good a memory you would be just like him! Now of course I'm telling it this way to portray a type, and to show a typical outcome. You must then think of the corresponding lighter variations that you meet in life, which the physician especially meets. I'm picturing an extreme case so that you can see the chief characteristics.

So when the astral body draws the ego organization in, there comes about a kind of power for reproducing details of memory as though automatically. It is always ready to repeat them; it is indifferent to logical connections and just tells things one after another. As a result one can't help wondering why the person hits upon one thing at one moment and another thing at the next. His tale can go on like this, for instance: “The farmer lady went to get the milk and while she was gone I looked in the corner of the room and there was a Madonna picture and it was the same one I'd seen thirty years earlier in another place but there I didn't have coffee but a very good soup.” It can happen that he comes entirely away from the first part of his narrative, but it can also happen that he returns to it again. One sees that this is not a logical memory but a space-and-time memory, extraordinarily exact, with a compulsive desire to tell everything. It is a memory in which, when one studies it more closely, one sees something very remarkable—one sees its deeper foundation. One notices that the person enjoys the sound of certain words he had associated with certain events while he was experiencing the events themselves, and now he takes pleasure in sounding these words again. He is in fact going back to speech that was kept in his memory while thoughts were pushed out—not completely, but almost so.

One also notices changes in the sphere of the will. To these one must pay attention, for now the beginning of real pathological conditions can be found. One will encounter the following—again, one must pay attention, for nothing much can be acclomplished if, for instance, one approaches such people to do this or that in order to observe them. For they become amazingly stubborn, they don't want to cooperate, won't answer questions, won't do anything. But if one can obtain an earlier case history and put those things together with what can be learned from the person's neighbors or a similar source, then one discovers, for instance, that such a person feels a terrific impulse at a definite time of the year to go wandering off somewhere. Often it is to the same region each year. And this inner impulse of will works so strongly that if one tries at such a moment to counteract it, just to discover what state the person is in, one can, for instance, notice the following.

Take a gourmand (there are gourmands even among such people as these!). Catch up with him while he is wandering and sit him down to a wonderful meal or two—to what gives him his greatest joy in life. You'll find that he will only stay put the first day, possibly a second day if he is still a good distance from the place he is heading for. He becomes restless, for he would love another fine meal, and he knows that the next place he'll reach has frightful food. He knows that, for his memory is unusually well developed. He becomes anxious. He wants to go on, for he cannot adapt his will to sudden external suggestions. Just as on the one hand he cannot adapt himself to immediate sense impressions but brings out every possible gem from his speech coffers, so on the other hand he cannot adapt himself to the necessity of surrendering his will-limb system to life's external circumstances. He wants just to follow his own will-impulses, which drive him from within in a very definite manner. One sees that he has almost completely lost the faculty of the ego organization that unites a human being with the outer world. His senses are dulled; his will-impulses prevent him from having a normal relation to the world, and he wants only to follow these will-impulses. This is the consequence of the ego being drawn down into the astral body.

So you see, such people could be helped very much if our medical understanding and the loving devotion of the theologians would work together—not, however, by some instant therapy, but in the following way. With these people one can observe a very definite situation. First we have to consider their life between the change of teeth and puberty. In that period, from a superficial point of view usually nothing abnormal is to be noticed. Everyone loves to see how clever these children are, how frightfully clever, what clever answers they can give, “just like an adult!” But one should be alert to this clever answering between the seventh and the fourteenth year. The children who are so excessively clever at this age are receiving something in this period before puberty that they should only have for their development after puberty. That is how the condition that I have just been describing comes about. The astral body should only be drawing the ego down after puberty, so that then the ego can completely unfold by the beginning of the twenties. With these children the astral body has already drawn the ego down after the change of teeth or in the ninth, tenth, eleventh year. We observe the abnormal cleverness and are delighted by it. By the time the late teens come, the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth years, the ego is stuck too deeply in the astral body. Then the condition is present that I have described, along with the symptoms that I indicated. So now if a child worries us in those early years by premature cleverness, it is a matter of giving certain kinds of treatment. First of all, there will be situations where physician and priest will have to confer with the teacher, so that the teacher will realize what should be done for that early life period. When we have finished this general characterization, we will make several detailed suggestions of what can actually be done. But first I'd like to carry this further, to indicate certain clear connections between the various themes we've been discussing.

Now the following can happen: the etheric body on its part can draw the astral body and ego in too strongly, so that they snap to an excessive degree into the physical and etheric bodies—again in the waking state. Then we have the situation that, seen from within, there is too much astrality in the organs; it cannot unite properly with them. This condition is the pathological mirror-picture of a visionary state such as, for instance, that of St. Teresa, such as her “first stage” as I described it, when she felt the presence of spiritual beings. We had there the bringing of waking-sleep into clear consciousness. And now in such persons as I am describing we have the opposite: dreams are carried over into waking life, with the accompanying symptoms I have mentioned. For it really happens in waking life: dreams do not appear, but an active “dream” life that discloses itself in the kind of speech I described, and in that extreme turning inward of the will impulses. That is the pathological mirror-picture of ordinary dreaming. Activity is there instead of the passivity that is the normal condition of dreaming.

Then we have the second stage, the drawing down of the ego and astral organization by the etheric body. The individual snaps too strongly with the ego, astral body, and etheric body into the physical organism, and the physical organism is not able to receive them into its single organs. Every possible organ has excess astrality that could not unite properly with the organ. Now we have the pathological mirror-picture of what we learned was the second stage for the individuals in whom sense impressions were in a certain sense stimulated from within. The direction was from within out to the senses. Now in this mirror-picture the direction is the opposite: it goes inward to the organs, it takes hold of the physical organism. And conditions appear that always appear when a physical or etheric organ is flooded by the astral body and ego organization and they cannot unite so that it could be called a proper saturation of the physical body by the etheric and astral bodies. Something is left over in the physical organs from the higher members of the organism. What in the other type of individuals poured into visions similar to a sense perception, with colors like a sense perception, visions that revealed the spiritual world, is in this case pouring itself inward, wanting to seize a physical organ. In the former situation there was a reaching out more externally, to the spiritual world beyond the sense world. In this case there is a reaching inward to a physical organ, manifesting in so-called “seizures,” all the different forms of real epilepsy or epileptoid symptoms (“temporal lobe seizures”). It can be explained as the snapping down of the ego and astral organization too strongly into the physical organism, which then succeeds in drawing the etheric body to itself. We see how the first condition advances to this second condition.

Hereby we see something in modern life that could be prevented if a real pastoral medicine would come about. People do not realize that the first condition is pathological; they simply find it interesting. And they only become aware of the second condition when seizures or other epileptic symptoms appear. The memory is now no longer expanding into detail, and the inner will-impulses are no longer increasing: now, since the astral and ego organizations are being pulled inward, and therefore the astral organization is failing to relate properly to certain organs, we find the memory is extinguished. Instead of the memory clinging to details as in the previous condition (details with no logical relation, that were just a running stream of unassociated pictures), now we find the memory disrupted, collapsed, a memory with gaps in it. This can become so extreme that the person lives in a kind of double consciousness. For instance, the memory clings to the upper organs—for the whole human being participates in memory—it takes hold of the upper organs, deserting the lower organs. Then this is reversed: the upper organs lose the memory activity and the lower organs receive it again. There is a rhythmic alteration. Such things can happen. And so these people have two streams of consciousness flowing parallel to each other. In one stream they remember everything that occurs when they are in the one condition; in the other stream they remember all the other things. And they never know in one condition of consciousness any of the content of the other condition of consciousness. Thus the memory deteriorates to a pathological level.

There we have the pathological mirror-picture of what we found in the second stage of the saint. Let us use that term, for modern medicine has no word for such a thing. Saints have a world around them that is visionary but that has a spiritual content. They reach into the spiritual world and receive inner impressions of it. People with pathological conditions—because their karma has given them a weak personality—are drawn down into the physical body. Instead of receiving visions of spiritual things they have epileptic conditions, empty gaps in consciousness, a lack of coherence in daily waking life, and so forth.

But now there can be still a third stage. This is the stage at which for karmic reasons the physical body has become even weaker, along with all the other members, so that earlier karmic forces no longer operate sufficiently in the physical body. With such a person it now comes about, not that ego, astral, and etheric body are pulled in by the physical body, but that something quite different happens. I shall have to describe it in the following way.

Think how it is with those who are extremely sensitive in the other direction, in the direction of the senses, that is, in the direction of the ego organization. How painfully sensitive they can be to all that flows in through the senses, to strong colors, lively sounds. Now precisely the opposite is the case with those whose physical body is weak from karmic causes. Such people are not hypersensitive from within outward, but are insensitive to their physical body and yield to an excessive degree to everything from the other side, the side of the will, that is, from the outer physical world. They succumb to heaviness, warmth, cold. All of this affects them not as it normally affects organic beings, but as it affects inorganic things. This then stifles the expression of the astral body and ego. They are hemmed in by the world and because of a weak physical body they cannot confront it with the necessary intensity; they are like a piece of the outer world although they are still inside their physical body. This is clearly the exact opposite of what we described as the third stage for the saint. The saint goes through pain that is then transformed into bliss, and then further to an experience of the spiritual world in its pure spirituality. This is called “rest in God” or “rest in the Spirit.”

But people who develop in the way I am now describing do not come to “rest in God” or “rest in the Spirit.” They come, although they are not conscious of it, to rest in the hidden occult forces of the physical world, forces against which they, as human beings, should actually be maintaining their independence. They develop the pathological mirror-picture of the third stage of the saint: the condition called idiocy, in which the human personality is lost, in which a person rests in outer nature, that is, in the hidden forces of nature. They can no longer manifest as a human being. They live only in the natural processes that go on within them, in what is a continuation of external natural processes, vegetable processes—eating food, digesting food, moving about in whatever way digestion and the food substances give an impulse to move. It is a complete waking sleep given over to the bodily functions, which are not under the control of the weak physical body but are active as processes in the outer world are active. Naturally, since these processes are working in a human being they do give human-like impulses. But these people are isolated from the normal human world because they are pushed into the physical world to too great a degree. Here we have to do with everything that is a pathological mirror-picture of the “rest in God.” We can call it “rest in Nature.” It has to do with the various paranoid states, with what in everyday life is called idiocy, while the previous conditions would be called mental retardation.

So we have seen the progression in the case of the saint from feeling the presence of spiritual beings to a third stage, being present in the spiritual world. And we have seen the opposite pathological states: first, psychopathological impairment as the first stage. We can be particularly aware of this stage when we encounter an abnormal wanderlust, as I described, connected with a memory that lacks logic. We see this progress to states of insanity, of which the early stage will still allow a person to pursue certain activities in external life. Then we see this progress to the third stage—which could also have been present in early childhood in statu nascendi.

The second stage can be due to the fact that no one has been able to recognize and counteract certain conditions in the first life period, between birth and change of teeth. Occasionally young children show, not exactly an excessive cleverness, but rather an unusual desire to learn things—something that should only appear after the change of teeth. This characteristic is normal between change of teeth and puberty. When it appears in the first life period, however, we should be concerned and we should find the means—physical, soul, and spiritual means—to cure what is already pathological. It is of utmost importance to investigate how certain capacities can be prevented from shining down into the first seven years of life that should really only emerge during the second seven years.

The third stage can reveal itself in two ways. In most cases a person brings it along as his or her karma—as you have seen from my descriptions. Already at birth, the person is in an abnormal condition because of some unusual stress in putting together the etheric body before entering the physical body. An etheric body was formed that does not want to penetrate the physical body completely, does not want to enter heart and stomach in the proper way but wants to flood them: in other words, an etheric body that carries the astral body and ego organization too strongly into the various organs. Already at birth or very soon after, we see facial or bodily deformities that can give us deep concern. This is called congenital mental retardation—but there is no such thing! There is only karmic mental retardation, related to the child's entire destiny. We will also speak about this more fully, so that you will see how an incarnation spent in such mental dullness can, under certain conditions, even have a beneficial place in a human being's karma, although it may mean misery in that one incarnation. There is need, after all, to regard things not merely from the point of view of finite life, but sub specie aeterni from the point of view of the immortal life of a human being. Then we would have a compassionate charity (caritas) and a wise one as well.

On the other hand, the second stage I have described can progress to the third stage in the following way. If in the first life period, between birth and change of teeth, not only the second life period shines in but also the third—the period between puberty and the twenties, when our organization should work into our organism—then we see a child in their fourth or fifth year with capacities that often delight the people. They say, “This child talks or acts like a twenty-year-old!” But this is what is happening: the ego organization is developing too early and is overpowering the physical body and making it weak. Idiocy will then appear in the latter part of the person's life. In this case it is not brought on by karma but has been acquired in this very life, and can only be balanced out karmically in later lives. If we observe life intelligently and have a good pastoral medicine to support us, we will be able to prevent it simply by providing the proper education for such a person's early childhood.

Whoever is vocationally drawn to observe such things should do so not only as individual symptoms—where, naturally, they should be studied with special love—but should also cultivate an understanding for them as a general phenomenon. Such a person should also develop an understanding for how these things are brought about.

We have seen how much of the pedagogy of former decades that a healthy pedagogy, such as the Waldorf school pedagogy wants to be, must definitely oppose. Yet these things have become extraordinarily precious to people. Sometimes our Waldorf school education must address certain things with tremendous severity, for instance, the Froebel kindergarten work, which is taken not from life but out of the intellect. Before the change of teeth it occupies children with activities that are not an imitation of life but are invented out of people's heads. This is putting into the child's first years of life something that should not be there until the next period, between change of teeth and puberty. This brings on the first stage of a pathological condition, a mild state of illness that often is not yet regarded as pathological. Also it were better, perhaps, not to label it pathological, otherwise so much else would have to be labeled pathological, which must in any case be recognized as “cultural phenomena.” These things cannot merely be criticized, they must be understood, so that one relates to them in the right way.

What we should see in front of us is wrong education in early childhood. The second life period has been carried into the first. This is the underlying cause creating a person's automatic speech and stirring the will from within outwards without adjusting in any degree to the surrounding world. Think of a situation such as I described as the first pathological stage: a slight tendency, caused by bad education, education going the wrong way. Then what happens? Wanderlust. This impulse is not entirely pathological, but it is characterized by the desire at a certain age to follow none but one's own ideas, not to bother about the world, to get free and away from one's surroundings, to wander at will! It is connected with other contemporary phenomena that also have their origin in a pathological education, or at least an education with a pathological tinge. You can observe this right now. Look at some of these youth groups. Their very existence belongs to the lifestyle of the last decades of the Kali Yuga.⁶ There is an affinity between this slightly pathological condition and the kind of life that the Kali Yuga brought about. These things all belong together. But they must be examined from these two aspects. If you look, you will easily see tinges of what I have been describing. They reveal themselves clearly in wanderlust, but that is an extreme symptom. Listen once in a while to their conversations! One despairs at their indifference to what one says to them. They repeat details eternally, details they describe as their “experience”; they come back again and again to the same thing.

Please don't misunderstand me! I'm certainly not pointing to any of these things in a trivial sense. My intention is to show you that such phenomena can only be really understood if one grasps clearly the connection I've been pointing to during these few days: that there is always a step into spiritual life and its extreme opposite—a step into the physical body. A further step into the spiritual world for the saint; a further step into the body, into seizures, for instance, for the psychopath. And so on. That is the relationship. If you consider how in the external world, in electricity and magnetism, one pole is always dependent upon the other, you will realize that in life too there can be such a relation between two poles of human development.

This, of course, cannot be seized upon clumsily, as happens today so often with the materialistic worldview. This fact, that there are polar opposites here and that there is a connection between the two poles, must be approached with delicacy. Then one will begin to see what can develop in the one and the other direction. One will finally learn in this way to see into the nature of the human being.

We will continue tomorrow.

• 5 . Mechthild von Magdeburg (1210–1286?). Cistercian nun. Her chief work was The Flowing Light of the Godhead.
• 6 . Kali Yuga, “the Dark Age,” reckoned from 3101 B.C. to A.D. 1899 in Steiner's esoteric chronology.

Today I should like to give another transitional lecture and indicate, from a certain aspect, the relation between exoteric and esoteric life; or, in other words, the transition from ordinary knowledge to knowledge attained through initiation. In this connection we must bear in mind what I have already explained in the News Sheet for Members when describing the Free College of Spiritual Science, namely: that the content of the Science of Initiation, expressed in appropriate words, can certainly be understood by everyone who is sufficiently free from prejudice. One should not say that a person must first be initiated himself in order to understand what the Science of Initiation has to give. Today, however, I should like to discuss the relationship of Anthroposophy to its source, which is the Science of Initiation itself. These three lectures will then form a kind of introduction to the composition of man (physical body, etheric body, etc.) which will be given next in the lectures of the General Anthroposophical Society.

When we consider the consciousness of present-day man, we are led to say: He stands here on the earth, and looks out on the wide spaces of the cosmos, but does not feel any connection between these and himself and what surrounds him on the earth, just consider how abstractly the sun is described by all who claim today to be the representatives of sound science. Consider, too, how these same savants describe the moon. Apart from the fact that the sun warms us in summer and leaves us cold in winter, that the moon is a favourite companion of lovers under certain conditions, how little thought is given to any connection between man, as he lives on earth, and the heavenly bodies.

Nevertheless, to know such connections, one need only develop a little that way of looking at things of which I spoke in the lecture before last. One need only develop a little understanding of what men once knew who stood nearer to the cosmos than we do today, who had a naive consciousness and an instinct for knowledge rather than an intellectual knowledge, but were able to contemplate the connection between individual heavenly bodies and the life and being of man.

Now this connection between man and the heavenly bodies must enter human consciousness again. This will come about if Anthroposophy is cultivated in the right way.

Man believes today that his destiny, his ‘Karma’, is here on the earth, and does not look to the stars for its indications. It is for Anthroposophy to grasp man's part in the super-sensible world. All that surrounds him, however, really belongs in the first place to his physical, or at most his etheric body. However far we look into the starry worlds we see the stars by their light. Now light, and all that we perceive in the world by light, is an etheric phenomenon. Thus, no matter how far we look in the universe, we do not get beyond the etheric by merely turning our gaze this way or that.

Man's being, however, reaches out into the super-sensible. He carries his super-sensible being from pre-earthly existence into the earthly realm, and carries it out again at death—out of the physical and the etheric too.

In reality there is in the whole of our environment on the earth or in the cosmos nothing of those worlds where man was before descending to earth and where he will be after passing through the gate of death. There are, however, two gates which lead from the physical and etheric worlds to the super-sensible. One is the moon, the other the sun. We only understand the sun and moon aright when we realise that they are gates to the super-sensible world, and have very much to do with what man experiences as his destiny on earth.

Consider, in the first place, the moon. The physicist knows nothing about the moon, except that it shows us reflected sunlight. He knows that moonlight is reflected sunlight, and gets no further. He does not take into account that the cosmic body visible to our physical eye as the moon, was once united with our earth-existence.

The moon was once a part of the earth. In primeval times it separated off from the earth and became an individual cosmic body out there in cosmic space. That it became a separate body is not, however, the important point; after all, that can also be interpreted as a physical fact. The important point is something essentially different.

If anyone, in full earnestness, extends his studies of human civilisation and culture back into remote times, he finds a wide-spread primeval wisdom. From this is derived much that endures today and is really much cleverer than what our science can explore. And whoever studies, for example, the Vedas of India or the Yoga philosophy from this point of view, will feel deep reverence for what he finds. It is presented in a more poetic form to which he is not accustomed today, but it fills him with deeper reverence the more deeply he studies it. If one does not approach these things in the dry, prosaic manner of today, but lets them work upon him in their stirring, yet profound, way, one comes to understand, even from a study of the documents, that Spiritual Science, Anthroposophy, must say from its own cognition: There was once a widespread primeval wisdom, though it did not appear in an intellectual, but rather in a poetic form.

The man of today, however, is constrained by his physical body to understand, through the instrumentality of his brain, what confronts him as wisdom. Now this brain, as his instrument of understanding, has only evolved in the course of long periods of time. It did not exist when the primeval wisdom was here on earth. Wisdom was then the possession of beings who did not live in a physical body.

Such beings were once companions of men. They were the great, original teachers of humanity, who have since disappeared from the earth. It is not only the physical moon that went out into cosmic space; these beings went with it. One who looks at the moon with real insight will say: There above is a world with beings in it who once lived among us on earth, and taught us in our former earthly lives; they have retired to the colony of the moon. Only when we study things in this way do we attain to truth.

Now today, within his physical body, man is only able to contemplate a very weak infusion—if I may use this term—of the primeval wisdom. In ancient times, when these beings were his teachers, man possessed something of this wisdom. He received it, not with his understanding but with his instinct, in the way by which higher beings could reveal themselves to him.

Thus everything connected with the moon points to man's past. Now, for the man of today, the past is over and done with; he no longer possesses it. Nevertheless, he bears it within him. And though we do not, in our present condition between birth and death, really encounter those beings of whom I spoke just now who were once earth-beings but are now moon-beings, we do meet them in our pre-earthly life, in the life between death and rebirth. That which we bear within us and which is always pointing to our earlier existence before birth—which speaks from our subconscious life and never attains full intellectual clarity, but has, on this account, much to do with our feelings and emotional disposition—this directs to the moonlight, not only the instinct of lovers, but the man who can value these sub-conscious impulses of human nature.

