The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We know three worlds: the physical, the astral and the devachanic. The physical one is known to all people: the world we perceive with the five senses. - Not so the astral, it is the world of all drives, desires, passions and so on. Man must receive guidance in order to know his way around it. If a person gets a glimpse of the astral completely unprepared, he will not find his way around in it. The best comparison is the seal impression: What is sublime in the physical, that forms the recess in the astral and vice versa, what is recess here, is sublime there. Everything is a reflection of reality. The numbers are seen in reverse: 364 here is 463 there. It is much more complicated with the space formations: One sees a sphere as if one had the eye in the center of the sphere. All colors are seen in their opposite, what is red here is green there, yellow here becomes indigo there, black becomes white. The opposite color is always the one whose covering creates white.

Time actually runs backwards. One does not live towards the future, but towards the past. The peoples have expressed in the myths this astral way of looking at things. The myths of Chronos devouring his children can be understood only by those who have astral vision: The children in turn return to the womb of that from which they emerged. Uranos means the mental world, Chronos the astral, and Zeus the physical world. The myths originate from the initiates, who went out from the pre- and postexistence. They form the spirit through legends and fairy tales. What man cannot grasp in one life, he will grasp in the next. Also moral and spiritual conditions appear in the mirror image. What man feels belongs to the astral. And when he observes his own urges, they also appear to him in the mirror image. When a desire moves outward, it appears [there] as when it approached [one]. Like an animal that wants to snatch a thing from him when he takes it away. Thus he sees a whole animal world rushing at him: it is all the desires, cravings, and passions that man exudes.

The dream is a kind of memory of astral experiences; dreams are often nothing but mirror images of one's passions. Curiosity, for example, is always a certain current in the astral. The legend of the midday woman who visits the workers in the field and always quizzes them. Human curiosity expresses itself especially in the fact that man wants to know something about his past and future. The reflection of inquisitiveness is magnificently expressed in [the riddle of] the Cadmean Sphinx. The whole earth development of man lies in the answer: Man walks on four legs, on two legs, on three legs. Man walked on fours as a single-sex being in the Lemurian time. On two he goes in the present, on three he will go in the future. Both feet and the right side with the arm will disappear; instead there will be a highly developed left arm.

Evolution proceeds in such a way that certain beings evolve upward and have side shoots that come in decadence. In those who lag behind, the astral body is stronger; in those who advance, the mental body.

The reflection of development is retardation: regression. From the [retarding] forces of the astral, development is arrested. Thus, on the astral one must translate everything into its mirror image. This could not be understood in the beginning of the theosophical movement. The Master tried to make it clear to Sinnett, through the plant, which is surrounded by a mass, into which the plant pushes off.

We lose the human being from our field of vision if we do not fix the eye of the soul upon his entire nature in all its life-manifestations. We should not speak of man's knowledge, but of the complete man manifesting himself in the act of cognition. In cognition, man uses as an instrument his sense-nerve nature. For feeling, he is served by the rhythm living in the breath and the circulation of the blood. When he wills metabolism becomes the physical basis of his existence. But rhythm courses into the physical occurrence within the sense-nerve nature; and metabolism is the material bearer of the life of thought, even in the most abstract thinking, feeling lives and the waves of will pulsate.

The ancient Oriental entered into his dream-like thinking more from the rhythmic life of feeling than does the man of the present age. The Oriental experienced for this reason more of the rhythmic weaving in his life of thought, while the Westerner experiences more of the logical indications. In ascending to super-sensible vision, the Oriental Yogi interwove conscious breath with conscious thinking, in this way, he laid hold in his breath upon the continuing rhythm of cosmic occurrence. As he breathed, he experienced the world as Self. Upon the rhythmic waves of conscious breath, thought moved through the entire being of man. He experienced how the Divine-Spiritual causes the spirit-filled breath to stream continuously into man, and how man thus becomes a living soul. The man of the present age must seek his super-sensible knowledge in a different way. He cannot unite his thinking with the breath. Through meditation, he must lift his thinking out of the life of logic to vision. In vision, however, thought weaves in a spirit element or music and picture. It is released from the breath and woven together with the spiritual in the world. The Self is now experienced, not in connection with the breath in the single human being, but in the environing world of spirit. The Eastern man once experienced the world in himself, and in his spiritual life today he has the echo of this. The Western man stands at the beginning of his experience, and is on the way to find himself in the world. If the Western man should wish to become a Yogi, he would have to become a refined egoist, for Nature has already given him the feeling of the Self. which the Oriental had only in a dream-like way. If the Yogi had sought for himself in the world as the Western man must do, he would have led his dream-like thinking into unconscious sleep, and would have been psychically drowned.

The Eastern man had the spiritual experience as religion, art, and science in complete unity. He made sacrifices to his spiritual-divine Beings. As a gift of grace, there flowed to him from them that which lifted him to the state of a true human being. This was religion. But in the sacrificial ceremony and the sacrificial place there was manifest to him also beauty, through which the Divine-Spiritual lived in art. And out of the beautiful manifestations of the Spirit there flowed science.

Toward the West streamed the waves of wisdom that were the beautiful light of the spirit and inspired piety in the artistically inspired man. There religion developed its own being, and only beauty still continued united with wisdom. Heracleitos and Anaxagoras were men wise in the world who thought artistically; Aeschylos and Sophocles were artists who moulded the wisdom of the world. Later wisdom was given over to thinking; it became knowledge. Art was transferred to its own world. Religion, the source of all, became the heritage of the East; art became the monument of the time when the middle region of the earth held sway; knowledge became the independent mistress of its own field in man's soul. Thus did the spiritual life of the West come to existence. A complete human being like Goethe discovered the world of spirit immersed In knowledge. But he longed to see the truth of knowledge in the beauty of art. This drove him to the south. Whoever follows him in the spirit may find a religiously Intimate knowledge striving in beauty toward artistic revelation. If the Western man beholds in his cold knowledge the spiritual-divine streaming forth below him and glancing with beauty, and if the Eastern man senses in his religion of wisdom, warm with feeling and speaking of the beauty of the cosmos, the knowledge that makes man free, transforming itself in man into the power of will, then will the Eastern man in his feeling intuition no longer accuse the thinking Western man of being soulless, and the thinking Western man will no longer condemn the intuitively feeling Eastern man as an alien to the world. Religion can be deepened by knowledge filled with the life of art. Art can be made alive through knowledge born out of religion. Knowledge can be illuminated by religion upheld by art.

The Eastern man spoke of the sense-world as an appearance in which there lived a lesser manifestation of what he experienced as spirit in utter reality within his own soul. The Western man speaks of the world of ideas as an appearance where there lives in shadowy form what he experiences as Nature in utter reality through his senses. What was the Maja of the senses to the Eastern man is self-sufficing reality to the Western man. What is the ideology constructed by the mind to the Western man was self-creating reality to the Eastern man. If the Eastern man finds today in his reality of spirit the power to give the strength of existence to Maja, and if the Western man discovers life in his reality of Nature, so that he shall see the Spirit at work in his ideology, then will understanding come about between East and West.

In hoary antiquity the humanity of the Orient experienced in knowledge a lofty spirituality. This spirituality, laid hold upon in thought, pulsated through the feeling; it streamed out into the will. The thought was not yet the percept which reproduces objects. It was real being which bore into the inner nature of man the life of the spiritual world. The man of the East lives today in the echoes of this lofty spirituality. The eye of his cognition was once not directed toward Nature. He looked through Nature at the spirit. When the adaptation to Nature began, man did not at once see Nature; he saw the spirit by the way of Nature; he saw ghosts. The last residues of a lofty spirituality became, on the way from East to West, the superstitious belief in ghosts. To the Western man, a knowledge of Nature was given as Copernicus and Galileo arose for him. He had to look into his own inner nature in order to seek for the spirit. There the spirit was still concealed from him, and he beheld only appetites and instincts. But these are material ghosts, taking their place before the eyes of the soul because this is not yet inwardly adapted to the spirit. When the adaptation to the spirit begins, the inner ghosts will vanish, and man will took upon the spirit through his own inner nature, as the ancient man of the East looked upon the spirit through Nature. Through the world of the inner ghosts the West will reach the spirit. The Western ghost superstition is the beginning of the knowledge of spirit. What the East bequeathed to the West as a superstitious belief in ghosts is the end of the knowledge of spirit. Men should find their way past the ghosts into the spirit—and thus will a bridge be built between East and West.