Our subconscious life, then, directs us to the moon. This may witness to the fact that the moon, with the beings who dwell there, was once united with the earth. In this sense the moon is a gate to the super-sensible; and one who studies it rightly will find, even in its external, physical configuration, support for this statement.

Just try to recall the way the moon, with its mountains, etc., is described. It all indicates that these mountains cannot be like those on the earth. The whole configuration of the moon is different. It is always stressed that the moon has neither air nor water, for example. The configuration of the moon is, in fact, like that of the earth before it became quite mineral.

I should have to read you a large number of my books and many passages from the lecture-cycles if I had to draw together what I am here presenting as a result of what has been worked out here. I only want to sketch, in an introductory way, how Anthroposophy proceeds. It leads us, in the manner described, from the physical to the spiritual again. Through Anthroposophy we learn to think in accordance with Nature. This men cannot do today.

For instance, men know today that the physical substance of their bodies is often changed in the course of life. We are continually ‘peeling off’. We cut our nails, for example; but every-thing within us is moving towards the surface until, at last, what was in the centre of the body reaches the surface and peels off-You must not believe, my dear friends, that the flesh and blood—or any physical substance—sitting on your chairs today would have sat on these chairs had you been here ten years ago. That substance has all been exchanged. What has remained? Your psycho-spiritual being. Today, at least, it is known to everyone that the people sitting here today would not have had the same muscles and bones had they sat here ten or twenty years ago; only, this is not always borne in mind.

Now, when people look up at the moon, they are conscious, to a certain extent, of its external, physical substance, and believe this was the same millions of years ago. As a matter of fact, it was just as little the same then as your present physical body was the same twenty years ago. Of course, the physical substances of the stars are not exchanged so quickly; still, they do not require so long a time as our physicists estimate in the case of the sun. These calculations are absolutely accurate—but they are wrong. I have often referred to this. You see, you may measure, for example, the changes in the inner configuration of a man's heart from month to month. You may estimate them over a period of three years. You may then calculate, quite correctly, what the configuration of his heart was three hundred years ago, or what it will be in three hundred years' time. You can arrive at some fine numbers; your calculations may be quite correct—only, his heart was not there three hundred years ago, and will not be there in three hundred years to come.

Geologists calculate in this fashion today. They study the strata of the earth, estimate the changes occurring in the course of centuries, multiply their figures and say: Twenty millions of years ago the earth was so and so. This is just the same sort of calculation, and just as sensible; for twenty million years ago all these strata were not yet there, and will no longer be in twenty million years to come.

However, apart from this, all the heavenly bodies are subject to metabolism, as man is. The substances we see when we look up at the moon were just as little there a certain number of centuries ago, as your own substances were on these chairs ten years ago. It is the beings themselves who sustain the moon, just as it is the psycho-spiritual in you that maintains your body. True, the physical moon once went out into cosmic space; but what went out is continually changing its substance, while the beings who inhabit the moon remain. It is these who form the permanent element of the moon—quite apart from their passage through repeated moon-lives.—But we will not go into that today.

When you study the moon in this way you acquire a kind of ‘science of the moon’. This science becomes inscribed in your heart, not merely in your head. You establish a relationship to the spiritual cosmos, and regard the moon as one gate thereto. Everything present in the depths of our being—not only the indefinite feelings of love, to mention these once again, but every-thing in the subconscious depths of our souls that results from earlier lives on earth—is connected with this ‘moon-existence’. From this we free ourselves in all that constitutes our present life. We are continually doing so. When we see or hear outer things with our senses, when we exercise our understanding—i.e. when we disregard what comes from the depths of our soul life and is clearly recognised as part of an active past, and turn to what draws us again and again into the present—then we are directed to the ‘sun-existence’, just as we are directed by the past to the moon-existence. Only, the sun works on us by way of our physical bodies. If we want to acquire independently, of our own free will, what the sun gives us, we have to exert that will: we must set our intellect in action. Yet, with all that we human beings of today understand through our busy intellect and our reason, we do not get nearly so far as we do instinctively—simply through there being a sun in the universe.

Everyone knows, or can, at least, know, that the sun not only wakens us every morning, calling us from darkness to light, but is the source of the forces of growth within us, including those of the soul. That which works in these soul-forces from out of the past is connected with the moon, but that which works within the present and which we shall only really acquire in the future through our own free choice, depends on the sun.

The moon points to our past, the sun to the future. We look up to the two luminaries, that of the day and that of the night, and observe the relationship between them, for they send us the same light. Then we look into ourselves and observe all that is woven into our destiny through past experiences undergone as men; in this we see our inner moon-existence. And in all that continually approaches us in the present and determines our destiny, in all that works on from the present into the future we see the sun-element. We see how past and future are weaving together in human destiny.

Further: we can study this connection between past and future more closely. Suppose two people come together for some common task at a certain time of life. One who does not think deeply about such things may say: He and I were both at Müllheim (let us say), and we met there. He thinks no more about it. But one who thinks more deeply may follow up the lives of these two who came together when one was, perhaps, thirty years of age and the other twenty-five. He will see in what a wonderful and extraordinary way the lives of these two people have developed, step by step, from birth onwards, so as to bring them together at this place. One may say, indeed, that people find their way to one another from the most distant places to meet about half-way through their lives. It is as if they had arranged all their ways with this end in view. Of course, they could not have done this consciously, for they had not seen one another before—or, at least, had not formed such a judgment of one another as would make their meeting significant. All these things take place in the unconscious. We travel paths leading to important turning points, or periods in our lives, and do so in deep unconsciousness. It is from these depths that—in the first place—destiny is woven. (Now we begin to understand people like Goethe's friend Knebel, whose experience of life was deep and varied and who said in his old age: On looking back on my life it seems as if every step had been so ordained that I had to arrive finally at a definite point.) Then the moment comes, however, when the relationship between these two people takes place in full consciousness. They learn to know one another, one another's temperament and character, they feel sympathy or antipathy for one another, etc. Now, if we examine the connection between their relationship and the cosmos, we find that moon-forces were active on the paths taken by these two people up to the moment of meeting. At this point the action of the sun begins. They now enter, to a certain extent, the bright light of the sun's activity. What follows is accompanied by their own consciousness; the future begins to illuminate the past, as the sun the moon. At the same time the past illuminates man's future, as the moon the earth with reflected light.

But the question now is, whether we can distinguish the solar from the lunar in man's life. Well, even our feelings can distinguish much, if we study them more deeply. Even in childhood and early life we come into contact with people whose relation-ship to us remains external; we ‘pass them by’ as they us, even though they may have a good deal to do with us. You all went to school, but only very few of you can say you had teachers with whom you had any deeper relationship. Still, there will be one or two of you who can say: Yes, I had a teacher who made such an impression on me that I wanted to be like him; or: He made such an impression on me that I wished him off the face of the earth. It may have been either sympathy or antipathy.

There are others, again, who only affect our understanding, so to speak, or our aesthetic sense at most. Just think how often it happens that we learn to know somebody and, meeting others who know him too, we all agree that he is a splendid fellow—or a terrible person. This is an aesthetic judgment, or an intellectual one. But there is another kind of judgment. There are human relationships that do not merely run their course in the above two ways, but affect the will; and this to such an extent that we do not merely say, as in childhood, that we would like to become like this person or that we wish him off the face of the earth—to mention extreme cases—but we are affected in the unconscious depths of our will life, and say: We not only look upon this man as good or bad, clever or foolish, etc., but we would like to do, of our own accord, what his will wills; we would rather not exert our intellect in order to judge him. We would like to translate into action the impression he has made upon us.

Thus there are these two kinds of human relationships: those that affect our intellect, or, at most, our aesthetic sense; and those that affect our will, acting on the deeper life of our soul. What does that mean? Well, if people act on our will, if we do not merely feel strong sympathy or antipathy towards then but would like to give expression to our sympathy or antipathy through our will, they were somehow connected with us in our previous life. If people only impress our intellect or our aesthetic sense, they are entering our life without such a previous connection.

You can see from this that in human life, especially in human destiny, past and present work together into the future. For what we experience with others, even though they have no effect on our will, will come to expression in a future life on earth.

Just as the sun and moon circle in the same path and are interrelated, so, in the human being, are past and future, moon element and sun-element. And we can come to look upon the sun and moon, not as external luminaries, but as mirrors reflecting, in the wide spaces of the cosmos, the interweaving of our destiny. Past and future continually interpenetrate and interweave in our destinies, just as moonlight passes into sunlight, and sunlight into moonlight. Indeed, the interweaving takes place in every case of human relationship.

Consider the paths travelled by two people, the one for thirty years, the other for twenty-five. They meet here, let us say. All they have passed through until now belongs to the moon-element in man. Now, however, through learning to know one another, through confronting one another consciously, they enter the sun-element of destiny, and weave past and future together, thus forming their destiny for future lives on earth.

Thus, from the way destiny approaches man we may see how, in the one case, a person acts on another through intellect or aesthetic sense, in another case through the will and the life of feeling connected therewith.

As I have said, I only want today to sketch these things in a brief, fragmentary way in order to show you the path of Anthroposophy and of its source—the Science of Initiation. We shall study the details in the future. As far as I have gone at present however, everyone can have direct, first-hand knowledge of these things. He can study his destiny with understanding. That peculiar, intimate, inner relationship in which another person speaks from within us—as it were—indicates tics of destiny from the past. If I feel that someone ‘grips’ me, not merely in my senses and intellect but inwardly, so that my will is engaged in the very way he grips me, he is connected with me by ties of destiny from the past. Such ties can be felt with a finer, more intimate sense.

One experiences this in an essentially different way, however, when one attains a certain stage of the path described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, or in the second part of my Occult Science. When one attains initiation another person with whom one has ties of destiny is not only experienced in such a way that one says: He acts on my will, he acts in my will. One actually experiences the other personality as really within oneself. If an initiate meets another person with whom he has ties of destiny, this other person is present within him with independent speech and gestures—speaks from out of him, as one who stands beside us speaks to us. Thus the tics of destiny, which are usually felt only in the will, take such a form for the initiate that the other person speaks from out of the initiate himself. For one possessing the Science of Initiation a karmic encounter means, then, that the other person works not only on his will, but as strongly as a man standing beside him.

You see, what ordinary consciousness can only surmise by way of feeling and will, is raised for higher consciousness to full reality. You may say: That means that the initiate walks about with a group of people inside him with whom he is connected through destiny. That is actually the case. The attainment of knowledge is not a mere matter of learning to say more than other people while talking just as they do; it really means enlarging one's world.

Thus, if one intends to speak on the way Karma operates in human lives, fashioning mutual destiny, one must be able to confirm what one says from a knowledge of how others speak in one, how they really become a part of oneself.

If we then describe these things, they need not remain out of reach of one who has not been initiated; for he can and—if sane and healthy—will say: True, I don't hear a person speaking within me, if we are connected through destiny; but I feel him in my will, in the way he stirs it. One learns to understand this effect on the will. One learns to understand what is experienced in ordinary consciousness but cannot be understood unless we hear it described, in its true concrete significance, out of the Science of Initiation.

It was my special concern today to explain that this feeling of karmic connection with another, which otherwise enters consciousness in a kind of nebulous way, becomes a concrete experience for the initiate. And all that the Science of Initiation can achieve, can be described in this way.

There are many other indications of our karmic connections with other people. Some of you will know, if you study life, that we meet many people of whom we do not dream; we can live long with them without doing so. We meet others, however, of whom we dream constantly. We have hardly seen them when we dream of them the next night, and they enter our dreams again and again.

Now dreams play a special part in the subconscious life. When we dream of people on first meeting them, there is certainly a karmic connection between us. People of whom we cannot dream make only a slight impression on our senses; we meet them but have no karmic connection with them.

What lives in the depths of our will is, indeed, like a waking dream; but it becomes concrete, fully conscious experience for the initiate. Hence he hears those with whom he has a karmic connection speaking from within him. Of course he remains sensible and does not walk about speaking, as an initiate, from out of others when he converses with all sorts of people. Nevertheless, he does accustom himself, under certain conditions, to hold converse with persons connected with him through Karma. This converse takes place in a quite concrete way, even when he is not with them in space, and things of real significance come to light. However, I shall describe these things at some future time.

Thus we can deepen our consciousness on looking out into the wide spaces of the cosmos, and on looking into man himself. And the more we look into man himself, the more we learn to understand what the wide cosmic spaces contain. Then we say to ourselves: I no longer see merely shining discs or orbs in stellar space, but what I see in the outer cosmos appears to me as cosmically woven destiny. Human destinies on earth are now seen to be images of cosmically woven destinies. And when we realise clearly that the substance of a heavenly body is changing—is being exchanged, just as is the bodily substance of man—we know there is no sense in merely speaking of abstract laws of Nature. These abstract laws must not be regarded as giving us knowledge. It is just as in life insurance companies. To what do these owe their existence? To the fact that they can calculate a man's ‘expectation of life’. One takes a certain number of people aged twenty-five and, from the number of these who reach the age of thirty, etc., one can calculate the probable number of years a man of thirty will live. He is insured accordingly. Now, one gets on quite well with such insurance, for the laws of insurance hold. But it would not occur to anyone to apply these laws to his innermost being; otherwise he would say: I insured myself at the age of thirty, because my ‘probable death’ would occur at the age of fifty-five. I must die at fifty-five. He would never draw this conclusion and act accordingly, although the calculation is quite correct. The correctness of the reasoning has no significance for actual life.

Now we only arrive at laws of nature by calculations. They are good for technical applications; they enable us to construct machines, just as we can insure people in accordance with certain natural laws. But they do not lead us into the true essence of things, for only real cognition of the beings themselves can do that.

The laws of Nature, as calculated by astronomers for the heavens, are like insurance laws in human life. What a real Science of Initiation discovers about the being of the sun or moon is like my funding someone still living in ten years' time when, according to his insurance policy, he should have died long before. It lay in his inner being to live on.

Fundamentally speaking, actual events have nothing at all to do with the laws of Nature. These laws are good for applying natural forces; real Being, however, must be known through the Science of Initiation.

This concludes the third of the lectures in which I only wanted to indicate what the tone of Anthroposophy should be. We shall now begin to describe the constitution of man somewhat differently from the way it is done in my “Theosophy.” In doing this we shall build up an Anthroposophical Science, an Anthroposophical Knowledge from its foundations. You may regard the three lectures I have just given as illustrations of the difference in tone between the speech of ordinary consciousness and the speech of that consciousness which leads into the real being of things.

[ 1 ] Two lectures which I had to deliver shortly after the beginning of the Weimar phase of my life are associated for me with important memories. One took place in Weimar, and was entitled, “Fancy as the Creatress of Culture”; it preceded the conversation I have described with Herman Grimm concerning his views on the history of the evolution of fantasy.

Before I delivered the lecture, I summarized in my own mind what I could say on the basis of my spiritual experience concerning the streaming of the real spiritual world into the human fantasy. What lives in the imagination seemed to me to be stimulated by human sense-experiences only as regards its material form. That which is truly creative in the genuine forms of fantasy seemed to me a reflection of the spiritual world existing outside of man. I desired to show that fantasy is the gateway through which the Beings of the spiritual world work creatively indirectly through man in the evolution of civilizations.

[ 2 ] Because I had arranged my ideas for such a lecture toward this objective, Herman Grimm's exposition made a deep impression upon me. He felt no need whatever to seek for the supersensible sources of fantasy; what enters the human mind as fantasy he took as matter of fact and proposed to observe this in the course of its evolution

[ 3 ] I first set forth one pole of the fantasy – dream-life. I showed how external sense-experiences are perceived, because of the subdued life of the consciousness, not as in waking life, but transformed into symbolic pictures; how inner bodily processes are experienced through the same symbolization; how experiences rise in consciousness, not in sober memories, but in a way that indicates a powerful elaboration of the thing experienced in the depths of the soul-life.

[ 4 ] In dreams consciousness is subdued; it sinks down into the sensible physical reality and perceives the control within the sensible existence of something spiritual which during ordinary awareness remains concealed, and which even to the half-sleeping consciousness appears only as a play of colours from the shallows of the sensible.

[ 5 ] In fantasy the mind rises as far above the ordinary state of consciousness as it sinks below this in dream-life. The spiritual which is concealed within the sense-existence does not appear, yet the spiritual influences man; but he cannot grasp this in its very own form but pictures it unconsciously to himself by means of a soul-content which he borrows from the sense-world. The consciousness does not penetrate all the way to the perception of the spiritual; but it experiences this in pictures which draw their material from the sense. world. In this way the genuine creations of fantasy are evidences of the spiritual world even though this does not penetrate into human consciousness.

[ 6 ] By means of this lecture I wished to show one of the ways in which the Beings of the spiritual world influence the evolution of life. It was thus that I strove to discover means by which I might bring to expression the spiritual world I experienced and yet in some way connect it with what is adapted to the ordinary consciousness. I was of the opinion that it was necessary to speak of the spirit, but that the forms in which one is accustomed to express oneself in this scientific age must be respected.

[ 7 ] The other lecture I gave in Vienna at the invitation of the Scientific Club. It dealt with the possibility of a monistic conception of the world on the basis of a real knowledge of the spiritual. There I set forth that man by means of his senses grasps the physical side of reality “from without” and by means of his spiritual awareness grasps its spiritual side “from within,” so that all which is experienced appears as an unified world in which the sensible manifests the spirit and the spirit reveals itself creatively in the sensible.

[ 8 ] This occurred at the time when Haeckel had formulated his own monistic philosophy through his lecture on Monismus als Band Zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft.¹ Haeckel, who knew of my being in Weimar, sent me a copy of his speech. I reciprocated his courtesy by sending him the issue of the newspaper in which my lecture at Vienna was printed. Whoever reads this lecture must see how opposed I then was to the monism advanced by Haeckel when occasion rose for me to express what a man has to say about this monism for whom the spiritual world is something into which he sees.

But there was at that time another occasion for me to give thought to monism in the colouring given it by Haeckel. He seemed to me a phenomenon of the scientific age. Philosophers saw in Haeckel the philosophical dilettante, who really knew nothing except the forms of living creatures to which he applied the ideas of Darwin in the order in which he had rightly arranged them, and who explained boldly that nothing further is required for the forming of a world-conception than what can be grasped by a Darwinian observer of nature. Students of nature saw in Haeckel a fantastic person who drew from natural-scientific observations conclusions which were arbitrary.

[ 9 ] Since my work required that I should realize what was the inner temper of thought about the world and man, about nature and spirit, as this had been dominant a hundred years earlier in Jena, when Goethe interjected his natural-scientific ideas into this thought, I saw in Haeckel an illustration of what was then thought in this direction. Goethe's relation to the views of nature belonging to his period I had to visualize inwardly in all its details during my work. At the place in Jena from which came the important stimulations to Goethe to formulate his ideas on natural phenomena and the being of nature, Haeckel was at work a century later with the assertion that he could draw from a knowledge of nature the standard for a conception of the world.

[ 10 ] In addition it happened that, at one of the first meetings of the Goethe Society in which I participated during my work at Weimar, Helmholtz read a paper on Goethes Vorahnungen kommender naturwissenschaftlicher Ideen.² I was then informed of much in later natural-scientific ideas which Goethe had “previsioned” by reason of fortunate inspirations; but it was also pointed out how Goethe's errors in this field bore upon his theory of colour.

[ 11 ] When I turned my attention to Haeckel, I wished always to set before my mind Goethe's own judgment of the evolution of natural-scientific views in the century following that which saw the development of his own; as I listened to Helmholtz I had before my mind the judgment of Goethe by this evolution.

[ 12 ] I could not then do otherwise than say to myself that, if one thought of the being of nature in the dominant spiritual temper of that time, that must necessarily result which Haeckel thought in utter philosophical naïveté; those who opposed him showed everywhere that they restricted themselves to mere sense-perception and would avoid the further evolution of this perception by means of thinking.

[ 13 ] I had at first no occasion to become personally acquainted with Haeckel, about whom I was impelled to think very much. Then his sixtieth birthday came. I was invited to share in the brilliant festival which was being arranged in Jena. The human element in this festival attracted me. During the banquet Haeckel's son, whom I had come to know at Weimar, where he was attending the school of painting, came to me and said that his father wished to have me presented to him. The son then did this.

[ 14 ] Thus I became personally acquainted with Haeckel. He was a fascinating personality. A pair of eyes which looked naïvely into the world, so mild that one had the feeling that this look must break when the sharpness of thought penetrated through. This look could endure only sense-impressions, not thoughts which reveal themselves in things and occurrences. Every movement of Haeckel's was directed to the purpose of admitting what the senses expressed, not to permit the ruling thoughts to reveal themselves in the senses. I understood why Haeckel liked so much to paint. He surrendered himself to physical vision. Where he ought to have begun to think, there he ceased to unfold the activity of his mind and preferred to fix by means of his brush what he had seen.

Such was the very being of Haeckel. Had he merely unfolded this, something human unusually stimulating would have been thus revealed.

[ 15 ] But in one corner of his soul something stirred which was wilfully determined to enforce itself as a definite thought content – something derived from quite another attitude toward the world than his sense for nature. The tendency of a previous earthly life, with a fanatical turn directed toward something quite other than nature, craved the satisfaction of its passion. Religious politics vitally manifested itself from the lower part of the soul and made use of ideas of nature for its self-expression.

[ 16 ] In such contradictory fashion lived two beings in Haeckel. A man with mild love-filled sense for nature and in the background something like a shadowy being with incompletely thought-out, narrowly limited ideas breathing out fanaticism. When Haeckel spoke, it was with difficulty that he permitted the fanaticism to pour forth into his words; it was as if the softness which he naturally desired blunted in speech a hidden demonic something. A human riddle which one could but love when one beheld it, but about which one could often speak in wrath when it expressed opinions. Thus I saw Haeckel before me as he was then preparing in the nineties of the last century what led later to the furious spiritual battle that raged over his tendency of thought at the turning-point between the centuries.

[ 17 ] Among the visitors to Weimar was Heinrich von Treitschke. I had the opportunity of meeting him when Suphan included me among the guests invited to meet Treitschke at luncheon. I received a deep impression from this very comprehensive personality. Treitschke was quite deaf. Others conversed with him by writing whatever they wished to say on a little tablet which Treitschke would hand them. The effect of this was that in any company where he chanced to be his person became the central point. When one had written down something, he then talked about this without the development of a real conversation. He was present in a far more intensive way for the others than were these for him. This had passed over into his whole attitude of mind. He spoke without having to reckon upon objections such as meet another when imparting his thoughts in a group of men. It could clearly be seen how this fact had fixed its roots in his self-consciousness. Since he could not hear any opposition to his thoughts, he was strongly impressed with the worth of what he himself thought.

The first question that Treitschke addressed to me was to ask where I came from. I replied that I was an Austrian. Treitschke responded: “The Austrians are either entirely good and gifted men, or else rascals.” He said such things as this, and one became aware that the loneliness in which his mind dwelt because of the deafness drove him to paradoxes, and found in these a satisfaction. Luncheon guests usually remained at Suphan's the whole afternoon. So it was this time also when Treitschke was among them. One could see this personality unfold itself. The broad-shouldered man had something in his spiritual personality also through which he impressed himself upon a wide circle of his fellow-men. One could not say that Treitschke lectured. For everything he said bore a personal character. An earnest craving to express himself was manifest in every word. How commanding was his tone even when he was only narrating something! He wished his words to lay hold upon the emotions of the other person also. An unusual fire which sparkled from his eyes accompanied his assertions. The conversation touched upon Moltke's conception of the world as this had found expression in his memoirs. Treitschke objected to the impersonal way – suggestive of mathematical thinking – in which Moltke conceived world-phenomena. He could not judge things otherwise than with a ground-tone of strongly personal sympathies and antipathies. Men like Treitschke, who stick so fast in their own personalities, can make an impression on other men only when the personal element is at the same time both significant and also interwoven deeply with the things they are setting forth. This was true of Treitschke. When he spoke of something historical, he discoursed as if everything were in the present and he were at hand with all his pleasure and all his displeasure. One listened to the man, one received the impression of the personal in unmitigated strength; but one gained no relation to the content of what he said.

[ 18 ] With another visitor to Weimar I came into a friendly intimacy. This was Ludwig Laistner. A fine personality he was, in harmony with himself, living in the spiritual in the most beautiful way. He was at the time literary adviser to the Cotta publishing house, and as such he had to work at the Goethe Institute. I was able to spend with him almost all the leisure time we had. His chief work, Das Rätzel des Sphinx³ was then already before the world. It is a sort of history of myths. He follows his own road in the interpretation of myths. Our conversation dealt very much with the field which is treated in that very important book. Laistner rejected all interpretation of fairy-lore, of the mythical, which maintains the more or less consciously symbolizing fantasy. He sees in dreams, and especially in nightmares, the original source of the myth-making conception of nature formed by the folk. The oppressive nightmare which appears to the dreamer as a tormenting questioning spirit becomes the incubus, the elf, the demonic tormentor; the whole troop of the spirits arise for Ludwig Laistner out of the dreaming man. The riddling sphinx is only another metamorphosed form of the simple midday-woman who appears to the sleeper in the fields at midday and puts questions to him which he has to answer. All that the dream creates by way of strange and fanciful and meaningful, tormenting and delightful shapes – all this Ludwig Laistner traces out in order to point to it again in the images of fairy-lore and myths. In every conversation I had the feeling: “The man could so easily find the way from the creative subconscious in man, which works in the dream-world, to the super-conscious which touches the real world of spirit.” He listened to my explanations of this sort with the utmost good will; opposed nothing against these, but gained no inner relationship to them. In this matter he, too, was hindered by the fear belonging to that time of losing the “scientific” ground from under him the moment he should enter into the spiritual as such. But Ludwig Laistner stood in a special relationship to art and poetry by reason of the fact that he traced the mythical into the real experiences of dreams and not into the abstraction-creating imagination. Everything creative in man thus took on, according to his view, a world-significance. In his rare inner serenity and mental self-sufficiency he was a discriminating poetic personality. His utterances in regard to every sort of thing had a certain poetic quality. Conceptions which are unpoetic he simply did not know at all. In Weimar, and later during a visit in Stuttgart, when I had the pleasure of living near him, I spent the most delightful hours in his company. Beside him stood his wife, who entered completely into his spiritual nature. For her Ludwig Laistner was really all that bound her to the world. He lived only a short while after his sojourn at Weimar. The wife followed her vanished husband after an exceedingly brief interval; the world was empty for her when Ludwig Laistner was no longer in it. An altogether lovable woman, in the true sense of that word. She always knew how to be absent when she feared she might disturb; she never failed when there was anything requiring her care. Like a mother she stood by the side of Ludwig Laistner, whose refined spirituality was contained in a very delicate body.

[ 19 ] With Ludwig Laistner I could talk as with few other persons regarding the idealism of the German philosophers-Fichte, Hegel, Schelling. He had a vital sense for the reality of the ideal that lived in these philosophers. When I spoke to him once of my solicitude regarding the one-sidedness of the natural-scientific world-conception, he said: “Those people have no sense of the significance of the creative in the human soul. They do not know that in this creative within man there lives a cosmic content just as in the phenomena of nature.”

[ 20 ] In dealing with the literary and the artistic, Ludwig Laistner did not lose touch with the directly human. Very distinctive were his bearing and approach; whoever possessed an understanding for such things felt the significant element in his personality very quickly after forming his acquaintance. The official researchers in mythology were opposed to his view; they scarcely paid any attention to it. Thus there remained scarcely observed at all in the spiritual life of the time a man to whom by reason of his inner worth belonged the very first place. From his book The Riddle of the Sphinx the science of mythology might have received entirely fresh impulses; it remained almost wholly without influence. Ludwig Laistner had at that time to undertake for the Cotta Bibliothek der Weltliteratur editions of the complete works of Schopenhauer and of selections from Jean Paul. He entrusted both of these to me. And thus I had to unite with my Weimar tasks the thorough working through of the pessimistic philosopher and of the paradoxical genius, Jean Paul. I devoted myself to both undertakings with the deepest interest, because I loved to transplant myself into attitudes of mind utterly opposed to my own. Ludwig Laistner had no ulterior motive in making me the editor of Schopenhauer and of Jean Paul; the assignment was due entirely to the conversations we had held about the two persons. Indeed, the thought of entrusting these tasks to me came to him during a conversation.

[ 21 ] There were then living in Weimar Hans Olden and Frau Grete Olden. They gathered about them a special group of those who desired to live in “the present” in contrast with everything which considered the very central point in a spiritual existence to consist in the furtherance, through the Goethe Institute and the Goethe Society, of a life that was past. Into this group I was admitted; and I look back upon all that I experienced there with great appreciation. [ 22 ] However fixed one's idea might have become in the Institute through association with the “philological method,” they must again become free and fluid when one entered the home of the Oldens, where every one was received with interest who had the idea in his head that a new way of thinking must find place among men, but likewise every one who in the depths of his soul found painful many an old cultural prejudice and was thinking about future ideals. [ 23 ] Hans Olden was known to the world as the author of slight theatrical pieces such as Die Offizielle Frau⁴ in his Weimar circle at that time his life expressed itself quite otherwise.

He had a heart receptive to the highest interests which were manifest in the spiritual life of that time. What lived in the plays of Ibsen, in what thundered in the spirit of Nietzsche – in regard to these things there were endless discussions in his house, but always stimulating.

[ 24 ] Gabrielle Reuter, who was then writing the novel, Aus guter Familie⁵ which soon afterward won for her by storm her literary place, was a member of Olden's circle, and filled it with earnest questions of all sorts which were then stirring men in reference to the life of woman.

[ 25 ] Hans Olden could be captivating when, with his rather sceptical way of thinking, he instantly put an end to a conversation which was about to lose itself in sentimentality; but he himself could become sentimental when others fell into easy-going ways. The desire in this circle was to evolve the deepest “understanding” for everything “human”; but criticism was unsparing of whatever did not suit one in this or that human thing. Hans Olden was penetrated through and through with the idea that it was the only sensible course for a man to apply himself through literature or art to the great ideals about which there was a good deal of talk in his circle; but he was too scornful of men to realize his ideals in his own productions. He thought that ideals could live in a social circle of select men, but that any one would be “childish” who should think that he could bring forth such ideals before a greater public. At that very time he was making a beginning toward the artistic realization of wider interests by means of his Klüge Käte.⁶ This play had only a moderate success in Weimar. This confirmed him in the view that one should give to the public that to which it has now attained, and should keep one's higher interests for the small circle which has an understanding for these.

[ 26 ] To a far greater degree than Hans Olden was Frau Grete Olden filled with this idea. She was the most complete feminine sceptic in her estimation of the world's capacity for receiving things spiritual. What she wrote was plainly derived from a certain form of misanthropy.

[ 27 ] What Hans Olden and Grete Olden offered to their circle out of such a temper of mind breathed in the atmosphere of an aestheticizing world-feeling, which was capable of reaching up to the most earnest matters, but which did not hesitate to pass by many of the most serious questions with a vein of light humour.

• 1. Monism as a Bond between Religion and Science.
• 2. Goethe's Previsions of Coming Scientific Ideas.
• 3. The Riddle of the Sphinx.
• 4. The Official Wife
• 5. Of a Good Family.
• 6. Clever Kate.

In a series of lectures, we want to take in a general picture of the theosophical attitude and world view and that which can be considered the basis for our spiritual scientific work. And in doing so, we want to base these theosophical considerations on the Gospel of John. It will come about quite naturally that after a few lectures, light will be shed on the most remarkable piece of writing in the world. Because that is this Gospel of John. Today, let me point out what the Gospel of John actually is.

First, we need to create a basis for understanding the profound first chapter. When you read the gospel, you can be edified by the grandeur of the images, but as a person of the present, you can no longer really grasp what this gospel actually means. In the past, it was considered a record of how the real Christ Jesus lived on earth and what actually happened in Palestine. In more Protestant and modern research, it was later believed that John's gospel seems to contradict the other three gospels. The first three, the Synoptics, were therefore summarized. The fourth gospel is not considered to be of equal value because it was written much later. It contains nothing historical, but is a kind of poetic rendering, a poem in which the writer has set down what he thought of the life of Christ Jesus. This is the point of view of the so-called believer of the present day. With a certain amount of justification, the famous theologian Bunsen said: “If the Gospel of John is nothing more than the poetic outpouring of an individual, then with it the whole of Christianity falls.” All this research is based on the inability of the last four to five centuries to even understand what is meant by the Gospel of John.

Man and his views have changed, and today's man cannot imagine that the world can be viewed from a different point of view. What is really understandable to people today is sensory and intellectual knowledge. In the past, however, people still knew that there is another kind of knowledge. They knew that there are other senses and other sources of knowledge. Today's materialistic research is in stark contrast to the orthodox biblical believer with regard to this knowledge. This also applies to the Mosaic creation story. The believers take it literally, and modern research says: This can never be taken literally; we are dealing with long, long periods of time. The Bible believer and the natural scientist do not understand each other at all. They have sought a kind of compromise, trying to understand the whole story of creation allegorically, saying that it is only meant symbolically. How was the story of creation understood in church circles five hundred years ago? No one in the church originally said: this is what happened materially and visibly before our very eyes. To the medieval theologian, that would have seemed grotesque. The idea that the seven days of creation were to be taken literally only came in through materialism.

As a kind of lawful necessity, the materialistic world view swept over our earth, and the first thing this wave took hold of was religion. At first, it was not science that was grasped by the materialistic view, but the church. What used to be understood spiritually was now imbued with the materialistic attitude. Now science is fighting something that the materialistic world view has brought about.

One example of this is the concept of the Lord's Supper. In the 12th century, the church was shocked when people began to understand the Lord's Supper as if wine could actually turn into blood and bread into the actual body. The spiritual teaching of transubstantiation was forgotten.

nn So the spiritual meaning was lost bit by bit. The theologian of the 6th and 7th century still knew what was meant by the story of creation. When it says, “Adam fell into a deep sleep,” it refers to a dream vision through which Adam experienced the seven-day work as an astral process.

What happened in the distant past could no longer be grasped by the senses. But those who saw with their soul could grasp it in a higher spiritual state. But it then appears to them in images. So it was astral images that Adam saw in his dream during the seven days of creation; he looked back at the original world from which he came.

Thus, the religious documents were attributed to higher sources of knowledge. The fight against the Bible is based on misunderstandings. To take the Gospel of John literally in a materialistic sense is to misunderstand it. This is not to say that it should be taken symbolically. What is written in the Gospel of John cannot be experienced in this physical-sensual world any more than the work of the seven days, the story of creation, but only in a different state of consciousness. The author of the fourth Gospel describes what he perceived not within but outside of the physical body, in a different state of consciousness. The other three Gospels can still be taken literally, but the Gospel of John cannot. It is more true than true; it contains the deepest truth of Christianity. It sees the center of world evolution in Christ Jesus. For John, the Christ hidden in Jesus is an outstandingly high personality that can only be understood by soaring to a higher level of knowledge. To understand what is alive in the Gospel of John, it is necessary to recognize the deepest secrets of existence. To understand the human being and the leader of humanity, one must grasp the essence of the cosmos. The Gospel of John begins with words that are based on the whole secret of the world. The most peculiar thing about these words is that they not only appeal to our understanding, but also have a magical mental effect. They give us a picture of how the human being and the cosmos are connected.

The Gospel of John must be experienced. You have to take the first words as material for meditation, let them live within you. This is spiritual food for life. You have to say to yourself: This is material for me to live with for five minutes a day. These words will open your spiritual eyes and ears; you will experience the magical power of these words, which are forces, and you will experience them in astral images. Let me bring you closer to the soul of what the writer of the Gospel of John felt as an impulse, what he wanted to say. At first he was one who was a newborn according to his soul, one who had been awakened by the power of the insights that lie in the sentences: |

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

That is the first part of the meditation. And this is the second part:

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
He came for a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that through him all might believe.
He was not the Light, but a witness about the Light.
For the true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world.
It was in the world, and the world was made through it, but the world did not recognize it.
It came to what was individual in people (it came to what was individual in the people who were “I” persons), but what was individual in people (the “I” persons) did not receive it.
But those who received it, through it they could reveal themselves as God's children.
Those who trusted in his name were not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we heard his teaching, the teaching of the only
Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

If you take the values of these words, not just their literal meaning, then they have infinite value. For example, it should read: “It came to the I-people” - instead of: “He came into his own.”

If you read these words, you have a brief outline of the theosophy of John and that which we also teach. So let us try to understand the very first words. To do this, a brief overview of the basic concepts of theosophy is necessary.

There are entities that are above human beings and no longer need a physical body. These are: the angels, the archangels, the first causes or causes, authorities, powers, dominions, thrones, cherubim, seraphim.

Verse 1: “In the first causes was the Word, and the Word was made life, and because it was creative, it was a god.” Everything, absolutely everything is the crystallized Divine Word, the spoken Word. Now man has the Word; later he will bring forth his own through the Word. The Primordial Beginnings are the entities that were already at the stage at the beginning of the evolution of the earth at which man will arrive at the end of the evolution of the earth.

Because John was able to feel this impulse, he had experienced in great astral visions what is contained in these sentences. But that was only the second thing in his soul, the first was the awakening of these powers. The third was now the following. We will try to understand it with an example. For example, you have a dream one night; it shows you a person you have never seen before. The dream gives you the certainty that you are not indifferent to this person; after a short time you will meet him. — This is how John felt about the experience of Christ. He had had astral visions in a dream state of what became history in Palestine. What his experiences were in higher worlds, his visions, then became experience in earthly life.

The meditation would be done in such a way that one morning a person begins to let the first words of the Gospel of John run through his soul every day. After months, after years, after decades he will experience something in his soul of what is contained in these words. The translation of these words is important: “It came as far as the ‘I’ people, but the ‘I’ people did not accept it.” If you go through these words, you will have a brief outline of theosophy in the Gospel of John: the theosophy that we teach. Hence its tremendous effect. Only those who first awaken these soul-spiritual powers within themselves will experience this.

Try to understand the very first words of the Gospel of John. To do this, a brief overview of the most elementary concepts of Theosophy is necessary.

Let us try it by starting from the bottom. If we look at the human being as he stands before us today, we can say that what we know something about today is the physical body, one limb only of the human being. Even the physical human body is permeated by other higher aspects of our being; that is why it looks as it appears to us now. If it were not permeated by other aspects of our being, it would be just a physical apparatus, with nothing moving it from within and nothing hurting it. Only the physical eye is like a physical apparatus. You must vividly keep in mind the possibility that man grows and that something hurts him, then you will recognize how the physical body is permeated with two other entities: one makes man grow, reproduce and nourish himself; this is done through his etheric body. The other is that he feels, that he has urges, desires and passions that come from his astral body. In order for the physical body to grow, it needs the etheric body. In order for it to feel, it needs the astral body. |

Hydrogen alone cannot represent water; it needs oxygen to do so. If hydrogen and oxygen separate again, we no longer have water; the connection is necessary here as well as there. If the human being is separated from his two other bodies, the physical body will immediately decay.

The sentient body, etheric body and physical body, these three elements of being go down to the animal. Man shares his physical body with the earth, the mineral; his ether body with the plants, and his astral body with the animals. We can also say: everything that requires growth and reproduction resides in the ether body; instincts, desire and pain sensations reside in the astral body.

At death, the physical body remains behind, the etheric and astral bodies initially remain together, and soon the etheric body also separates from the astral body. In sleep, the human being is literally a plant in the fullest sense: his body is still kept going only by the vegetative life, the etheric body. Normally, a person is unconscious and without will or desires when asleep. The few who retain their consciousness during sleep are the exceptions among humanity; they already represent a state that all people will reach in the future: they are the predisposed, predestined leaders and prophets of humanity.

How are dreams possible? How do they come about? There is a hidden potential in the astral body. When this ability is fully developed, consciousness arises.

To the physical body, to the etheric and astral bodies, one more is added. There is a word that differs from all others because it can only be said to oneself. It is the word “I”. This fact is of the utmost importance. Jean Paul's story gives us a beautiful example of the significance of this word. He describes how, as a very young boy, he stood under the door of his parents' house when suddenly the realization flashed through him: I am a self! It is a process in the hidden sanctum of the soul that pure natures feel particularly strongly as a mystery. The scope of this mystery was felt by the priests and sages of all times. It also underlies what the ancient Hebrews called the unspeakable name of God. The high priest would say the word “Joph” once a year to express the sound of the unspeakable. Joph is the “I”. Together with the bodies mentioned above, the “I” forms what is known as the Pythagorean tetrad.

The clairvoyant can see the higher bodies while fully conscious. It is a different matter with hypnosis. In this state, the hypnotized person sees what the hypnotist wants. The hypnotized person is subject to positive or negative suggestion, depending on whether they are led to believe that something is really there, that they feel something, for example, the sweet taste of a pear while biting into a potato, or that something is not there, for example, no people, no objects in the room, and so on.

This last state can be consciously brought about to make the etheric body visible. It is a higher kind of attention. Through a strong volitional act, you suggest the physical body away and then convince yourself that the space previously occupied by the physical body is not empty, but filled with a magnificent light substance, not comparable to anything earthly. In the heart and lung area, you can see wonderful movements of this light substance. This is the etheric body of the human being. The consciously clairvoyant person sees the etheric body protruding a little above the human body. In the case of horses, it protrudes much further.

The third thing that the clairvoyant can see, even if the etheric body is suggested away, is the astral body, which then appears as an elliptical cloud. There you can see the instincts and desires in the form of colored light formations, the bright yellow of developed intelligence and clear thinking, and the beautiful blue of piety and selfless sacrifice.

In addition to these three phenomena visible to the clairvoyant, there is a fourth one that is formed very differently in all people. In the space behind the bridge of the nose, one sees in the astral body a kind of hollow sphere of bluish color, similar to the core of a flame of light that appears blue through the yellow light envelope. In the undeveloped human being it is a small bluish oval; in the developed human being it appears as a blue glow.

Friendship, love, and religious feeling appear in green, blue, and blue-red; everything is in constant and intense motion while the etheric body is rotating.

If we now ask ourselves under what influences these four components of the human being have formed, the answer is that the physical body, which only reflects the life of the earth, is composed of the forces of the earth. The earth has an influence on it. The etheric body, like plants, depends not only on the earth but also on the sun; it strives towards the sun. Our astral body, however, depends on the forces of the stellar world, hence its name. Paracelsus is quite right when he says: “There is nothing in heaven and on earth that is not also in man, and God, who is in heaven and on earth, is also in man.” During the night, man lives in the stars, in the forces from which he was built. During sleep, his astral body experiences the paths in which the stars move and hold. From this astral body, the body born of the stars, the ego is now born.