The man of the East feels “I” and sees “World”; the I is the moon which reflects the world. The man of the West thinks the “World” and radiates into the world of his own thought “I”. The I is a sun which irradiates the world of pictures. If the Eastern man comes to feel the rays of the sun in the shimmer of his moon of wisdom, and the Western man experiences the shimmer of moon-wisdom in the rays of his sun of will, then shall the will of the West release the will of the East.

The ancient Oriental felt himself to be in a social order willed by the Spirit. The commandments of the spiritual Power, brought to his consciousness by his Leader, gave him the conception as to how he should integrate himself with this order. These leaders derived such conceptions out of their vision in the super-sensible world. Those who were led felt that in such conceptions lay the main directions transmitted to them for their spiritual, political and economic life. Views regarding man's relationship to the spiritual, the relationship between man and man, the handling of the economic affairs were derived for them from the same sources, commandments willed by the spirit. The spiritual life, the social-political order, the handling of the economic affairs were experienced as a unity. The farther culture progressed toward the West, the more relationship of rights between man and man and the handling of economic affairs were separated from the spiritual life in human consciousness. The spiritual life became more independent. The other members of the social order still continued to constitute a unity. But, with the further penetration of the West, they also became separated. 3y the side of the element of rights and the state, which for a time controlled everything economic, there took form an independent economic thinking. The Western man is still living amidst the processes of this last separation. At the same time, there arises for him the task to mould into a higher unity the separated members of the social life—the life of the spirit, the control of rights and of the state, the handling of economic affairs, if he achieves this, the man of the East will look upon this creation with understanding, for he will again discover what he once lost, the unity of human experience.

Among the partial currents whose interaction and reciprocal conflict compose human history, there is included the conquest or labor by man's consciousness. In the ancient Orient, man labored in accordance with an order imposed upon him by the will of the Spirit, in this reeling, he was either a master or a worker. With the migration of the life of culture toward the West, there came into human consciousness the relationship between man and man. into this was woven the labor which one performs for others. Into the concepts of rights there penetrated the concept of the value of work. A great part of Roman history represents this growing together of the concepts of rights and of work. With the further penetration of culture into the West, economic life took on more and more complicated forms, It drew labor into itself when the structure of rights which this had hitherto taken on was not yet adequate for the demands of the new forms. Disharmony arose between the conceptions of work and of rights. The re-establishment of harmony between the two is the great social problem of the West. How labor can discover its form within the entity of rights, and not be torn out of this entity in the handling of economic affairs, constitutes—the content or the problem, if the West begins to advance toward this solution, through insight and in social peace, the East will meet this with understanding. But, if this problem generates in the West a stand in thinking which manifests itself in social turmoil, the East will not be able to acquire confidence in the further evolution of humanity through the West.

The unity between the spiritual life, human rights, and the handling of economic affairs, in accordance with an order willed by the Spirit, can survive only so long as the tilling of the soil is predominant in economics, while trade and industry are subordinate to agricultural economics. It is for this reason that the social thinking of the ancient Orient, willed by the Spirit, bears with reference to the handling of economic affairs a character adapted to agricultural economics. With the course of civilization toward the West, trade first becomes an independent element in economics. It demands the determination of rights. It must be possible to carry on business with everyone. With reference to this, there are only abstract standards of rights. As civilization advanced still farther toward the West, production in industry becomes an independent element in the handling of economic affairs. It is possible to produce useful goods only when the producer and those persons with whom he must work in this production live in a relationship which corresponds with human capacities and needs. The unfolding of the industrial element demands out of :he economic life associative unions so moulded that men know their needs to be satisfied in these so far as the natural conditions make this possible, To discover the fight associative life is the task of the West. If it proves to be capable of this task, the East will say: “Our life once flowed into brotherhood. In the course of time, this disappeared; the advance of humanity took it away from us. The West causes it to blossom again out of the associative economic life. It restores the vanished confidence in true humanness.”