What can be heard as the keynote of the movement of the stars in the universe is called the Pythagorean music of the spheres. This fundamental chord of the starry orbits and the universe, this tone is what the writer of the Gospel of John means when he speaks of the Word of the world. Thus, a first understanding of the deep mystical meaning of these words will begin to dawn on our consciousness. It will lead us ever deeper and deeper into the true occult meaning of this wonderful document.

Devachan (abode of the Gods) corresponds to the heaven of the Christians, the spiritual world of the occultists.

These regions of existence are beyond the range of our physical senses, although they are intimately connected with this world. In attempting to describe them, we must have recourse to allegories and symbols. The words of human language are only adapted to express the world of sense.

There are seven distinct stages or degrees of Devachan. The seven stages are not definite ‘localities’ but conditions or states of the life of soul and Spirit. Devachan is everywhere present; it envelops us as does the astral world, only it is invisible. By dint of training, the Initiate acquires, one by one, the faculties necessary for beholding it.

At the first stage of clairvoyance, greater order enters into dreams; man sees marvelous forms and hears words that are pregnant with meaning. It becomes more and more possible to decipher the meaning of dreams and to relate them to actuality. We may dream, for example, that a friend's house is on fire and then hear that he is ill. The first faint glimpses of Devachan give the impression of a sky streaked with clouds which gradually turn into living forms.

At the second stage of clairvoyance, dreams become precise and clear. The geometrical and symbolic figures employed as the sacred signs of the great religions are, properly speaking, the language of the creative Word, the living hieroglyphs of cosmic speech. Among such symbols are: the cross, the sign of life; the pentagram or five-pointed star, the sign of sound or word; the hexagram or six-pointed star (two interlaced triangles) the sign of the macrocosm reflected in the microcosm, and so forth. At the second stage of clairvoyance, these signs—which we today delineate in abstract lines—appear full of colour, life and radiance on a background of light. They are not, as yet, the garment of living beings, but they indicate, so to say, the norms and laws of creation. These signs were the basis of the animal forms chosen by the earliest Initiates to express the passage of the Sun through the Zodiacal constellations. The Initiates translated their visions into such signs and symbols. The most ancient characters employed in Sanscrit, Egyptian, Greek and Runic scripts—every letter of which has ideographic meaning—were the expressions of heavenly ciphers.

At this stage of his seership, the disciple is still at the threshold of Devachan. His task is to penetrate into Devachan, to find the path leading from the astral world to the first stage of the devachanic world proper. This path was known to all the occult schools and even during the first centuries, Christianity contained esoteric teaching of which traces can be found. The ancient methods of Initiation, however, were abandoned from the beginning.

In the Acts of the Apostles, mention is made of Dionysius the Areopagite. He was an initiated disciple of St. Paul and taught an esoteric Christianity. Later on, at the Court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century, John Scotus Erigena again taught the esoteric doctrines. Esoteric Christianity was then gradually obscured by dogma. When the Initiate has penetrated into Devachan, however, he finds that the descriptions given by Dionysius of this world are correct.

The rhythmic breathing practised in Yoga was one of the methods by means of which man was enabled to penetrate the world of Devachan. A certain sign that this entrance has been made is a conscious experience indicated in Vedic philosophy by the words: tat twam asi (Thou art That).

In dream, man beholds his own bodily form from without. He sees his body stretched on the couch but merely as an empty sheath. Around this empty form shines a radiant, ovoid form—the astral body. It has the appearance of an aura from which the body has been eliminated. The body itself seems like a hollow, empty mould. It is a vision where everything is reversed as in a photographic negative. The soul of crystal, plant and animal is seen as a kind of radiation, whereas the physical substance appears as an empty sheath. But it is only the phenomena of Nature that so appear—nothing that has been made by the hands of men. At the first stage of Devachan, we are contemplating the astral counterparts of the phenomena of the physical world. This region has been spoken of as the ‘continents’ of Devachan—the ‘negative’ forms of the valleys, mountains and physical continents.

If he enters into deep meditation while the breath is held, man reaches the second stage of Devachan. The moulds which represent physical substance are seen to be filled with spiritual currents—the currents of life universal. This is the ocean of Devachan. At this stage the Initiate enters the well-spring of all life. This life has the appearance of a network of vast streams with their tributaries. At the same time there is a strange and new experience of living within the metals. Reichenbach, the author of L'Od, speaks of this phenomenon in connection with sensitive subjects who were able to detect different metals wrapped in paper.

The Beings living in the region which becomes perceptible at the second stage of clairvoyant vision are called by Dionysius the Areopagite, the Archangels. [In German, Erzengel,—Erz = ore, mineral.] They represent the living soul of the minerals.

To attain the third stage of Devachan, thought must be freed from bondage to the things of the physical world. Man can then live consciously in the world of thought, quite independently of the actual content of thought. The pupil must experience the function of pure intellect, apart from its content. A new world will then be revealed. To the perception of the ‘continents’ and ‘waters’ of Devachan (the astral soul of things and the streaming currents of life) will be added the perception of its ‘air’ or ‘atmosphere.’ This atmosphere is altogether different from our own; its substance is living, sonorous, sensitive. Waves, gleams of light and sounds arise in response to our gestures, acts and thoughts. Everything that happens on Earth reverberates in colours, light and sound. Whether it be in sleep or after death, the echoes of Earth can be experienced in these ‘airs’ of Devachan. It is possible, for example, to experience the effects of a battle. We do not actually see the battle, nor hear the cries of the soldiers and the booming of the cannons. Strife and passions appear in the form of lightning and thunder. Thus Devachan does not separate us from the Earth, but reveals it to us from outside, as it were. We do not experience sorrow and joy as if they were arising in ourselves; we behold them objectively, as a spectacle. Devachan is a school of apprenticeship where we learn to regard sorrows and joys from a higher point of view, where we strive to transmute suffering into joy, failures into renewed efforts, death into resurrection.

This has nothing in common with the passive contemplation and more or less egotistic bliss of heaven conceived of by certain writers on religion who think that the sufferings of the damned are part of the bliss of the elect. Devachan is a living heaven, where the overwhelming urge to sympathy and action contained in the human soul is faced with a boundless field of activity and a vista of infinity.

At the fourth stage of Devachan, the archetypes of things arise—not the ‘negatives’ but the original types. This is the laboratory of the Cosmos wherein all forms are contained, whence creation has proceeded; it is the home of the Ideas of Plato, the ‘Realm of the Mothers’ of which Goethe speaks in Faust in connection with Helena. In this realm of Devachan, the Akashic Record of Indian philosophy is revealed. In our modern terminology we speak of this Record as the astral impression of all the events of the world. Everything that passes through the astral bodies of men is ‘fixed’ in the infinitely subtle substance of this Record as in a sensitive plate. To understand the images which hover in the astral nimbus of the Earth, we must have recourse to analogies. The human voice pronounces words which set up waves of sound, penetrating by the ears into the brains of others, where images and thoughts are evoked. Each of these words is a wave of sound with an absolutely definite form which—if we could see it—is distinct from all others. Let us imagine these words congealing somewhat as water congeals to ice by sudden, intense cold. In such a case the words would descend to Earth as congealed air and we could recognise each word by its form.

And now, instead of a process of densification, let us imagine the reverse. We know that matter can pass through the most solid to the most rarified states: solid, liquid, gaseous. Matter can be subtilised to a point at which we are led over to ‘negative’ matter—Akasha. Events on Earth impress themselves into this akashic substance and can be rediscovered there even those which occurred in far remote ages of the past.

Akashic pictures are not static and immobile. They unroll before the eye of the seer as living tableaux where objects and persons move and even speak. The astral form of Dante would speak as he spoke in his own milieu. It is almost invariably this kind of image that is seen in spiritualistic séances, where it is thought to be the spirit of the dead.

Our task is to learn how to decipher the pages of this book of living images and to unroll the innumerable scrolls of the ‘Chronicle’ of the universe. This can only be done if we are able to distinguish between appearance and reality, between the human sheath and the living soul. Daily discipline and long training are necessary if false interpretations are to be prevented. Definite answers to questions, for example, might be received from the form of Dante thus perceived. But they do not emanate from the individuality of Dante, for the individuality continues to evolve; they emanate from the ancient figure of Dante, ‘fixed’ in the etheric milieu of his time.

The fifth realm of Devachan is the sphere of heavenly harmony. The higher regions of Devachan are characterised by the fact that all sounds have a greater clarity, brilliance and richness. In a mighty harmony we hear the voice of all beings. This harmony was called by Pythagoras, the ‘Music of the Spheres.’ It is the living, Cosmic Word. To the clairvoyant who has now become clairaudient, each being communicates his true name in a definite sound or tone. In Genesis, Jehovah takes the hand of Adam and Adam gives all beings their names. On Earth, the individual is lost among the crowd of other beings. In the highest sphere of Devachan, each being has his own particular sound; yet at the same time the Initiate is united with all beings, becomes one with his environment.

The Initiate who has attained to this degree is called the ‘Swan.’ He hears the sounds through which his master speaks to him and then communicates them to the world. The singing swan of Apollo brings to the ears of men the tones of the Beyond. The swan is said to come from the land of the Hyperboreans—that is to say from the world where the Sun sinks to rest, from heaven.

At this point, the Initiate passes to a sphere beyond the world of stars. He no longer reads the Akashic Records from the side of the Earth but from the side of the heavens. The Akashic Record becomes the occult script of the stars and the Initiate experiences the primal source of the universe, of the Logos.

In the myths, we find indications of this degree of the Swan, notably in the Middle Ages in the Grail stories which give expression to experiences in the devachanic world. All the exploits there described are by knights of the Grail, who represent the great spiritual impulses given to mankind by command of the masters.

The time when the legend of the Grail was composed, under the inspiration of high Initiates, is the age when the reign of the Bourgeoisie began and when the movement connected with the freedom of great cities had its rise, coming from Scotland into England and thence to France and Germany. When he is a free citizen, man aspires unconsciously to truth and divine life. In the legend of Lohengrin, Elsa represents the soul of man in the Middle Ages, striving to develop what is always expressed in occultism by a female figure. Lohengrin, the knight who comes from an unknown country, from the Castle of the Holy Grail, to deliver Elsa, represents the master who is the bearer of truth. He is the messenger of the Initiate and is borne by the symbolic swan. The messenger of the great Initiates is a “Swan.” None may ask his true name nor whence he comes. His authority may not be doubted. By his words he must be believed; by the truth shining in his countenance he must be recognised. He who has not this faith is incapable of understanding, unworthy to listen. That is why Lohengrin forbids Elsa to ask his name and whence he comes. The Swan is the chela who bears the master.

The disciple who has reached the fifth degree of initiation is sent by the master into the world. The legend of Lohengrin is a description of events occurring in the higher worlds. The light of the Logos—the solar and planetary Word—shines through the myths and legends of the ages.

My dear friends,

A large number of anthroposophical friends have appeared at the Class today who have not been here before, so I am obliged to say a few introductory words about the School's arrangements. It is to be remembered in all earnestness that with the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum a new element has entered into the anthroposophical movement. Especially the members of our Free School for Spiritual Science must be aware of this new element. I have often indicated this, but I know that many anthroposophical friends are here for the first time who have never heard it, so I must emphasize it once again.

It is true that before the Christmas Conference it was always emphasized that the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society must be held strictly separate.

The anthroposophical movement represented the inflow of spiritual wisdom and life impulses into human civilization today which can and should be obtained for our present time directly from the spiritual world. This anthroposophical movement exists not because people like it to exist but because the spiritual powers which guide and lead the world and affect human history consider it right that spiritual light, which can come through anthroposophy, flow today into human civilization in the appropriate manner.

The Anthroposophical Society was founded in order to act as an administrative society for the body of anthroposophical wisdom and life. And it had to be continually emphasized that anthroposophy as such is beyond and above any societal organization and the Anthroposophical Society is the exoteric administrator.

That has changed since the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum. Since the Christmas Conference the opposite is the case. And only because the opposite is the case was I able to declare myself willing, together with the Executive Committee (Vorstand) which was formed during the Christmas Conference and with whom the appropriate work to be done can be carried out, to take over the presidency of the Anthroposophical Society which was founded at Christmas. I can explain what this means in one sentence: Until then, anthroposophy was administered by the Anthroposophical Society; now whatever happens through the Anthroposophical Society must itself be anthroposophy. Since Christmas the Anthroposophical Society must occupy itself with anthroposophy. Every single act must have an esoteric character. The investment of the Vorstand was thus an esoteric measure, a measure which must be thought of as coming directly from the spiritual world. Only when our anthroposophical friends are conscious of this can the Anthroposophical Society thus founded thrive. So, the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society have now become identical.

Thus, the Vorstand at Dornach is an initiative-Vorstand, as was emphasized during the Christmas Conference. Of course, there must be an administration. But that is not what it considers to be its principal task, but rather to make anthroposophy flow through the Anthroposophical Society and to do everything possible to achieve this objective.

The position of the Vorstand at Dornach within the Anthroposophical Society is therewith given. And it must be clear that from now on every relationship within the Anthroposophical Society will not be based on some bureaucratic measure or other, but it will be based on the strictly human. Therefore, at the Christmas Conference statutes that contain paragraphs which detail what members must believe or agree to were not presented; rather do the statutes describe what the Vorstand intends. And that is how the Anthroposophical Society is constituted. It is founded upon human relationships.

It is a minor thing, but I must emphasize it: every member is issued a membership card, which is signed by me, so that even if it's an abstract thing, the personal relationship is at least present. It has been suggested that I have a rubber stamp made with my signature. I'm not going to do that - despite it not being exactly comfortable to sign twelve thousand membership cards, little by little. But I will not have the stamp made, first of all because, although very abstract, a relationship is at least established to each and every member when, if only for minutes the eye rests on the name of the person who carries the membership card. Obviously, all the other relationships will be even more human, but by this means a concrete beginning is made within our society.

I must also stress that it must be clear to the members - I stress it because it has already been sinned against - that when the name “General Anthroposophical Society” is used, the agreement of the Vorstand at the Goetheanum is first obtained. In the same sense, when something comes from the Goetheanum and is then used as something esoteric, the use is based upon an understanding with the Vorstand at the Goetheanum. This means that nothing by way of formulations and teaching which appears in the name of the General Anthroposophical Society will be recognized by us here as valid unless an understanding with the Vorstand at the Goetheanum has taken place. In the future, no abstract relationship will be possible, only concrete ones. Anything said to come from the Goetheanum must really come from the Goetheanum. Therefore, the use of the title “General Anthroposophical Society” for lectures to be given somewhere or for the use of formulations and so forth which originate here and which an active member wishes to distribute, should write to the Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum, that is, to Mrs. Wegman, in order to obtain the Vorstand's agreement. It is important that in future the Vorstand at the Goetheanum be understood as the center of the anthroposophical movement.

Furthermore, the relation of this School to the Anthroposophical Society must be clearly understood by the membership. One who becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society feels the inner heartfelt need to learn and live what circulates in the world as anthroposophical knowledge and living impulse. One assumes no responsibilities other than those which come to the heart and soul from anthroposophy itself. Once one has been a general member of the General Anthroposophical society for a certain time - presently the minimum is two years - he can apply for membership in the Free School for Spiritual Science.

In this Free School for Spiritual Science one assumes truly earnest responsibilities for the Society, for anthroposophy, that is, that as a member one wishes to be a true representative of anthroposophy to the world. That is necessary today. The leadership of the Free School for Spiritual Science cannot agree to work together with someone as a member under other conditions.

Do not say, my friends, that this is a limitation of freedom. Freedom demands that everyone involved be free. And just as one can be a member of the School and be free in this relationship, the leadership of the School must also be free to determine with whom it wishes to work and with whom not. Therefore, if the leadership for any reason is of the opinion that a member cannot be a true representative of anthroposophy to the world, it must be possible for the leadership of the School to either not approve that person's application or, in the case where he is already a member, to say that his membership must be revoked. This must be strictly observed in this future, so that in fact a free cooperation exists between the School's leadership and the members.

Step by step we will try to make arrangements so that those who cannot take part in the continuing work of the School in Dornach can partake in some manner. We can only take the fifth step after the fourth, not the seventh step after the first; we must take one step after the other and there has been much to do here since the Christmas Conference. But it will all be arranged to the extent possible. We will have a newsletter through which those who reside elsewhere can participate in the School's activities. We were able to make a beginning with a newsletter that Dr Wegman sent to the physicians who were thus able to participate in the work of the School. Things will develop as much as possible, and I ask that you be patient in this respect.

Something else to be mentioned is that the School must be understood not as having been established by a human impulse, but from the spiritual world. A decision made from the spiritual world has been obtained with the means which are possible. So that this School is to be understood as an institution of the spiritual world for the present time - as has been the case with the Mysteries in all times. Therefore, we may say today: This School must develop into a true Mystery School for our times. Thus, it will be the soul of the anthroposophical movement.

This makes clear how serious membership in this School should be understood to be. It is obvious that all the previous esoteric work achieved here will flow into the School's work. For this School is the esoteric foundation and source of all esoteric activity within the anthroposophical movement. Therefore, if anyone wishes to initiate any kind of esoteric work in the world without a connection to the Vorstand at the Goetheanum, they must either reach an understanding with the Vorstand or they cannot include things which originate in the Goetheanum in their teaching or impulse. Whoever wants to do esoteric work under conditions other than those just mentioned cannot be a member of this School. They must then do the esoteric work outside the confines of this School and unrecognized by it, but must clearly understand that it cannot include anything which originated in this School. Relations with the School must be clearly understood. So the members must understand that [the leadership of] the School must be able to consider that each member is a true representative of anthroposophy in the world, and that every member represents anthroposophy exoterically (sic) as a member of the School should.

Before I was President of the Anthroposophical Society an attempt was made to organize the Goetheanum in the way other universities are organized. But that doesn't work under certain circumstances. Here esoteric studies will take place which are not found in other universities. And there is no intention to compete with other universities in the world, but to begin with questions about any field of life posed by honestly seeking people, which cannot be answered outside the esoteric.

Therefore, in the future, especially for members of the School, nonsense which keeps being repeated must cease, because with the Christmas Conference something real has happened and for the Goetheanum to fulfill its mission all the members of the School must frankly and freely declare: I am a representative of the anthroposophy which comes given from the Goetheanum. Whoever will not do this, who thinks that one should be silent about anthroposophy, prepare people slowly, whoever wants to play politics and thinks that he can advance by denying us and then people will come to us - they generally don't - would be well advised to give up membership in the School right away. I can promise you that in the future membership in the School will be taken very seriously indeed. For those members of the School whose work is really about anthroposophy and not something else, this will be accepted readily and gladly. Those who continually claim that you can't confront people with anthroposophy immediately, that you must somehow talk them into it gradually, may choose to exercise their opinion outside the School.

These are the conditions which must be adhered to, and I had to mention them today because so many anthroposophical friends are present who had not yet participated in the School. And this is the reason why you have had to wait so long for the lesson to begin, and listen to this introduction. So, we can consider the lesson today to be a kind of preparation. I will hold a second lesson, date to be announced, in which no new friends may participate. So, I ask those who wish to attend in the future to have patience, because if every time a lesson is held here new people come, we would never get anywhere. Of course, one can still become a member, but only members who have attended today will be admitted to the next lesson. It will be a continuation of today's lesson.

I wish to begin today's lesson - without you taking notes, only listening at first - by speaking the mantric formula which points to what has resounded throughout the ages, first from the Mysteries, but previously for the Mysteries from the script written in the stars, in the whole cosmos, and which resounds in the human soul, in the human heart, as the great challenge to humanity to strive for a true knowledge of self. This challenge; “O man, know thyself!” rings forth from the whole cosmos.

We look up at the stars, which reveal an especially clear writing in the zodiac, which through their composition in certain forms reveal the grand cosmic script. For one who understands the script the cosmic words will sound forth: “O man, know thyself!”

When we look up at what the planets reveal by their movements, first the sun and moon, but also the planets which belong to the sun and moon, then just as the movements of the stars reveal the powerful, forceful cosmic word, so do these planetary movements reveal the heart and feeling content.

And through what we experience from the elements which surround us on the earth and in which we partake through our skin, through our senses, through everything in us, that enters into us and acts in our bodies - earth, water, fire, air - through them the will element pours into these words.

We can therefore let this cosmic word, which rings out to humanity, act on our souls through the mantric words:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the cosmic-word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it vast in spirit.

Who speaks so vastly cosmic?
Who speaks so deeply heartfelt?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Is it you yourself who,
Feeling space, experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destroying flow.

My dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, there exists no knowledge which is not closely tied to the spiritual world. Everything we call knowledge which is neither investigated in the spiritual world nor imparted by those who are able to investigate in the spiritual world, is not real knowledge. We must be clear about the fact that when we look around in the world, in the kingdoms of nature, see the colors and the radiance manifested, see what lives above in the shining stars, in the warming sun, what springs up from the depths of the earth - it is all sublime, grand, beautiful, full of wisdom. And we would be very mistaken to ignore this beauty, sublimity, this wisdom. If one wishes to become an esotericist, if he strives for real knowledge, then he must have a sense for the world around him - an open, free sense. For during the time between birth and death, during his earthly existence, he is obliged to absorb his strength from the forces of the earth, and to return the results of his work to the forces of the earth.

But although it is true that man must really participate in all the colors on colors, sound on sound, warmth on warmth, star on star, cloud on cloud, creatures of the kingdoms of nature which surround him, it is also true that if when he looks out at all the grand, powerful, sublime, wise, beautiful things his senses convey, he still does not discover what he himself is. Rather is it just then, when he has a correct sense of the sublimity, beauty and grandeur of his surroundings in his life on earth, that he will realize: In this light-filled kingdom of earth the inmost source of my being is not present. It is elsewhere. Full recognition of this causes us to seek the state of consciousness which moves us on to what we call the threshold to the spiritual world. This threshold, which lies immediately before an abyss, we must approach and remember that in all that surrounds us in earthly existence the primal source of humanity is not found.

Then we must know: at this threshold stands a spiritual figure called the Guardian of the Threshold. This Guardian takes care - beneficially to man - that one does not cross the threshold unprepared, without having experienced deeply in the soul those feelings I have spoken about. But then, when he really is prepared with inner earnestness for spiritual knowledge - whether by means of clairvoyant consciousness or through healthy human understanding of what he has been told, for both ways are valid, only then is it possible for the Guardian of the Threshold to reach out with a helping hand and allow him to look over the abyss. There, beyond the threshold where the human being's inmost being originated, utter darkness lies at first.

My dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, we seek light in order to see in the light the origin of our own being. At first darkness reigns. This light which we seek must radiate out from the darkness. And it only radiates out from the darkness when we become aware of how the three fundamental impulses of our soul-life, thinking, feeling and willing, here is this earth-life are held together by our physical bodies. Thinking, feeling and willing are conjoined in physical existence.

If I schematically draw how they are conjoined, it looks like this. Feeling (green) extends into thinking (yellow); willing (red) extends into feeling. So, in earthly existence the Three are conjoined.

One must learn to feel that the Three separate from each other. And if more and more he uses the meditations suggested to him here by the School as the content of his soul life, he will note the following [drawing again]: thinking (yellow) is freed, detaching itself from feeling, feeling [green] is on its own as is willing [red]. For one learns to perceive without the physical body.

The physical body had held thinking, feeling and willing together, had pressed them into each other. [Around the first drawing an oval is drawn.] Here [in the second drawing on the right] the physical body is not present.

Through the meditations which he receives here at the School, one gradually comes to feel himself outside his body; and he comes to regard the world as self, and what self was, as world. We stand here on the earth in our earthly existence: we feel like human beings; we say, as we become inwardly aware: this is my heart, these are my lungs, this is my liver, this is my stomach. What we call our organs, what we call the physical human organization, we consider to be our own. And we point up: that is the sun, that is the moon, those are the stars, the clouds, that is a tree, a stream. We identify these things as being outside us. We are within our organs. We are outside of those things we indicated as: that is the sun, that is the moon, those are the stars, and so on.

When we have prepared our souls enough so that they can perceive without the body, that is, outside the body in the spiritual universe, then the reverse consciousness comes about. Now we speak of the sun as we speak of our heart here in earthly existence: that is my heart. We speak of the moon: that is the creator of my form. We speak of the clouds more of less as we speak on earth of our hair. We call our own organism what people on the earth see as components of the universe. And we point out: look there, a human heart, human lungs, a human liver - that is objective, that is world. Just as when we are in our physical bodies we look out from here to the sun and moon and to the world, when from the universe we look at the sun and the moon and clouds and rivers and mountains and they are within us. And when we look at man he is our outer world. The difficulty is only in the spatial relationships. And the difficulty will be overcome.

As soon as we leave our physical bodies with our thinking, we perceive this thinking as one with all that is manifested in the stars. Here on earth we call our brain our own, as the instrument of our thinking. But now we begin to feel the stars, especially the stars of the zodiac, as our brain when we are out in the universe and look down at man external to us.

And we perceive the circling planets as our own feeling. Our feeling follows then the course of the sun, of the moon, and of the other planets. Between what we experience as thinking in the fixed stars and feeling, is the sun in ourselves [the sun sign is inserted between the yellow and green of the second drawing]; and the moon lies between feeling and willing - which we also feel within us. [The moon sign is inserted between green and red.] And by simply meditating on this figure, it has the force to bring us closer and closer to spiritual vision. It must be realized that what I am saying here can really be experienced: leaving the physical body, expanding throughout the cosmos, feeling the elements of the cosmos - sun and moon, stars and so on - as one's own organs, observation of humanity as our exterior world.

What must be perfectly clear however, is that our thinking, our feeling and our willing which on earth is a unity held together by the physical body, now becomes threefold. And we learn to feel this threefold nature above all when we observe thinking.

Dear friends, dear sisters and brothers, this thinking which man uses on earth between birth and death is a corpse. It does not live. Whatever he may think with his brain about the beautiful, sublime, grand earth in his surroundings: these thoughts do not live. They lived in pre-earthly existence. They lived, these thoughts, when we had not yet descended to the physical world, but still lived above in the soul-spiritual world as soul-spiritual beings. There the thoughts which we have on earth were alive, but our physical body is the grave in which the moribund thought-world is buried when we descend to the earth. And here we carry the corpses of thought within us. And we think about our sense-perceptible surroundings on earth not with living thoughts but with the corpses of thought. But before we descended to this physical world a living thinking existed within us.

My dear friends, we only need to immerse ourselves in these truths again and again with inner strength and we come to the conscious conclusion that it really is so. One comes to know the human being in this way. One comes to know him and sees him so: This is the human head. [The outline of a head is sketched.] This human head is the bearer and support for earthly corpse-thinking. From it spring forth - but dead - the thoughts which spread over what is perceived by the eyes, by the ears, by the sense of warmth, by the other senses. We observe the thinking that corresponds to life on earth.

But gradually we learn to see through this thinking. Within the spiritual cell of the human head is the lingering sound of the true, living thinking in which we lived before descending to the physical world. When one looks at man, one sees at first his dead thinking [sketch: red part of the head]. But behind this dead thinking in the head's spiritual cell is the living thinking [yellow part of the head]. And this living thinking has brought with it the force necessary to form our brain. The brain is not thinking's creator, but the product of pre-earthly living thinking.

So when we look at the human being with the correct awareness, dead earthly thinking is manifested on the surface of the head; if we look within to the spiritual cell behind, we see the living thinking, which is like a will, such as the will we are otherwise aware of in the human motor system, which is really sleeping in us. For we don't know how thought descends to our muscles and so on - when it intends to will this or that. Then we observe what lives in us as will: we see it as thinking in the spiritual cell behind the sense oriented thinking. But then this will, which we become aware of as thinking, is creative for our thinking organ. For this thinking is no longer human thinking, it is cosmic thinking.

If we can understand the human being so that we look through the earthly thinking to the thinking which made the brain the basis for thinking on earth, then sensory thinking flows out into the cosmic void, and eternal thinking arises as will.

We become conscious of all this when we let the following mantric words act in us:

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell
Willing arises from the body's depths;
Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void;
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

This imagination must gradually stand before you, my dear friends, this imagination of dead thinking directed toward the sensory world streaming out from the head. Behind it lurks - at first in darkness - the true thinking which glows through sensory thinking and which builds the brain as man descends from the spiritual to the physical world. It is, however, like will. And one sees then how from out of man the will arises [white lines from below to above], spreading in the head, to become cosmic thinking because what lives in the will as thinking is already cosmic thinking.

We should therefore try to better understand and bring closer the mantric thoughts which we can imbue in the soul in the following way:

[The first verse is written on the blackboard:]

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell

- that is, one must look behind thinking - [“behind” is underlined]

Willing arises from the body's depths;

- one must become strong in the soul to let normal sensory thinking flow away -

Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

These seven lines contain the secret of human thinking's connection to the universe.

We must not pretend to understand these things with the intellect, but must let them live in feeling as meditation. And these words have force. They are constructed harmoniously. “Thinking”, “willing”, “cosmic void”, “will” and “cosmic thought creating” [these words are underlined] are arranged here in inner organization of thoughts so they can work on the imaginative consciousness.

Just as we can look at the human head and it becomes a means for us to look into cosmic-thought-creating, we can also look at the human heart as the physical imaginative representative of the human soul. As thinking is the abstract representative of the human spirit, we can look upon the human heart as the representative of feeling. And we can look into feeling, as it applies to human earthly existence, but now no longer behind, but into it. [In the drawing a yellow oval.] For just as we perceive cosmic-thought-creating in the spiritual cell behind thinking, we can also perceive feeling, whose representative the heart is, streaming through something which from the cosmos goes in and out of man: we perceive cosmic life, cosmic life which becomes human soul-life.

As here [in the first verse] must be: “behind thinking's sensory light”, now it must be: “in feeling's” in the second mantra, which must be harmonically interwoven with the first.

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life streams in from cosmic distance;
Let in sleep through the tranquil heart
Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

[This second strophe is written on the blackboard:]

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams

Feeling is only a wakeful dreaming. Feelings are not as conscious as thinking is. They are as conscious as the pictures in dreams. Thus, feeling is a waking dream. Therefore:

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life

Here [in the first verse] “willing” arises from the body's depths; whereas here “Life” streams in from cosmic distance.

streams in from cosmic distance;

[In the drawing 4 horizontal arrows are added.]

As here [in the first verse] thinking is to flow into the cosmic void through strength of soul, now we let the dreams of feeling gust away, but in their place, we perceive in the psychic weaving of feeling what streams in as cosmic life. When feelings' dreams completely dissolve in sleep, when individual human feeling stops, then cosmic life weaves into man.

Life streams in from cosmic distance

[Writing continues:]

Let in sleep through the tranquil heart

Here [in the first verse] we need strength of soul; Here [in the second verse] we need complete tranquility, for the dreams of feeling dissolve in sleep, and the divine cosmic life streams into the human soul.

Let in sleep through the tranquil heart

[Writing continues, and the words “drift away”, “cosmic spirit life” and “Man's true force of being” are underlined.]

Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

In these seven lines the whole secret of human feeling is contained, if it can become independent when the unity [of thinking, feeling, willing] becomes threefold.

In this way we can also observe the human limbs, in which the will is revealed [Drawing: white arrow pointing downwards]; here we cannot say: “See behind”, “See into”. Here we must say “See above”, for thinking streams down to the will from the head, although man with normal consciousness cannot see it. But the thoughts stream from the head into the limbs in order for the will to be able to act in the limbs.

When we observe the will acting in the limbs, when we see in every arm movement, in every leg movement how the will streams in, then we also realize how in this will there is a secret thinking, a thinking which directly grasps earthly existence. Actually, it is our being in earlier earthly lives, which grasps earthly existence through the limbs in order that in grasping it we can live our present life on earth. Thinking descends into the limbs. When we see how thinking descends, we are seeing thinking in the will [drawing: red descending from the head through the arm].

Then, because we are seeing with the soul, we see how thinking lives in the arms, in the hands, in the legs, in the feet, in the toes, a process otherwise hidden from us, then we must see how this thinking is light. Thinking as light streams through arms and hands, through legs and toes. And the will, which otherwise is sleeping in the limbs, transforms itself and thinking appears as a magical being of will that transplants the human being from earlier lives - after becoming spirit - into the present-earth life:

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as the magical essence of will.

It conjures, that is, it acts magically on the invisible thinking in the will of the limbs. He understands the human being who knows that the thought which is not seen in the will - because we are sleeping in the will - acts magically in the limbs as will. And only by seeing as magical the thoughts which pass through the arms and hands, through legs and toes is true magic understood.

[The third strophe is written on the blackboard with the words “thinking”, “transform” and “magical being of will” underlined.]

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as the magical essence of will.

Therein is contained the secret of human will, which creates magically from out of the universe into man.

Let us then, my dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, consider this a foundation for building later on at a time to be announced, a foundation for again and again in meditation letting the mantric words flow through the soul.

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell
Willing arises from the body's depths;
Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void;
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life streams in from cosmic distance;
Let in sleep through the tranquil heart
Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as magical being of will.

Translator Unknown

From the various discussions on our present-day stage of development you will have seen that, from a certain higher point of view, mankind is at the present time passing through a very important phase in its existence. If I say "at the present time" we must naturally be aware that what is in question is a very long period, and when we speak of the "present time" today we mean the epoch of the consciousness soul, into which mankind entered roughly at the middle of the 15th century and which extends over 2,000 years. We will, in turn, be succeeded by another epoch, in which an essential part of human nature, quite different from what has developed in the epoch which has just elapsed, will force its way to the surface.

We always divide up the whole evolution of mankind, you see, into sequences of seven phases, whether we are fixing our eyes on longer or shorter epochs. We are now standing in the fifth epoch, and we know that in the sixth epoch the spirit-self is to take possession of mankind. The development of the Ego belongs to our epoch, although it particularly brings the consciousness- soul to expression. In passing over from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean epoch man passes over a sort of Rubicon (see diagram), when the whole of mankind enters into a phase of development which leads up to higher spirituality. This is a very important, significant fact. Now when one is describing conditions of evolution on a great scale, for example those which concern the whole of mankind, it is always inadequate to do so by means of the conditions of development of individual men. If one does this, one is very liable to get mere comparisons. What I am about to quote is, of course, more than a mere comparison, but you must be on your guard against taking the matter pedantically. You must take it in a broad sense.

You know that when a human being enters into the supersensible world he has to pass what we call the Guardian of the Threshold. One comes into the supersensible would by passing this Threshold. You will find this passing- over depicted in my little booklet The Threshold of the Spiritual World. If you take what is depicted there, together with certain chapters of the work How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, you can get more precise representations of this. You know that when one passes over the Threshold the existing bonds in the human soul which connect thinking, feeling and willing become more loosened. Thinking, feeling and willing become in a certain sense more independent. On this side of the Threshold in a normal spiritual life, these three activities of Man are more interwoven.

Regard must be had to these facts, that one has to pass over the Threshold on entering into the supersensible world, and that, in a certain sense, a kind of splitting apart of the three principal activities of human soul-life takes place, which makes thinking, feeling and willing independent. What the individual man can consciously experience while passing over into the supersensible world is being experienced by the whole of mankind in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In this fifth post-Atlantean epoch lies the Threshold through which the whole of mankind must pass.

The fact that the whole of mankind is passing through the Threshold does not at all need to come directly to the consciousness of individual men. If, for example, men were to persevere in that disposition which the majority now has, in refusing all spiritual knowledge, the whole of mankind would pass over the Threshold just the same in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but men, for the greater part, would not be aware of the fact. That powerful soul-spiritual event which can be described as the Crossing of the Threshold can only be experienced consciously by men if they partake in that knowledge which is obtained through Spiritual Science. But event if not a single man were aware that the whole of mankind is passing over the Threshold, that in reality mankind is already, at this time, engaged in this passing, the passing would, nevertheless, take place. It does not in the least depend on whether mankind is aware of it or not. It can be that men are not aware of it. They can hinder the spreading of knowledge of this fact by their stubbornness. But the bringing to expression of the fact in the development of mankind is not thereby prevented.

If you first of all take this in its abstract aspect, you will be able to say to yourselves during this fifth post-Atlantean epoch of ours, during the development of the consciousness-soul, something significant and mighty is happening to mankind. To this belongs the fact that a certain separation is taking place of the life of thinking from those of feeling and willing. Please fix your attention clearly on this fact. A separation is taking place in mankind in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which makes independent the life of thinking, that of feeling and that of willing. The three spheres of the soul-life of the whole of mankind are becoming more independent. And this will distinguish that mankind of the future from the mankind of the past, that in the past the soul was more centralised in itself, while in the future it will feel itself to be three-membered. If a human being is alone by himself, he will certainly be able to undergo his development in this sense in which we find it intimated in the work How Does One Attain Higher Worlds?: this concerns single, individual men. When men are taken together as a people, a state, and economic organisation and so forth, when men have intercourse with one another to get to know and to satisfy their common interests, this splitting of the whole soul-life into three spheres is developing because, as has been said, behind the scenes of existence of the whole of mankind is passing through a phase of development which one can compare with the passing of the individual man through the Threshold into the supersensible world.

Now there area actually men in our time who are aware of something of these events which are occurring behind the scenes of existence. But they are only aware of them, I should like to say, in the negative sense. I have often mentioned to you the name of Fritz Mauthner, who has written a Critique of Speech and a thick, two-volume Dictionary of Philosophy.¹ After I have recently said something substantial to you, just about the significance of speech in human life,² it will be interesting to you to hear how a man of the present day thinks about the soul-life of man, who, like Fritz Mauthner, directs his attention just to speech but in doing so has no inkling of the existence of Spiritual Science, who has no idea of what Spiritual Science can do for mankind. Just in the case of this kind of man of the present-day, who is entirely ignorant of spiritual-scientific matters but who has an acute brain, more intelligent than those of innumerable official learned men, one can find peculiar opinions uttered about human development when he turns his attention to the working of speech, to the human soul.

On the whole, as you know well, the mankind of today is still infinitely proud of what it calls its Science. Fritz Mauthner is not at all proud of this Science. He sets no store at all by this Science. For he believes that, while they think they have a Science, they are in fact, merely muddling about with words, that they are merely relying on words, and that while they think in words, come to an understanding with words and think that they have an inner soul-life, they are, nevertheless, fundamentally only moving about in the external words. Fritz Mauthner has made this clear.

Now call to mind that I recently said to you³: of the whole construction of our speech, the dead most clearly understand what we say to them in verbs, while they aware of almost nothing of what we want to say to them when wee speak to them in nouns. In this connection you can already have a feeling of what importance speech has in the real spiritual life of men. And if men cannot rid themselves of the speech-content of their so-called thinking then, when they think in nouns, they are in actual fact thinking something completely unspiritual, something which does not make its way into the Spiritual World at all. They cut themselves off from the Spiritual World as a result of thinking in terms of nouns. It is, indeed, very much the case at the present day that men are cutting themselves off from the Spiritual World by a kind of thinking in terms of nouns.

Peoples which have already fallen into decadence and which experience their verbs in a very substantive way [...] are thereby setting themselves completely off from the Spiritual World.

Now after Fritz Mauthner had found that, in everything which is carried on today as Science, there really exists nothing more than a sort of "making a fool of oneself" through speech, he comes to an opinion about the human soul which is remarkable in the highest degree for the present day. He says in the first place, men confront the world. While they are confronting the world and perceive it with their senses, they are really only becoming aware of those impressions which they denote by means of adjectives. People do not pay attention to this, but it is a good remark. If you see a bird flying, if you see a table standing, you are really only perceiving qualities through your senses—let us say, the colour of the bird. You are also only perceiving the qualities of the table. It is really only a self- deception, an illusion, that you still perceive a special table apart from these qualities, that you can perceive something else besides those impressions which you denote by adjectives, namely what you can denote by nouns. With his senses, man only perceives the qualities of things. When he puts these sensible qualities into words by means of adjectives, by means of the adjectives of speech, he is living sensually with the things, in an external way. And a man like Fritz Mauthner asks himself: but what can a man, who is living with the things in an external way, really receive into himself from the things? What can he reproduce about the things? He can only receive, thinks Fritz Mauthner, what is reproduced through Art, by which is understood the whole development of art from the most primitive stages of mankind to what can be indicated today as the highest stage of art. When man digests what he perceives with the senses, what he can uttered through adjectives, Art arises.

For people like Fritz Mauthner, who have stripped off much that is superstitious in the present time, especially the superstitions of our schools, artistic creation, even the most primitive of all, is the only thing which man achieves creatively in union with things. But man is not satisfied with merely expressing the qualities of things by means of adjectives: he forms nouns. But with the nouns he indicates nothing at all of what approaches men in the external sense-world.

Fritz Mauthner makes this especially clear, and for this reason he says in the second place: when Man arises to illusionary life by forming nouns, mysticism arises in his soul. Here he believes that he is penetrating into the essence of things, and is not aware that he really has nothing in the nouns. In this sphere—so Fritz Mauthner thinks—he can only dream. He therefore says: if you men really want to live, you must represent things artistically, for only then are you awake. If you have no mind for artistic representations, you really are not awake at all in your soul. You are dreaming if you think that you can penetrate into the essence of things further than can be done by the mere artistic forming of sensible quality- data. You fall into unreality with your mysticism, but you have a certain satisfaction in this mysticism. You dream of things by forming nouns in reference to them.

It is true that, from the spiritual-scientific point of view, this is a foolish assertion, but one which is extraordinarily acute and important for the present time, because in fact a man does only experience dream illusions if he develops only those qualities which people love today in the whole world of nouns, in which he can live mystically. But the majority of men do not make this clear to themselves.

However strangely it may sound, it is an extraordinarily important fact for the life of the present day that men work with the external, sensible qualities of things, with what they bring to expression in adjectives. They work on these external things by altering their qualities in some way. Then, disregarding the fact that they are working on these external things—let us say, in primitive art, people turn to the churches, to the schools, in order to learn something about the essence of things. But there they get only get an education expressed in nouns, really nothing but illusions. A man like Fritz Mauthner has a quite correct feeling for this. If one walks over a meadow and sees the green surface there, differentiated in the most varied way, interspersed with white, blue, yellow and reddish varieties of flowers, one has what is the true reality in the sensible world. But men believe that they can get hold of something beyond this. If they walk on the road, one beside the other, and the one stretches out his hand and picks something which looks yellow, he then asks the other: but what is the plant called? The other has, perhaps, learned at some time, from someone else or at school, what this plant is called, and he utters a noun. But this whole proceeding is an illusory one—it is a mere dream-activity. The true activity consists merely in seeing something yellow of a particular shape, but what is said about it in nouns is a dream-activity.