When the ancient man composed a poem, he felt that spiritual Power spoke through him. In Greece the poet let the Muse speak through him to his fellowmen. This consciousness was a heritage of the ancient Orient. With the passage of the spiritual life toward the West, poetry became more and more the manifestation of man himself. In the ancient Orient, the spiritual Powers sang through man to men. The cosmic word resounded from the gods down to man. in the West, it has become the human word. It must find the way upward to the spiritual Powers. Man must learn to create poetry in such a way that the Spirit may listen to him. The West must mould a language suited to the Spirit. Then will the East say: “The divine Word, which once streamed for us from heaven to earth, finds its way back from the hearts of men into the spiritual world. In the human word mounting upward we behold with understanding the cosmic Word whose descent our consciousness once experienced.”

The man of the East has no understanding for “proof”. He experiences in vision the content of his truths, and knows them in this way. And what man knows he does not prove. The man of the West demands everywhere “proofs”. Everywhere he strives to reach the content of his truths out of the external reflection by means of thought, and interprets them in this way. But what is interpreted must be “proven”. If the man of the West releases from his proof the life of truth, the man of the East will understand him. if, at the end of the Western man's struggle for proof, the Eastern man discovers his unproven dreams of truth in a true awaking, the man of the West will then have to greet him as a fellow-worker who can accomplish what he himself cannot accomplish in work for the progress of humanity.

Speech Exercises:

Children chiding
Chaffinch chirping
Choking chimneys
Cheerfully chattering

Children chiding and fetching
Chaffinch chirping switching
Choking chimneys hitching
Cheerfully chattering twitching

Beach children chiding and fetching
Reach chaffinch chirping switching
Birches choking chimneys hitching
Perches cheerfully chattering twitching

RUDOLF STEINER: The “ch” should be sounded in a thoroughly active way, like a gymnastic exercise.¹

The following is a piece in which you have to pay attention both to the form and the content.

From “Galgenlieder” by Christian Morgenstern:

The Does’ Prayer

The does, as the hour grows late,
Med-it-ate;
Med-it-nine;
Med-i-ten;
Med-eleven;
Med-twelve;
Mednight!
The does, as the hour grows late,
Meditate,
They fold their little toesies,
the doesies.²

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we will continue our talk about the plant world.

Various contributions were offered by those present.

RUDOLF STEINER: Later there will be students in the school who will study the plant kingdom on a more scientific basis, in which case they would learn to distinguish mosses, lichens, algae, monocotyledons, dicotyledons, and so on. All children, who in their youth learn to know plants according to scientific principles, should first learn about them as we have described—that is, by comparing them with soul qualities. Later they can study the plant system more scientifically. It makes a difference whether we try first to describe the plants and then later study them scientifically, or vice versa. You can do much harm by teaching scientific botany first, instead of first presenting ideas that relate to the feeling life, as I have tried to show you. In the latter case the children can tackle the study of scientific botanical systems with a truly human understanding.

The plant realm is the soul world of the Earth made visible. The carnation is a flirt. The sunflower an old peasant. The sunflower’s shining face is like a jolly old country rustic. Plants with very big leaves would express, in terms of soul life, lack of success in a job, taking a long time with everything, clumsiness, and especially an inability to finish anything; we think that someone has finished, but the person is still at it. Look for the soul element in the plant forms!

When summer approaches, or even earlier, sleep spreads over the Earth; this sleep becomes heavier and heavier, but it only spreads out spatially, and in autumn passes away again. The plants are no longer there, and sleep no longer spreads over the Earth. The feelings, passions, and emotions of people pass with them into sleep, but once they are there, those feelings have the appearance of plants. What we have invisible within the soul, our hidden qualities—flirtatiousness, for example—become visible in plants. We don’t see this in a person who is awake, but it can be observed clairvoyantly in people who are sleeping. Flirtation, for example, looks like a carnation. A flirt continually produces carnations from the nose! A tedious, boring person produces gigantic leaves from the whole body, if you could see them.

When we express the thought that the Earth sleeps, we must go further: the plant world grows in the summer. Earth sleeps in the summer and is awake during winter. The plant world is the Earth’s soul. Human soul life ceases during sleep, but when the Earth goes to sleep its soul life actually begins. But the human soul does not express itself in a sleeping person. How are we going to get over this difficulty with children?

One of the teachers suggested that plants could be considered the Earth’s dreams.

RUDOLF STEINER: But plants during high summer are not the Earth’s dreams, because the Earth is in a deep sleep in the summer. It is only how the plant world appears during spring and autumn that you can call dreams. Only when the flowers are first beginning to sprout—when the March violet, for example, is still green, before flowers appear, and again when leaves are falling—that the plant world can be compared to dreams. With this in mind, try to make the transition to a real understanding of the plant.

For example, you can begin by saying, “Look at this buttercup,” or any plant we can dig out of the soil, showing the root below, the stalk, leaves, blossoms, and then the stamens and pistil, from which the fruit will develop. Let the child look at a plant like this. Then show a tree and say, “Imagine this tree next to the plant. What can you tell me about the tree? Yes, it also has roots below of course; but instead of a stalk, it has a trunk. Then it spreads its branches, and it’s as if the real plants grew on these branches, because many leaves and flowers can be found there; it’s as if little plants were growing on the branches above. So, we could actually look at a meadow this way: We see yellow buttercups growing all over the meadow; it is covered with individual plants with their roots in the Earth, and they cover the whole meadow. But when we look at the tree, it’s as if someone had taken the meadow, lifted it up, and rounded it into an arch; only then do we find many flowers growing very high all over it. The trunk is a bit of the Earth itself. So we may say that the tree is the same as the meadow where the flowers grow.

“Now we go from the tree to the dandelion or daisy. Here there is a root-like form in the soil, and from it grows something like a stalk and leaves, but at the top there is a little basket of flowers, tiny little blossoms close together. It’s as though the dandelion made a little basket up there with nothing in it but little flowers, perfect flowers that can be found in the dandelion-head. So we have the tree, the little ‘basket-bloomers,’ and the ordinary plant, a plant with a stalk. In the tree it’s as though the plants were only high up on the branches; in the compound flowers the blossom is at the top of the plant, except that these are not petals, but countless fully-developed flowers.

“Now imagine that the plant kept everything down in the Earth; suppose it wanted to develop roots, but that it was unsuccessful—or perhaps leaves, but could not do this either; imagine that the only thing to unfold above ground were what one usually finds in the blossom; you would then have a mushroom. At least, if the roots down below fail and only leaves come up, you would then have ferns. So you find all kinds of different forms, but they are all plants.”

Show the children the buttercup, how it spreads its little roots, how it has its five yellow-fringed petals, then show them the tree, where the “plant” only grows on it, then the composite flowers, the mushroom, and the fern; do not do this in a very scientific way, but so that the children get to know the form in general.

Then you can say, “Why do you think the mushroom remained a mushroom, and why did the tree become a tree? Let’s compare the mushroom with the tree. What is the difference between them? Take the tree. Isn’t it as though the Earth had pushed itself out with all its might—as though the inner being of the tree had forced its way up into the outside world in order to develop its blossoms and fruits away from the Earth? But in the mushroom the Earth has kept within itself what usually grows up out of it, and only the uppermost parts of the plant appear in the form of mushrooms. In the mushroom the ‘tree’ is below the soil and only exists as forces. In the mushroom itself we find something similar to the tree’s outermost part. When lots and lots of mushrooms are spread over the Earth, it is as though you had a tree growing down below them, inside the Earth. And when we look at a tree it is as though the Earth had forced itself up, turning itself inside out, as it were, bringing its inner self into the outer world.”