Men love this dream-activity today, but in fact it has no content. Many people, who are left unsatisfied by mere occupation with the external, qualitative impressions, listen to sermons and take part in divine-services. But all that lives in their souls as a result of the sermons and church services is also, at bottom, no more that a dream, a tissue of illusions, nothing real. Men who occupy themselves more accurately with the character of speech, as Fritz Mauthner did, notice this and draw attention to the fact that in the moment when one goes beyond what is artistic or artistically handled one at once enters the sphere of mystic dreaming.

Then Fritz Mauthner differentiates yet a third stage in the soul-life of men today, one which he calls Science. Today this is quite specially proud of the idea of development, of evolution. It prefers to express what it presents in verbs. But now take what I have said to you with reference to the experiencing of verbal activity, the activity of verbs. But how many people experience verbs eurhythmically today? How dry, insipid and abstract is what men experience in verbs! The German says Entwicklung. One says "evolution" if one is going to utter the same idea in speech in a different way. But one certainly has no idea at all of the reality of the words "evolution" or Entwicklung unless one is in the position concretely to carry one's feeling right through this word, inwardly to live through it.

But how many people, if they say: "the physical man of today has evolved (entwickelt) from lower organisms" think of a ball of thread is wound together and which is being unwound, which is "e-volved"! If you have a ball, the thread of which is wound up, and unwind it, you can say: "you are evolving this". This is evolution (Entwicklung). For you have the concrete representation.

Now consider Ernst Haeckel, who says that man has evolved from the apes. We do not wish to speak of the substance of the matter. Do you believe that he pictures to himself that there is a ball of thread and that something has been unwound from it by the changing of the ape into a man? Is it not the case that quite certainly nothing concrete like this lies in the word which is uttered when someone says that man has evolved from the ape—otherwise he would have had to think of the "unwinding of a thread from a ball!"

What does it mean when one utters the word "evolves" but really calls up no picture of it before oneself? This is the remarkable thing that men today, while they are thinking scientifically, prefer to express themselves in verbs, take refuge in verbs, but that they think nothing at all while using verbs. For if they were to make clear to themselves what they really are thinking, they would not get on at all with the object of their thoughts. Scientific concepts are really nothing else than scientific absence-of-thought. Today you can take the thickest text book, especially in political economy, and go through the concepts there—there are just as many absences-of-thought contained in them as there are concepts.

Now in this way somebody like Fritz Mauthner, who has no inkling of Spiritual Science, naturally cannot look into the reasons for the absences-of-thought into which we area now looking after we have just discussed how things are connected with speech. But Fritz Mauthner feels that, in the present day scientific way of thinking, this scientific talk is nothing more than an absence-of-thought, in consequence of the boundaries of thinking in terms of speech. It is, however, a hard fact if one has to confess: in the lower school grades, where, to be sure, plenty of sins are being committed against the children, the nature of the child demands that one gives it concrete thoughts, because it still wants to have something perceptible to the senses. But then, when people pass into the Gymnasium or become high school girls, one can already expect more from them in the way of absence-of-thought, for already the Conceptional is ceasing to have a content. And when one passes right on to the University, this is the summit of the absence-of-thought with is there traded-in as science, for the only reality today consists in handling things, what is artistic, what one brings out of the laboratory, the dissecting room and so on, the technical, the artistic. But what is "thought-out"—yes, I see, to be uttering a piece of nonsense—is nothing thought-out: it is an absence-of-thought.

Fritz Mauthner feels this. He therefore sets out this list of three steps, firstly Art, secondly Mysticism (which, however, is a state of dreaming), and thirdly Science, of which he says that in reality it is a learned ignorance a docta ignorantia.

I. Art
II. Mysticism: dreaming
III. Science: docta ignorantia

Thus one must take something uttered by a man like this as being a confession of a representative man of the present-day. Something of this kind is said by just the man who has stripped off those superstitions under the sway of which the majority of men live today, one who, as a result of his consideration of speech, has come to see what an emptiness is overflowing over present day mankind, while in the highest level of education pretended thoughts are taught which are, nevertheless, only absence-of-thought. Then this absence-of-thought overflows with a clutter of words into popular literature and comes at last, in journalism, to that terrible bog of words from which the majority of men nourish themselves spiritually today.

I could have quoted some other personage of the present day as an example: however, Fritz Mauthner brings this thing to expression in a uniquely precise, narrowly-systematised manner. Consider it well, what I have brought before you with regard to a representative man of the present day who has no inkling of Spiritual Science. If, intelligently and in an unprejudiced way, you take the conversation which the men of today carry on with one another, from the customary afternoon gossip to what is said in meetings of professional or territorial bodies, in the Reichstag or the Duma, there results a jumble of speech, of words, permeated by absence-of-thought.

But in this way one describes the real facts about what one must call "culture" today. I have depicted to you no more than the facts which just simply exist. And the task of the spiritual scientist is to look into this condition in a really unprejudiced way, courageously and without deceiving himself. You see, people who stand outside Spiritual Science are already coming to the view that it is a terrible superstition to consider Science, as it holds sway today, as anything but a docta ignoratntia. And it has gradually come to be this. Since it has been described by Nicolas of Cusa (1401–1464) at the beginning of the 15th century by the words docta ignorantia, our science has become this to an ever greater extent.

Now, of course, simple people can come and say: "But what are you saying? You have surely as often told us that the present time has attained to something magnificent in respect of Natural Science, and that you fully acknowledge the triumph of Natural Science". Yes, my dear friends, but nature contains no thoughts! It is just in the age of absence-of-thought that Natural Science can develop to the greatest extent of all, because it needs no thoughts, but merely external formulae, in order to classify natural-scientific facts. Natural Science owes its greatness just to the circumstance that, in order to be correct Natural Science, it may be without thoughts and even ought to be so. But the thing to which I wanted particularly to draw your attention to is this: that already in the present day people are noticing how mankind is passing through something which is turning their inner soul-life into a state of dreaming and Science really into one of sleeping, a state of ignorance. This, again, is the comfort which people feel today in Science and scientific thinking, that it lets itself sleep so comfortably in their souls. People do not at all believe how deeply the men of today are sleeping while they consider that they know something, how obedient they are to authority, even to excess, when freed by what they call "science" and what is given to them as Science, but how, out of their deep sleep, they can nowhere apply this Science to their real surroundings. Yes, they look on the application of "something scientific" to external life as a fantastic thing.

Just put in a library—it must be a very big one—all the learned works about psychiatry, all the works on mental diseases. You would then have gathered together much that is ingenious, in the sense of the present time. But yet one must also assume that the psychiatrists who occupy themselves professionally with affairs know what is in the books at least, they must know the principal facts, and they do know them, but as though they were asleep. For if, for example, it is a matter of considering life, of considering the fact that a man, who has for years controlled events over a great part of Europe, was and is really mad, then their science of psychiatry is of no use to people, for they do not think of applying their Science to real life.

These things were not always like this in the development of mankind. If we go back into other epochs, this was not present in the same measure. And, the further back we go, so it is present to a smaller extent. When men had the old, atavistic clairvoyance in ancient times, their dreams were then no dreams as we understand the term today, but they had a psychic content, in which they perceived something real. And people examined human affairs out of their sleep. Today it has come about that if men want to remain men they must gather their a knowledge different from that before which Fritz Mauthner finds them standing as before a docta ignorantia or a dreamlike mysticism. Men must wake up, and they can only do so through spiritual-scientific knowledge. Therefore I refer to what must happen as a awakening. This awakening must be something very real, something encroaching very, very deeply into life. Today people speak, and think in speech as it is described by us, and they believe that by this means they have thoughts as well. But in reality they have no thoughts. For what are thoughts for the man of today, if he really grasps them as thoughts? They are, in fact, nothing real: they are reflections of something real. And just when the man of today soars up to thoughts, if he is sinking at the real life of ideas, he must be conscious of the fact that these ideas as such are phantoms of reality, but are not reality itself.

I recently brought you a chapter of Hegel (Vol. 1, Lecture 8). I told you that it would be difficult to understand, because Hegel always bestirs himself in thoughts. This, to be sure, is so terribly difficult for men today—to bestir themselves in thoughts. One even becomes offensive to people, offensive in the highest degree, if one bestirs oneself in thoughts. When first I began to speak about Anthroposophy in Berlin, all sorts of people came from the most diverse directions of so-called spiritual life and wanted to see really what was happening, people who had taken part in Spiritualism, who had tried by means of all sorts of questionable mediumistic methods to experience something of the Spiritual World—all of them came there. And then it often turned out that just this kind of person regularly went to sleep in my lectures, especially when they were themselves rather mediumistic. One could see many a person there, sound asleep. Then they stayed away for the future. And some of them said that they dared not continue to go these lectures, for the spirits had told them that they would be dealing with ideas there, with thoughts, and that they dared not go to them.

My dear friends, I still call to mind a lady—she appeared to have become unwell—who ran out the door at some speed but who laid herself down at full length as soon as she was outside. The giving of thoughts had made this impression on her! Today, people in general are not trained in real thoughts, because they consider that when they bestir themselves in the projection of speech they have thoughts. But just when one admits oneself to be thinking, one is aware that, in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch of today, one has shadow-pictures if one really thinks, that is to say if one lives in thoughts. If one rightly comprehends the character of the life of thought, one is aware that the soul, as it were, bestirs itself on the surface of the thoughts, while something remains behind in the unconscious. There is the soul. But it sees something which it sends forth like the shadow-pictures of that in which it lives. It must comprehend the shadow-pictures, thoughts, ideas, and must carry them over into something which still, in many cases, remains unconscious for the men of today. How can it do this? It can only do it when that is received into the life of thoughts about which we can give ourselves up to no deception of any kind when we receive it: that is, the will to think, the feeling of the will while we are thinking, the feeling that we are present, that we are really leading over one thought into another, that, while we are thinking, we always have a clear picture underlying our thoughts.

Men do not love this today. They sit, walk or stand today, and their thoughts are churning up in their heads as I have just described, which is really absence-of-thought, but it is playing through their heads. Men give themselves up to these so-called thoughts, passively give themselves up to them, even take in every so-called thought which rolls through their heads. And the result of this is that the will to think, that which works arbitrarily and actively in thoughts, is of the utmost rarity in the souls of men today.

The man who holds himself to be a leader of opinion today wishes to the smallest degree to sit down and bring his will into activity. He quickly takes up the newspaper, so that his thoughts may be unrolled from outside, or a book—but does not develop within himself that activity which now really leads to active thinking. The mankind of today lives in a state of social laziness with regard to this active thinking—one can call it nothing else.

All these things give the real form of that transition which a man like Fritz Mauthner feels when he thus utters what I have described to you above. But all these things are phenomena connected with the crossing of the Threshold by the whole of mankind. The whole of mankind must pass by the stern Guardian of the Threshold in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And just in the epoch of the development of consciousness, it ought to come to the consciousness that mankind is passing through this stage in its development. But then a sort of splitting-up of the life of the soul must take place. What was centralised as a unity in earlier times must be split asunder into a trinity, and every single member must be centralised on its own account.

Because this is a question effecting human beings in their community-life, not individual men, it can only come about if there are external points of support, on which this tendency towards inward threefoldness can go on developing. These external points of support must now be present in the social organism in which men live. It is not in my choice that I must speak about the threefold social organism today. It is this which must be made clear to mankind from the signs of the times, from those signs of the times which become clear when one considers that mankind must pass the stern Guardian of the Threshold. And if you seek for an inner characteristic of the reasons why the threefolding must come about in the social organism, then just re-read that chapter in How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds which deals with the Guardian of the Threshold. It is all there already, from another point of view.

When one studies Spiritual Science, one is studying the most significant impulse of the present day development of mankind. Spiritual Science explains, from the most diverse points of view, the most intensively working life-necessities of the present time. And, while the splitting of the human soul into the three members of thinking, feeling and willing is pointed out in the chapter in How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds about the Guardian of the Threshold, it is a result demanded of the whole of mankind that they give thought to the Threefold Social Organism.

This is how the things are connected. If you consider the individual human being who steps over the Threshold to the supersensible world, you can say to yourselves this man experiences in himself the separation into a life of thinking, a life of feeling and a life of willing. If you consider the mankind of today who, while they are going through the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, step over the Threshold behind the scenes of historical Becoming, then you must say: this mankind must find its life of thinking in an independent spiritual organism, its life of feeling—that is to say the relations of feeling which play between man and man—in the independent rights-organism, and the life of will in the economic circuit, in the economic organism.

If you consider these matters in this way you will have the right foundations for the necessity of such statements as are made with regard to the Threefold Social Organism. Then you will also rise above the mere babel of words which often rules the present time. Then you will have insight that at the present time one should not dispute in words but should realise that words only gain importance and point to thoughts if one brings them into the right direction, if one considers that everything which must develop itself as thought-life in the spiritual organism of mankind is the cultivation of the individual capabilities of mankind, i.e. that individualism must rule in the spiritual organism, democracy must rule in the rights- or state-organism because this has to do with what every man develops in the way of relations with every man; in the sphere of economics, associative life must rule which holds together the co-workers in a profession, or the association which also arises as a result of the connection of production with consumption—in other words, socialism must rule in the sphere of the economics organisation. But the three independent members must appear separated in their characteristic qualities.

Now we are still living in a time in which Ahriman plays ball with men, while he lulls them into illusion about what really is to come to pass. So he causes them, as he has been done in former times, to mix together the will-organism and the feeling-organism—namely, socialism and democracy—and causes them to say: we are striving for social-democracy. As a result, the individualistic momentum is entirely left out, for, you see, people do not love thoughts. For otherwise one would have to say: "we must strive for individual-social-democracy", and this would destroy the most significant ideas which doctrinal social-democracy has today. In the confusion which the harmonising-together of socialism and democracy brings to social-democracy, you see an activity which Ahriman is carrying on with men. And one will only feel the seriousness of this tendency if one keeps one's attention on the transition at the Threshold of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and knows that, because the whole of mankind lives within the Social Organism must come about, just as a threefolding of the soul-life of the individual must come about in the passing of the individual man over the Threshold.

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• 1. Fritz Mauthner, Philosophisches Wörterbuch, Munich 1910.
• 2. The Social Question as a Question of the Soul: The Inner Experience of Speech.
• 3. R.S. The Social Question as a question of soul

In the background of all these considerations stands a question which is looked upon in the present age in the light of materialism, and which is far more materialistic in its fundamental conceptions than can be imagined. This question refers to the origin of certain historical events. People speak of historical necessity; namely, that the events which took place, for instance, in the past year, were historically the result, as it were, of events which took place in the preceding years.

What I characterize here as “historical” reaches, of course, into everything that proceeds out of human actions—that is, into social life and civilized life in general. The materialistic conception does not only consist in leading spiritual phenomena back to the sphere of natural science or to a material cause, but it also consists in many other things. The materialistic conception would like to investigate the idea of free will in a full light. It would also like to interpret the events taking place in the course of history in the same way in which it contemplates scientific matters; namely, that a preceding cause always produces, with a certain necessity, something which follows it as an effect. Then people say, and believe they are thinking very clearly when they say this, that all events, also those that have broken into our world-happenings with such a catastrophic force, are a necessity.

In this sense, that is, in the meaning of scientific necessity, this is perfect nonsense, although the expression—all events are a necessity—is justified in other directions. If you consider the things that passed before our souls yesterday—namely, the complicated organization of human nature, you will gain an insight, not only with your understanding but also with your feeling, into the depths of the universal order of laws. You will also gradually lose the habit of thinking that this reality can be embraced in abstract scientific ideas limited to strict laws. Then your gaze will fall on certain phenomena in Nature that reveal many things, if they are looked upon in their true light. For instance, a phenomenon like the following one: Every year a great number of life-germs develop in the ocean, germs which do not become living beings. The life-germs, or eggs, are laid—and perish. Only a small part of these grow into real living beings. This, of course, does not only happen in the wide ocean, but in the whole of Nature. Consider how many life-germs are supposed to become living beings, even in the short space of one year! How much is meant to become alive and does not attain life, when eggs are laid which do not develop! Must we not say that all these germs of life contain causes that do not produce effects? Indeed, anyone who does not consider Nature with theoretical prejudices, especially not with the precise theoretical opinion that every cause has its effect and every effect has its cause—anyone who considers Nature in an unprejudiced way will find that there are countless things in Nature which must be designated, in the fullest meaning of the word, as causes, although they do not produce effects such as should be the case if the causes would live themselves out completely. There are countless instances where life is interrupted, as it were, and does not attain its goal.

This is something that you can see outside in physical Nature. If the spiritual investigator asks himself what corresponds to this in the spiritual world—he will find something very strange. He will find something which corresponds, in a certain sense, exactly to this standing still of life in Nature, but in the way in which spiritual things correspond to things in Nature. Many considerations have shown us that often, not always, the spiritual must be characterized as follows:—Its qualities are the exact opposite of the qualities to be found in Nature—they are the exact opposite. Just as we have seen natural causes that bring about no results—that is, the process is interrupted and what is inherent in the cause (“inherent” is one of the worst possible words for the comprehension of reality) does not develop further—so spiritual investigation shows us that effects arise in the spiritual world; we can say just as little that these are determined by causes, as in the cases which we have just characterized. Yet here we have effects.

Let us ask concretely:—What does the spiritual investigator see when the eye of his soul sees such repressed processes of life? The physical eye sees that eggs, or germs, perish in this case, but the eye of the soul, or of the spirit, sees that where such eggs apparently perish, something endowed with being arises in an earlier stage, in a stage which is not as yet material. If we wish to investigate what really happens in such a case in which material causes have, as it were, no results, then we must dream in a cosmic sense, if I may use this expression. In our usual consciousness we can only dream egoistically. When we dream at night, our dreams are connected with the organism; in our dreams we are not connected with the surroundings. If we are connected with the surroundings and develop the same forces that we develop otherwise in dreams, we experience in the form of imaginations. What is kept back in the processes of Nature and does not reach the stage of physical living beings, becomes something which can very well be experienced in the consciousness of imaginative thought. Beings arise from such repressed life-germs that are only accessible to imaginative thought.

If we would not dream as human beings, but as beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, we could dream of them. In fact, if I may use ttii.s expression, the Angeloi dream of the beings that rise up every year in great numbers from the sea and from the earth, as elementary forms; these are nothing but the products of the life-germs that have apparently perished.

If you try to picture this very vividly, you can see a kind of elementary life rising out of the earth; in this elementary life we ourselves are embedded with our own soul. But we are in this elementary life more intensely still, for we take part in the process I have just mentioned. As human beings we participate very intensely in this process, and also the animals take part in this. How? Well, there is no difference between that which happens when a certain quantity of fish eggs are laid in the sea—eggs that do not develop and only give rise to elementary existence—and that which happens when we see the seeds growing out of the earth, let us say wheat. How many grains of wheat are predestined to become wheat halms,¹ and yet they do not grow into halms because we eat them! In this case we ourselves and our processes are linked up with the universe; we connect ourselves with what arises as elementary existence.

In the grains of wheat and in other products that we use for our food, we interrupt the progressive process. We do not allow the life germs to become real beings, but through our own existence we cause that, which was destined for something else, to become an elementary process, which can be seen only through imagination. But the reality that lies at the foundation of this imaginative life takes place because we ourselves are placed into the process and participate in it. From the grains of wheat or rye, from everything else in Nature which we consume in this way, from all this, an elementary life arises. This elementary life permeates us. We take up this elementary life and are placed within it.

You have here the foundation of elementary life. We can, as it were, exist only because we interrupt another progressive process and spiritualize it. Even when we eat, we spiritualize a process that would otherwise take a purely material course.

The opposite is to be found in the spiritual world. There we find effects which have no causes, for instance, like a moving billiard ball which moves because another one hits it these effects exist as it were without a cause, no cause can be indicated in their case; when we contemplate such things, the idea of cause and effect loses its meaning. Effects arise in the life of our soul and spirit, effects from the spiritual world, of which we cannot say that they have been caused. We face the elementary results (which arise as it were in the form of vapor from the processes just described) with desires arising from necessities of life. We must eat; hence we must spin ourselves into these elementary processes. Just as we face such elementary processes with a certain lust, or desire, so we face spiritual effects, which are in a certain sense devoid of causes, with antipathy, inasmuch as we are human beings on the physical plane. Inasmuch as we are physical human beings, we strive to prevent these effects from the spiritual world from entering into us.

If you try to grasp this somewhat subtle thought, you will see that we are, as it were, surrounded by a spiritual will, which strives to enter into us; at first we do not face it with desire; we are not even inclined to accept it. It is as if will motions were constantly floating around us in the air, motions which we reject. When the clairvoyant consciousness develops, it soon comes into the insight that imaginative things surround us and that we are hindered by inner obstacles from taking up this imaginative element.

Let us consider this imaginative element as a reality. Just as here on the earth a certain number of life-germs perish every year, so do spiritual imaginative things live in the world that always surrounds us as a spiritual world; they can indeed be reached through imagination, but through our human disposition we place obstacles in the way. These obstacles are not to be looked upon in an abstract way, or in general; they must be grasped as concrete and differentiated obstacles. What develops every year from physical life as an ascending elementary life, develops spiritually at some other time. Then it descends and becomes something that we reject in another period. These periods of time are not very regular, for there are times in which the spiritual life surges around us very strongly and many things wish to come to us. There are other times in which the spiritual air around us is not so full. We may take up a more or less receptive attitude, although generally speaking we do not feel inclined to take up this imaginative kind of existence that can be reached only through imagination. But certain conditions may enable us to take up a receptive attitude—we shall still speak of this—or we may take up an entirely rejecting attitude.

Let us suppose that in a certain period of time many such Beings are there, Beings who wish, as it were, to approach man in a spiritual way, and that man is disinclined to accept them. What will happen? It then happens that by rejecting these spiritual beings who wish to come to him, man creates the possibility (he creates the opportunity within mankind itself) for a continuation of the old processes within him, processes that have withered, and continue to spin their dry threads, so that they produce dead results instead of bringing about a living result. It is just the same as if a plant that has reached the end of its life were not taken away, but were to continue as a dried-up, lifeless plant to the damage of its surroundings.

In the course of historical events this takes place in the following way:—An age approaches—the beginning of the 20th century was essentially such an age—in which spiritual Beings wait, as it were, to approach man, an age in which man is called upon in every way to open his soul to new revelations. Yet he does not take up these new revelations, but rejects them. Then the old continues to spin beyond its limits, for this old needs to be fertilized anew through man. This does not happen. What has not been fertilized continues to spin on in a dry and barren way and this causes such events as the present catastrophic one.

One of the most important causes to be found in the spiritual world is the fact that, as the 20th century approached, evolution took a course that made human beings oppose the new revelation, for reasons which we shall still discuss. One might say that the spiritual world was full of all that was offered to mankind in the form of new spiritual knowledge, new spiritual impulses, yet mankind rejected this. Why? Undoubtedly such things are connected with conditions of human evolution. We know that the materialistic age had to come—it has its good qualities from certain other aspects. The materialistic age came, and one of its consequences was that man formed ideas which were connected only with one side of human nature. Think of what we discussed yesterday.

Yesterday we said that the human being, consisting of four members, physical, etheric, and astral body and ego (roughly speaking) is really of a different age, as far as each one of these members is concerned. When a human being is 28 years old, he is 28 only as far as his physical body is concerned (I said this yesterday); as far as his so-called etheric body is concerned he is 21; as far as the astral body is concerned, 14; and as far as the ego is concerned only 7 years old. Yesterday's considerations can very well show you this. A human being of 28, is really 28 years old only as a physical human being. The ego lives in him, for instance (without considering the other members) and lives more slowly, so that it is still a child of 7 years when the human being has reached the age of 28. When a man is 28 years old according to his physical body, this child of 7 is indeed connected with quite different worlds from the one where scientific necessity is to be found. But in the materialistic age man has become accustomed to form only those ideas that can be applied to the relationship of the physical body with its surroundings, and everything is judged according to this. The human being, such as he stands in the world, is really a complicated being, as we have seen yesterday from many aspects. What a human being believes that he knows about himself, what he says about himself in our materialistic age, is only a quarter of all that concerns man. It is only that part which concerns the physical body. We can speak of a scientific necessity only in regard to the relationship of the physical body with its surroundings. Of what must we speak when we consider, for instance, what is contained, as a child of 7, in a man of 28 (without taking into consideration the other members)? Here we must speak of something quite different, something from which this illuminated age, this infinitely clever age, has turned away completely. Strange as it may sound to a modern human being, we must speak in this case of wonders, of miracles. Wonders in the sense in which people often imagine them, or as they are imagined by people who like to go to spiritistic séances, are things which cannot be considered by a real spiritual science. Wonders lie in entirely different spheres; wonders lie in spiritual happenings. Just as necessities lie in the outer events of Nature, so do wonders lie in spiritual events. No human being who enters the physical world from the spiritual world, and proceeds to a physical incarnation, is a physical necessity. He is a necessity only inasmuch as he himself determines this necessity, because he has taken the superconscious decision in the spiritual world to connect himself with a certain hereditary stream. The cause need not lie in father and mother; they merely provide an opportunity. The appearance of every human being in the physical world is a miracle, a wonder. The entrance into the physical world of the human being that is 7 years old when the physical body is 28 is always a true wonder, and in respect to this, every question from a scientific point of view concerning the "cause" is nonsense. It is nonsense to ascribe to heredity that part in us which lives so slowly that it is only 7 years old, when we are 28. If we really want to find out its origin, and ask whence comes that which is only 7 years old when we are 28, we reach the spiritual world, the world that we share with the so-called dead, and in which we lived before descending to our body. Men who were able to think in an unprejudiced way could, indeed, form thoughts concerning such things, even though with great difficulty in our materialistic age.

Think how much Goethe occupied himself with scientific thoughts and how exemplary his scientific thoughts are. He had, as you know a constant longing to go to Italy before he ever saw Italy. And when he finally saw the great works of art in Italy which gave him a conception of the creative artistic activity of the Greek, he wrote to his friends at Weimar: “Here is necessity—here is God.” He wrote of a necessity that is not the one of natural science. His previous scientific thoughts gave him an inkling of the other necessity—the necessity that shines from the spiritual world and is the same as wonder, or miracle. This is what he felt when he saw Italy.

But our age is an illuminated one; our contemporaries are very clever. For this reason they have not only rejected the unjustified conception of “wonder,” but have banished wonder as such even from the spiritual world. But to banish wonder from the spiritual world implies nothing less than to do everything possible in order to misunderstand the spiritual world thoroughly. For the things coming from the spiritual world appear to us only as effects; if we look for the causes we cannot find them. For a spiritual investigator, this is an unquestionable truth. At the end of the 19th century men had no feelings of wonder and reverence for that which sought to come to them as a revelation from the spiritual world; this lack of feeling had increased to such an extent that there was an aversion to such revelations. For these revelations come to man in the same measure in which he develops reverence for all that is profound in the world.

That which can enter into the world's order of laws as wonders may also not take place—not be there. This dulling of human feelings in respect to wonder is the consequence of the omissions in the age approaching the 20th century. If we wish to speak of the causes of our present catastrophic events, we will find that these causes are not things done by human beings. Instead these causes are sins of omission. This is the essential point.

In lectures which I have held repeatedly in past years, I have pointed out that an excellent philosopher lived in the middle of the 19th century, Karl Christian Planck. In many places I have seized the opportunity of drawing attention to Karl Christian Planck, because he wrote a book that is, as it were, his philosophical, literary testament. This book sketches the details, even the spiritual details, of the present world catastrophe. Indeed, one may say that he describes them in advance. The book was written in 1880. Why? Because Karl Christian Planck belongs to those spirits who saw at the right time what was taking place. If you have a house that begins to grow dilapidated, it must be repaired in time. If you wait until it cannot be repaired any more, it falls together and the catastrophe occurs. Our present catastrophe is nothing but a collapse. If we look at it from a real aspect it is a collapse. The right time to bring about what might have taken place instead was during the decades 1870, 1880 of the past century. Men like Karl Christian Planck, who pointed out what was bound to come, never become—as we all know—leading personalities in outer life. When a leading personality is sought, when a statesman or someone similar must be found, one does not naturally turn to those who know something in the sense of Karl Christian Planck! These cannot be used—is it not so? Instead one chooses others, who very often can do nothing to repair and support the falling house. If we only look into the backgrounds of life, it can be proved historically (Karl Christian Planck is not the only one, there are many others) that the revelations from the spiritual world were given to many men at the right moment—the revelation of the event which mankind was facing. There might still have been time to avert the course of such an event. Of course, no one listened to Karl Christian Planck, and even now, who listens to those who speak of what must be said years before the catastrophe takes place, if this is to be averted?

Unfortunately we must say that the way in which humanity has lived through this catastrophic event up to now clearly shows that if it lasts another four years, human beings will have grown accustomed to it and will accept it as they accept normal life. Indeed, this has progressed to a high degree. He who understand the times, however, asks today:—What must take place? For, if something does not take place, the consequences will necessarily arise after decades, because something was left undone at the right time.

But what should take place according to the present conditions of time cannot be discovered in the surrounding physical world. If we wish to hear the right things it is, indeed, necessary today to listen to those who are able to speak out of the spiritual world. Of course, in less important things, events take place more quickly. One may say, in five years perhaps, human beings will recognize that they ought to have listened to many things, and they might already have known many things, if they had listened at the right moment. But they do not like to hear these things. They only like to hear things that show visible signs in the outer physical world. But this physical world has no significance for the historical course of events. It does not show the impulse, the motive force behind events. That which is to be the starting point and impulse for events in the social and ethical life must come from the spiritual world.

In our age humanity should be educated to understand a very great event in the course of human evolution, namely, to believe in free will also in historical evolution. At a certain point of spiritual life humanity today should be led with the greatest force to believe in freedom or free will—and wonder is identical with this. This point lies in the conception of the Christ impulse, of the Mystery of Golgotha. In earlier times humanity took an entirely different attitude toward the Mystery of Golgotha, and the more we go back in history the greater we find this difference. We have often spoken of this. Today it is not possible for human beings—especially for those human beings who are most advanced in the sense of the spirit of the age—to understand the Event of Golgotha as an historical event resembling other historical events. As a foundation for the argument to be dealt with here, I only need to point out that the significance of the Gospels as historical documents has, as you know, been shaken. We cannot consider the Gospels as historical documents in the same way in which we consider the documents concerning Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, or Caesar as historical documents. We cannot, according to methods of historical research, consider the Gospels or the other writings in the New Testament dealing with the Event of Golgotha, as documents in the same sense. The way of thinking adopted in modern historical research loses every possibility of considering the Gospels as historical documents and of looking upon the Event of Golgotha, described in the Gospels, as an historical event, in the sense in which other historical events and facts are historically proved. It is not possible to speak of Christ Jesus as an historical personality in the same way in which one speaks of Charlemagne as an historical personality, according to so-called historical sources.

He who sees through such things will realize that the time has come in which those who love truth and try to understand things through truth must say that what used to be considered as historical sources for the Mystery of Golgotha has been shaken, owing to the attitude adopted by modern historical investigation. One must, indeed, be very dull—for instance like Adolph Harnack, the famous theologian, to stand up again and again and state that what can be asserted concerning Christ Jesus on a quarto page constitutes an historical document in the meaning of modern history! Of course, these things standing on a quarto page are just as little historical documents as the Gospels—according toe Harnack—are historical documents. But an attempt like the one of Harnack (to which hundreds and hundreds of others may be added) is connected with the lack of truthfulness of our age in regard to such things; it is never willing to draw radical conclusions, nevertheless just these are the right conclusions.

The conclusion which must be drawn is that, in accordance with what lies before us, we must confess that it is impossible to find Christ Jesus if we seek him in an outward historical way; we cannot find him in this way. We must find him through spiritual investigation. But in this way we shall surely find him. We shall find the historical event of Golgotha. Why? Because the historical event of Golgotha occurred in human evolution through freedom—freedom of will, in a much higher sense than in the case of other historical events; and because this free event must approach the human being in our age in such a way that nothing compels him to accept it as valid; instead he must accept its validity through inner freedom. Events that can be proved historically cannot be accepted freely. Events for which there is no outer historical proof are accepted for spiritual reasons, and on a spiritual foundation we are free. One becomes Christian through freedom, and in our modern age we must understand, above all, that one can be a Christian in a real sense only through complete freedom and not through the compulsion of historical documents. The task destined for our age is that Christianity shall gain the truth through which it will become the great impulse for the human understanding of freedom. That this shall be understood belongs to the fundamental truths of our age—then an insight must be gained into the fact that the evidence for Christianity must be sought in the spiritual world.

If this insight becomes as intense in human nature as it should become it will produce further insight—it will give rise to other things. What it should produce first of all is that man should learn to answer for himself this question:—How shall I make myself more receptive for the recognition of that which is not forced upon me from the physical world, against which I may at first even feel an aversion, an antipathy? What makes me more inclined toward this?

I am not led by personal vanity or conceit, but only because I wish to bring a concrete example. I have pointed out again and again, on similar occasions, that I began my literary career by refraining, at first, from setting forth my own opinions; instead everything which I set forth was connected with Goethe's spirit, in a conscious retrospect of a spirit who ascended to the spiritual kingdom of the so-called dead, already in the year 1832. But read what I wrote in connection with Goethe, in the time that preceded my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The so-called Goethe investigators study these books chiefly with respect to the question, whether or not they render Goethe's opinions. They find Goethe-opinions only if the writer is a literary "ruminant," in other words, if he ruminates what Goethe said during his incarnation up to 1832. I was always of the opinion that schoolmasters, and also I myself, really need not repeat what Goethe said, for Goethe himself said far better what he wished to say. It is always better to read Goethe's own works than the opinions of schoolmasters, even when they are such excellent schoolmasters as, for instance, Lewes, who wrote the famous Goethebiography. What I tried to write is based on the inspiration of a Goethe who is no longer on the earth—It is the continuation of his ideas in a certain sphere after death. I wrote what could be written out of a certain feeling of a living relationship with so-called deceased souls. I mention this as an example and indeed not out of conceit and vanity, but because it is connected with the question as to what human beings must do in order to become more receptive for that which comes out of the spiritual world.

Human beings must seek a connection with the dead; they must find the way into the worlds where the dead live, but in a sensible, sound way, in a really fitting way and not spiritistically. The dead continue to speak after their death and we have seen that what they say, and what they send down as impulses, is alive. It is alive, not in the experiences we gain through our sense and not in our thoughts, but in our feelings, and in the reality of the impulses of our will. This is where it lives. But then we must also find within us that which inclines us to approach the spiritual world. Antipathy for imaginations is connected with unbelief in the possibility of being able to approach the spiritual world—antipathy for imaginations which wish to enter from the spiritual world in the form of impulses permeating our actions, and wish to enter also the social events and the moral, ethical events in human evolution. They alone can make human beings free.

Two things are needed in our age: To realize that the acknowledgement of the Mystery of Golgotha must be a free deed of the human soul and to penetrate wholly into this truth. And then, to seek in a real way the bridge to the dead, not merely in an abstract way, or in an abstract faith. In our age there is a great aversion also to this. People do not see at once through all that speaks against it. What ideal have human beings today, as far as social life is concerned? They think: “We are clever people; we were born and went to school—and that is why we are so clever; we are clever human beings, and consequently we know very well what must happen in social life. We call together meetings, elect officers, councilors, parliaments, and whatever all the rest may be called. There people discuss what must happen in social life. Naturally, for we are clever; and when such clever people as those of the present age come together, the right things must result”—This is the idea, but it is based on an assumption which is not correct—namely, that people know right away what is right.

Have you met anyone who knows what is the right thing for the year 1917 (the year of this lecture)? Not those who are now twenty years old, and love to sit in Parliament in order to talk and determine what is the right thing for 1917! Those who died long ago know this best of all. We should ask them what attitude we should adopt. This answers to a great extent the question as to how we can improve our social life—When we learn to consult the dead.

As physical human beings up to the end of our life, we know as a rule only what is convenient to us personally. Only when we are dead does our knowledge become really mature. Then it is mature to such an extent that it can really be applied to social life. But one must not think that the dead can have a direct influence, as it were, physically in the course of events, more or less like physical human beings. The dead know more than the living what must happen socially, but human beings must listen to them. And the human beings living on the physical plane must be the instruments carrying out the knowledge of the dead. Modern human beings must learn above all to become instruments. But—let us use this expression even though it is an unpleasant one—parliaments where human being will strive to let the dead be heard also will not exist for a long time to come. But no well-being can come in certain spheres unless the dead are consulted, unless social life is spiritualized also from this direction. Before believing that the knowledge gained here on earth through birth, surroundings, and schooling is ripe for social impulses, we should penetrate into that which has really become ripe for social impulses—the wisdom of those who have already laid aside the physical body, a wisdom which can reveal significant points of view if we really investigate it. Just imagine how much deeper the life of feeling becomes, what a deepening the human soul experiences, when that which I have now expressed in the form of thoughts becomes feeling, and when the ancient myths which connected human beings with their ancestors are replaced by the link which I have mentioned—when a concrete spiritual life will again permeate our spiritual atmosphere, and what can thus be grasped through spiritual science, in the form of thoughts, passes into the soul and feelings, and human beings will really live in this!

• 1. haulm: stems of beans and peas and potatoes and grasses collectively as used for thatching and bedding.

These lectures deal with the inner connection between appearance and reality in the world, and you have already seen that there are many things of which those whose vision is limited to the world of appearance have no idea. We have seen how every species of being—this was shown by a number of examples—has its task in the whole nexus of cosmic existence. Now today, as a kind of recapitulation, we will again consider what I said recently about the nature of several beings and in the first place of the butterfly. In my description of this butterfly nature, as contrasted with that of the plants, we found that the butterfly is essentially a being belonging to the light—to the light in so far as it is modified by the forces of the outer planets, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn. Hence, if we wish to understand the butterfly in its true nature, we must in fact look up into the higher regions of the cosmos, and must say to ourselves: These higher cosmic regions endow and bless the earth, with the world of the butterflies.

The bestowal of this blessing upon the earth has an even deeper significance. Let us recall how we had to say that the butterfly does not participate in what is directly connected with earthly existence, but only indirectly, in so far as the sun, with its power of warmth and light, is active in this earthly existence. Actually a butterfly lays its eggs only where they do not become separated from sun activity, so that the butterfly does not entrust its egg to the earth, but only to the sun. Then out creeps the caterpillar, which is under the influence of Mars-activity, though naturally the sun influence always remains present. Then the chrysalis is formed, and this is under the influence of Jupiter-activity. Out of the chrysalis emerges the butterfly, which can now in its iridescent colours reproduce in the earth's environment the luminous Sun-power of the earth united with the power of Saturn.

Thus in the manifold colours of the butterfly world we see, in the environment of earth-existence, the direct working of Saturn-activity within the sphere of the earthly. But let us bear in mind that the substances necessary for earth-existence are in fact of two kinds. We have the purely material substances of the earth, and we have the spiritual substances; and I told you that the remarkable thing about this is that in the case of man the underlying substance of his metabolic and limb system is spiritual whereas that of the head is physical. Moreover in man's lower nature spiritual substance is permeated with the activity of physical forces, with the action of gravity, with the action of the other earthly forces. In the head, the earthly substance, conjured up into it by the whole digestive process, the circulation, nerve-activity and the like, is permeated by super-sensible spiritual forces, which are reflected in our thinking, in our power of forming mental pictures. Thus in the human head we have spiritualized physical matter, and in the metabolic-limb-system we have earthized—if I may coin a word—earthized spiritual substantiality.

Now it is this spiritualized matter that we find to the greatest degree in the butterfly. Because a butterfly always remains in the sphere of sun-existence, it only takes to itself earthly matter—naturally I am still speaking pictorially—as though in the form of the finest dust. It also derives its nourishment from those earthly substances which are worked upon by the sun. It unites with its own being only what is sun-imbued; and it takes from earthly substance only what is finest, and works on it until it is entirely spiritualized. When we look at a butterfly's wing we actually have before us earthly matter in its most spiritualized form. Through the fact that the matter of the butterfly's wing is imbued with colour, it is the most spiritualized of all earthly substances.

The butterfly is the creature which lives entirely in spiritualized earth-matter. And one can even see spiritually how in a certain way a butterfly despises the body which it carries between its coloured wings, because its whole attention, its whole group-soul being, is centred on its joyous delight in the colours of its wings.

And just as we marvel at its shimmering colours as we follow it, so also can we marvel at its own fluttering joy in these colours. This is something which it is of fundamental importance to cultivate in children, this joy in the spirituality fluttering about in the air, which is in fact fluttering joy, joy in the play of colours. The nuances of butterfly-nature reflect all this in a wonderful way: and something else lies in the background as well.

We were able to say of the bird—which we regarded as represented by the eagle—that at its death it can carry spiritualized earth-substance into the spiritual world, and that thereby, as bird, it has the task in cosmic existence of spiritualizing earthly matter, thus being able to accomplish what cannot be done by man. The human being also possesses in his head earth-matter which has been to a certain degree spiritualized, but he cannot take this earthly matter into the world in which he lives between death and a new birth, for he would continually have to endure unspeakable, unbearable, devastating pain, if he were to carry this spiritualized earth-matter of his head into the spiritual world.

The bird-world, represented by the eagle, can do this, so that thereby a connection is actually created between what is earthly and what is extra-earthly. Earthly matter is, as it were, gradually converted into spirit, and the bird-creation has the task of giving over this spiritualized earthly matter to the universe. One can actually say that, when the earth has reached the end of its existence, this earth-matter will have been spiritualized, and that the bird-creation had its place in the whole economy of earthly existence for the purpose of carrying back this spiritualized earth-matter into spirit-land.

It is somewhat different with butterflies. The butterfly spiritualizes earthly matter to an even greater degree than the bird. The bird after all comes into much closer contact with the earth than does the butterfly. I will explain this in detail later. Because the butterfly never actually leaves the region of the sun, it is in a position to spiritualize its matter to such a degree that it does not, like the bird, have to await its death, but already during its life it is continually restoring spiritualized matter to the environment of the earth, to the cosmic environment of the earth.

Only think of the magnificence of all this in the whole cosmic economy! Only picture the earth with the world of the butterflies fluttering around it in its infinite variety, continually sending out into world-space the spiritualized earthly matter which this butterfly-world yields up to the cosmos! Then, with such knowledge, we can contemplate the region of the world, of the butterflies encircling the earth with totally different feelings.

We can look into this fluttering world and say: From you, O fluttering creatures, there streams out something still better than sunlight; you radiate spirit-light into the cosmos! Our materialistic science pays but little heed to things of the spirit. And so this materialistic science is absolutely unequipped with any means of grasping at these things, which are, nevertheless, part of the whole cosmic economy. They are there, just as the effects of physical activities are there, and they are even more real. For what thus streams out into spirit-land will work on further when the earth has long passed away, whereas what is taught by the modern chemist and physicist will reach its end with the conclusion of the earth's existence. So that if some observer or other were to sit outside in the cosmos, with a long period of time for observation, he would see something like a continual outstreaming into spirit-land of matter which has become spiritualized, as the earth radiates its own being out into cosmic space; and he would see—like scintillating sparks, sparks which ever and again flash up into light—what the bird-kingdom, what every bird after its death sends forth as glittering light, streaming out into the universe in the form of rays: a shimmering of the spirit-light of the butterflies, and a sparkling of the spirit-light of the birds.

Such things as these should also make us realize that, when we look up to the rest of the starry world, we should not think that from there, too, there only streams down what is shown by the spectroscope, or rather what is conjured into the spectroscope by the fantasy of the expert in optics. What streams down to earth from other worlds of the stars is just as much the product of living beings in other worlds, as what streams out from the earth into world-space is the product of living beings. People look at a star, and with the modern physicist picture it as something in the nature of a kindled inorganic flame—or the like. This, of course, is absolute nonsense. For what we behold there is entirely the product of something imbued with life, imbued with soul, imbued with spirit.

And now let us pass inwards from this girdle of butterflies—if I may call it so—which encircles the earth, and return to the kingdom of the birds. If we call to mind something which is already known to us, we must picture three regions adjoining each other. There are other regions above these, and again other regions below them. We have the light-ether and we have the warmth-ether, which, however, actually consists of two parts, of two layers, the one being the layer of earthly warmth, the other that of cosmic warmth, and these continually play one into the other. Thus we have not only one, but two kinds of warmth, the one which is of earthly, tellurian origin, and the other of a kind which is of cosmic origin. These are always playing one into the other. Then, bordering on the warmth-ether, there is the air. Below this would come water and earth, and above would come chemical ether and light-ether.

The world of the butterflies belongs more particularly to the light-ether; it is the light-ether itself which is the means whereby the power of the light draws forth the caterpillar from the butterfly's egg. Essentially it is the power of the light which draws the caterpillar forth.

This is not the case with the bird-kingdom. The birds lay their eggs. These must now be hatched out by warmth. The butterfly's egg is simply given over to what is of the nature of the sun; the bird's egg comes into the region of warmth. It is in the region of the warmth-ether that the bird has its being, and it overcomes what is purely of the air.

The butterfly, too, flies in the air, but fundamentally it is entirely a creature of the light. And in that the air is permeated with light, in this light-air existence, the butterfly chooses not air existence but light existence. For the butterfly the air is only what sustains it—the waves, as it were, upon which it floats; but the butterfly's element is the light. The bird flies in the air, but its element is the warmth, the various differentiations of warmth in the air, and to a certain degree it overcomes the air. Certainly the bird is also an air-being inwardly and to a high degree. The bones of the mammals, the bones of the human being are filled with marrow. (We shall speak later as to why this is the case.) The bones of a bird are hollow and are filled only with air. We consist, in so far as the content of our bones is concerned, of what is of the nature of marrow; a bird consists of air. And what is of the nature of marrow in us for the bird is simply air. If you take the lungs of a bird, you will find a whole quantity of pockets which project from the lungs; these are air-pockets. When the bird inhales it does not only breathe air into its lungs, but it breathes the air into these air-pockets, and from thence it passes into the hollow bones. So that, if one could remove from the bird all its flesh and all its feathers and also take away the bones, one would still get a creature composed of air, having the form of what inwardly fills out the lungs, and what inwardly fills out all the bones. Picturing this in accordance with its form, you would really get the form of the bird. Within the eagle of flesh and bone dwells an eagle of air. This is not only because within the eagle there is also an eagle of air. The bird breathes and through its breathing it produces warmth. This warmth the bird imparts to the air, and draws it into its entire limb system. Thus arises the difference of temperature as compared to its outer environment. The bird has its inner warmth, as against the outer warmth. In this difference of degree between the warmth of the outer air and the warmth which the bird imparts to its own air within itself—it is really in this that the bird lives and has its being. And if you were to ask a bird how matters are with its body—supposing you understood bird language—the bird's reply would make you realize that it regards its solid material bones, and other material adjuncts, rather as you would luggage if you were loaded, left and right, on the back and on the head. You would not call this luggage your body. In the same way the bird, in speaking of itself, would only speak of the warmth-imbued air, and of everything else as the luggage which it bears about with it in earthly existence. These bones, which envelop the real body of the bird, these are its luggage. We are therefore, speaking in an absolute sense when we say that fundamentally the bird lives only and entirely in the element of warmth, and the butterfly in the element of light. For the butterfly everything of the nature of physical substance, which it spiritualizes, is, before this spiritualizing, not even personal luggage but more like furniture. It is even more remote from its real being.

When we thus ascend to the creatures of these regions, we come to something which cannot be judged in a physical way. If we do so, it is rather as if we were to draw a person with his hair growing out of the bundle on his head, boxes growing together with his arms, and a rucksack growing out of his back, making him appear a perfect hunch-back. If one were to draw a person in this way, it would actually correspond to the materialist's view of the bird. That is not the bird; it is the bird's luggage. The bird really feels encumbered by having to drag his luggage about, for it would like best to pursue its way through the world, free and unencumbered, as a creature of warm air. For the bird all else is a burden. And the bird pays tribute to world-existence by spiritualizing this burden for it, sending it out when it dies into spirit-land; a tribute which the butterfly already pays during its lifetime.

You see, the bird breathes, and makes use of the air in the way I told you. It is otherwise with the butterfly. The butterfly does not in any way breathe by means of an apparatus such as the so-called higher animals possess—though these in fact are only the more bulky, not in reality the higher animals. The butterfly breathes in fact only through tubes which proceed inwards from its outer casing, and, these being somewhat dilated, it can accumulate air during flight, so that it is not inconvenienced by always needing to breathe.

The butterfly always breathes through tubes which pass into its interior. Because this is so, it can take up into its whole body, together with the air which it inhales, the light which is in the air. Here, too, a great difference is to be found.

Let us represent this in a diagram. Picture to yourselves one of the higher animals, one with lungs. Into the lungs comes oxygen, and there it unites with the blood in its course through the heart. In the case of these bulky animals, and also with man, the blood must flow into the heart and lungs in order to come into contact with oxygen.

In the case of the butterfly I must draw the diagram quite differently. Here I must draw it in this way: If this is the butterfly, the tubes everywhere pass inwards; they then branch out more widely. And now the oxygen enters in everywhere, and spreads itself out through the tubes; so that the air penetrates into the whole body.

With us, and with the so-called higher animals, the air comes as far as the lungs as air only; in the case of the butterfly the outer air, with its content of light, is dispersed into the whole interior of the body. The bird diffuses the air right into its hollow bones; the butterfly is not only a creature of light outwardly, but it diffuses the light which is carried by the air into every part of its entire body, so that inwardly too the butterfly is composed of light. Just as I could characterize the bird as warmed air, so in fact is the butterfly composed entirely of light. Its body also consists of light; and for the butterfly warmth is actually a burden, is luggage. It flutters about only and entirely in the light, and it is light only that it builds into its body. When we see the butterflies fluttering in the air, what we must really see is only fluttering beings of light, beings of light rejoicing in their play of colours. All else is garment, is luggage. We must gain an understanding of what the beings around earth really consist, for outward appearance is deceptive.

Those who today have learned, in some superficial manner, this or that out of oriental wisdom speak about the world as Maya. But to say that the world is Maya really implies nothing. One must have insight into the details of why it is Maya. We understand Maya when we know that the real nature of the bird in no way accords with what is to be seen outwardly, but that it is a being of warm air. The butterfly is not at all what it appears to be, but what is seen fluttering about is a being of light, a being which actually consists of joy in the play of colours, in that play of colours which arises on the butterfly's wings through the earthly dust-substance being imbued with the element of colour, and thus entering on the first stage of its spiritualisation on the way out into the spiritual universe, into the spiritual cosmos.

You see, we have here, as it were, two levels: the butterfly, the inhabitant of the light-ether in an earth environment, and the bird, the inhabitant of the warmth-ether. And now comes the third level. When we descend into the air, we arrive at those beings which, at a certain period of our earth-evolution, could not yet have been there at all; for instance at the time when the moon had not yet separated from the earth but was still with it. Here we come to beings which are certainly also air-beings, living in the air, but which are in fact already strongly influenced by what is peculiar to the earth, gravity. The butterfly is completely untouched by earth-gravity. It flutters joyfully in the light-ether, and feels itself to be a creation of that ether. The bird overcomes gravity by imbuing the air within it with warmth, thereby becoming a being of warm air—and warm air is upborne by cold air. Earth-gravity is also overcome by the bird.

Those creatures which by reason of their origin must still live in the air but which are unable to overcome earth-gravity, because they have not hollow bones but bones filled with marrow, and also because they have not air-sacs like the birds—these creatures are the bats.

The bats are a quite remarkable order of animal-life. In no way do they overcome the gravity of earth through what is inside their bodies. They do not, like the butterflies, possess the lightness of light, or, like the bird, the lightness of warmth; they are subject to earth-gravity, and they experience themselves in their flesh and bone. Hence that element of which the butterfly consists, which is its whole sphere of life—the element of light—this is disagreeable to bats. They like the dusk. Bats have to make use of the air, but they like the air best when it is not the bearer of light. They yield themselves up to the dusk. They are veritable creatures of the dusk. And bats can only maintain themselves in the air because they possess their somewhat caricature-like bat-wings, which are not wings at all in the true sense, but stretched membrane, membrane stretched between their elongated fingers, a kind of parachute. By means of these they maintain themselves in the air. They overcome gravity—as a counter-weight—by opposing it with something which itself is related to gravity. Through this, however, they are completely yoked into the domain of earth-forces. One could never construct the flight of a butterfly solely according to physical, mechanical laws, neither could one the flight of a bird. Things would never come out absolutely right. In their case we must introduce something containing other laws of construction. But the bat's flight, that you can certainly construct according to earthly dynamics and mechanics.

The bat does not like the light, the light-imbued air, but at the most only twilight air. And the bat also differs from the bird through the fact that the bird, when it looks about it, always has in view what is in the air. Even the vulture, when it steals a lamb, perceives it as it sees it from above, as though it were at the end of the light sphere, like something painted onto the earth. And quite apart from this, it is no mere act of seeing; it is a craving. What you would perceive if you actually saw the flight of the vulture towards the lamb is a veritable dynamic of intention, of volition, of craving.

A butterfly sees what is on the earth as though in a mirror; for the butterfly the earth is a mirror. It sees what is in the cosmos. When you see a butterfly fluttering about, you must picture to yourselves that it disregards the earth, that for it the earth is just a mirror for what is in the cosmos. A bird does not see what belongs to the earth, but it sees what is in the air. The bat only perceives what it flies through, or flies past. And because it does not like the light, it is unpleasantly affected by everything it sees. It can certainly be said that the butterfly and the bird see in a very spiritual way. The first creature—descending from above downwards—which must see in an earthly way, is disagreeably affected by this seeing. A bat dislikes seeing, and in consequence it has a kind of embodied fear of what it sees, but does not want to see. And so it would like to slip past everything. It is obliged to see, yet is unwilling to do so—and thus it everywhere tries just to skirt past. And it is because it desires just to slip past everything, that it is so wonderfully intent on listening. The bat is actually a creature which is continually listening to its own flight, lest this flight should be in any way endangered.

Only look at the bat's ears. You can see from them that they are attuned to world-fear. So they are—these bats' ears. They are quite remarkable structures, attuned to evading the world, to world-fear. All this, you see, is only to be understood when the bat is studied in the framework into which we have just placed it.

Here we must add something further. The butterfly continually imparts spiritualized matter to the cosmos. It is the darling of the Saturn influences. Now call to mind how I described Saturn as the great bearer of the memory of our planetary system. The butterfly is closely connected with what makes provision for memory in our planet. It is memory-thoughts which live in the butterfly. The bird—this, too, I have already described—is entirely a head, and as it flies through the warmth-imbued air in world-space it is actually the living, flying thought. What we have within us as thoughts—and this also is connected with the warmth-ether—is bird-nature, eagle-nature, in us. The bird is the flying thought. But the bat is the flying dream; the flying dream-picture of the cosmos. So we can say: The earth is surrounded by a web of butterflies—this is cosmic memory; and by the kingdom of the birds—this is cosmic thinking; and by the bats—they are the cosmic dream, cosmic dreaming. It is actually the flying dreams of the cosmos which sough through space as the bats. And as dreams love the twilight, so, too, does the cosmos love the twilight when it sends the bat through space. The enduring thoughts of memory, these we see embodied in the girdle of butterflies encircling the earth; thoughts of the moment we see in the bird-girdle of the earth; and dreams in the environment of the earth fly about embodied as bats. And you will surely feel, if we penetrate deeply into their form, how much affinity there is between this appearance of the bat and dreaming! One simply cannot look at a bat without the thought arising: I must be dreaming; that is really something which should not be there, something which is as much outside the other creations of nature as dreams are outside ordinary physical reality.

To sum up we can say: The butterfly sends spiritualized substance into spirit-land during its lifetime; the bird sends it out after its death. Now what does the bat do? During its lifetime the bat gives off spiritualized substance, especially that spiritualized substance which exists in the stretched membrane between its separate fingers. But it does not give this over to the cosmos; it sheds it into the atmosphere of the earth. Thereby beads of spirit, so to say, are continually arising in the atmosphere.

Thus we find the earth to be surrounded by the continual glimmer of out-streaming spirit-matter from the butterflies and sparkling into this what comes from the dying birds; but also, streaming back towards the earth, we find peculiar segregations of air where the bats give off what they spiritualize. Those are the spiritual formations which are always to be observed when one sees a bat in flight. In fact a bat always has a kind of tail behind it, like a comet. The bat gives off spirit-matter; but instead of sending it outwards, it thrusts it back into the physical substance of the earth. It thrusts it back into the air. And just as one sees with the physical eye physical bats fluttering about, one can also see these corresponding spirit-formations which emanate from the bats fluttering through the air; they sough through the spaces of the air. We know that air consists of oxygen, nitrogen and other constituents, but this is not all; it also consists of the spirit-emanations of bats.

Strange and paradoxical as it may sound, this dream-order of the bats sends little spectres out into the air, which then unite into a general mass. In geology the matter below the earth, which is a rock-mass of a soft consistency like porridge, is called magma. We might also speak of a spirit-magma in the air, which comes from the emanations of bats.

In ancient times when an instinctive clairvoyance prevailed, people were very susceptible to this spirit magma, just as today many people are very susceptible to what is of a material nature, for instance, bad smelling air. This might certainly be regarded as somewhat vulgar, whereas in the ancient instinctive time of clairvoyance people were susceptible to the bat-residue which is present in the air.

They protected themselves against this. And in many Mysteries there were special formulas whereby people could inwardly arm themselves, so that this bat-residue might have no power over them. For as human beings we do not only inhale oxygen and nitrogen with the air, we also inhale these emanations of the bats. Modern people, however, are not interested in letting themselves be protected against these bat-remains, but whereas in certain conditions they are highly sensitive, let us say, to bad smells, they are highly insensitive to the emanations of the bats. It can really be said that they swallow them down without feeling the least trace of repulsion. It is quite extraordinary that people who are otherwise really prudish just swallow down what contains the stuff of which I have spoken. Nevertheless this too enters into the human being. Certainly it does not enter into the physical or etheric body, but it enters into the astral body.

Yes, you see, we here find remarkable connections. Initiation science everywhere leads into the inner aspect of relationships; this bat-residue is the most craved-for nutriment of what I have described in lectures here as the Dragon. But this bat-residue must first be breathed into the human being. The Dragon finds his surest foothold in human nature when man allows his instincts to be imbued with these emanations of the bats. There they seethe. And the dragon feeds on them and grows—in a spiritual sense, of course—gaining power over people, gaining power in the most manifold ways. This is something against which modern man must again protect himself: and the protection should come from what has been described here as the new form of Michael's fight with the Dragon. The increase in inner strength which man gains when he takes up into himself the Michael impulse as it has been described here, this is his safeguard against the nutriment which the Dragon desires; this is his protection against the unjustified bat-emanations in the atmosphere.

If one has the will to penetrate into these inner world-connections, one must not shrink back from facing the truths contained in them. For today the generally accepted form of the search for truth does not in any way lead to actuality, but at most to something even less actual than a dream, to Maya. Reality must of necessity be sought in the domain where all physical existence is regarded as interwoven with spiritual existence. We can only find our way to reality, when this reality is studied and observed, as has been done here in the present lectures.

In everything good and in everything evil, in some way or other beings are present. Everything in world-connections is so ordered that its relation to other beings can be recognized. For the materialistically minded, butterflies flutter, birds fly, bats flit. But this can really be compared to what often happens with a not very artistic person, who adorns the walls of his room with all manner of pictures which do not belong to each other, which have no inner connection. Thus for the ordinary observer of nature, what flies through the world also has no inner connection; because he sees none. But everything in the cosmos has its own place, because just from this very place it has a relation to the cosmos in its totality. Be it butterfly, bird, or bat, everything has its own meaning within the world-order.

As to those who today wish to scoff, let them scoff. People already have other things to their credit in the sphere of ridicule. Celebrated scholars have declared that meteor-stones cannot exist, because iron cannot fall from heaven, and so on. Why then should people not also scoff at the functions of the bats, about which I have spoken today? Such things, however, should not divert us from the task of imbuing our civilization with a knowledge of spiritual truths.

Seven states of consciousness develop one after the other. What develops and rises to higher degrees is the ego. What we study is what the I experiences. So that theosophy is: self-knowledge. We were there and participated in the life on all planets. On the first one was a peculiar state of consciousness, not spatially we have to think of the planets. They are states that emerge from each other, like the girl from the child - in between only pralaya states. Metamorphoses they are.

From distant states we come to the esoteric plan. Mars. - On it we lived and had a consciousness that was quite dull -, not yet dream consciousness - as it is today in the stones, mineral. - But it went into the vastness, an all-consciousness it was. Such a person knew /gap in transcript]

Now only to be artificially evoked in pathological states. There they begin to draw /unreadable] great world systems [...]. A dull trance consciousness, but extending over the earth with surrounding world bodies.

In each round it becomes brighter. Seven rounds, each in seven states. So that 7x7=49 states the consciousness has already gone through. - Materially, the planet dies, but all the plants pass over, like the lily from the seed.

On the second planet - Sun - a consciousness is formed which extends not so far, not over the dead, but over all living things, the consciousness which man has in dreams, where all vegetative functions continue to work; plant consciousness in 49 states. The planet is esoterically called the sun. Solarpitris, which here complete themselves high.

The third planet - Moon - develops a higher state of consciousness, dream trance, like the consciousness of the higher animals. Moon - again seven states: arupa, rupa, astral, physical, [illegible]

Fourth planet: earth. Now it comes over and becomes earth-development, which has to develop the bright day-consciousness.

Then passes over into the fifth state of consciousness - fifth planet: Mercury: psychic consciousness. To be distinguished by the fact that man will be brightly conscious not only in the physical but also in the astral. The desire nature of the other becomes transparent, his own he can direct like a force. Psychic consciousness.

On the sixth planet - Venus - more-than-psychic, super-psychic. Thought is conducted.

Seventh planet: On Jupiter spiritual consciousness; man will be all spirit.

343 states man thus undergoes. 7 x 7 on each planet. Thus we understand the seven principles that are in eternal formation. Four are formed in man, three in the plant. The earth is for man to be formed as he is now; because man is in the fourth round, he has also formed his fourth principle.

Important theosophical proposition that basically everything is one and we are connected with all beings - let us study.

In the great seed that arose as earth, as loud seeds were pitris that surrounded themselves with matter of various kinds, took bodies and lived out in seven principles. What happens on the earth is the means for man to reach his goal, to climb up the ladder. Man is the center and goal of the earthly development. There would be no /unreadable] if /gap in transcript]

The Pitris enter, find the earth quite undeveloped, must prepare the ground; form the mineral world. The human being has it in itself - bone structure is mineral -, even we have predisposed it, together with the formers. Not like today it was, a radiating system and germ of what should become. However, one had not been able to use everything, but had to separate out. From the rest dead bodies became, the nobler materials were taken away to living ones. So the human being came into being at the expense of the mineral kingdom. So that we can stand and develop further, we had to form it. Everything can be distributed only polar. If we climb up, we push the others down.

Now man got out of what he had already drawn to himself the vegetable and repels that which is useless for him.

During the third round, he does the same with the animal kingdom, but only as far as the fish-like creatures.

During the fourth round, the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are there, and man first segregates what becomes amphibians, and also the birds. Within the animal kingdom he segregates the higher, so that he eliminates at their expense the very noblest parts to form himself. - Thus within the warm-blooded animals man arises.

Elohistic days - the rounds.

So the mineral kingdom arises in the first round, becomes properly finished in the fourth. The plant kingdom begins in the second, becomes finished in the fifth. The animal kingdom comes into being in the third, is completed in the sixth. Man comes into being in the fourth, and in the seventh becomes the image of God.

Fifth day: teeming [Mostly illegible and very fragmentary notes follow]

That man rules means that he has already sucked into himself.