Now you are coming nearer to the reality: “When you see mushrooms growing you know that the Earth is holding something within itself that, in the case of a growing tree, it pushes up outside itself. So in producing mushrooms the Earth keeps the force of the growing tree within itself. But when the Earth lets the trees grow it turns the growing-force of the tree outward.” Now here you have something not found within the Earth during summer, because it rises out of the Earth then and when winter comes it goes down into the Earth again. “During summer the Earth, through the force of the tree, sends its own force up into the blossoms, causing them to unfold, and in winter it draws this force back again into itself. Now let us think of this force, which during the summer circles up in the trees—a force so small and delicate in the violet but so powerful in the tree. Where can it be found in winter? It is under the surface of the Earth. What happens during the depth of winter to all these plants—the trees, the composite flowers, and all the others? They unfold right under the Earth’s surface; they are there within the Earth and develop the Earth’s soul life. This was known to the people of ancient times, and that was why they placed Christmas—the time when we look for soul life—not in the summer, but during winter.

“Just as a person’s soul life passes out of the body when falling asleep, and again turns inward when a person wakens, so it is also for the Earth. During summer while asleep it sends its sap-bearing force out, and during winter takes it back again when it awakens—that is, it gathers all its various forces into itself. Just think, children, our Earth feels and experiences everything that happens within it; what you see all the summer long in flowers and leaves, the abundance of growth and blossom, in the daisies, the roses, or the carnations—this all dwells under the Earth during winter, and there it has feelings like you have, and can be angry or happy like you.”

In this way you gradually form a view of life lived under the Earth during winter. That is the truth. And it is good to tell the children these things. This is something that even materialists could not argue with or consider an extravagant flight of fancy. But now you can continue from this and consider the whole plant. The children are led away from a subjective attitude toward plants, and they are shown what drives the sap over the Earth during summer heat and draws it back again into itself in winter; they come to see the ebb and flow in plant life. In this way you find the Earth’s real soul life mirrored in plants. Beneath the Earth ferns, mosses, and fungi unfold all that they fail to develop as growing plants, but this all remains etheric substance and does not become physical. When this etheric plant appears above the Earth’s surface, the external forces work on it and transform it into the rudiments of leaves we find in fungi, mosses, and ferns. But under a patch of moss or mushrooms there is something like a gigantic tree, and if the Earth cannot absorb it, cannot keep it within itself, then it pushes up into the outer world.

The tree is a little piece of the Earth itself. But what remains underground in mushrooms and ferns is now raised out of the Earth, so that if the tree were slowly pushed down into the Earth everything would be different, and if it were to be thus submerged then ferns, mosses, and mushrooms would appear; for the tree it would be a kind of winter. But the tree withdraws from this experience of winter. It is the nature of a tree to avoid the experience of winter to some extent, but if I could take hold of a fern or a mushroom by the head and draw it further and further out of the Earth so that the etheric element in it reached the air, then I would draw out a whole tree, and what would otherwise become a mushroom would now turn into a tree. Annual plants are midway between these two. A composite flower is merely another form of what happens in a tree. If I could press a composite flower down into the Earth it would bear only single blossoms. A composite flower could almost be called a tree that has shot up too quickly.

And so we can also find a wish, a desire, living in the Earth. The Earth feels compelled to let this wish sink into sleep. The Earth puts it to sleep in summer, and then the wish rises as a plant. It is not visible above the Earth until it appears as a water-lily. Down below it lives as a wish in the Earth, and then up above it becomes a plant.

The plant world is the Earth’s soul world made visible, and this is why we can compare it with human beings. But you should not merely make comparisons; you must also teach the children about the actual forms of the plants. Starting with a general comparison you can then lead to the single plant species.

Light sleep can be compared with ordinary plants, a kind of waking during sleep with mushrooms (where there are very many mushrooms, the Earth is awake during the summer), and you can compare really sound deep sleep with the trees.

From this you see that the Earth does not sleep as people do, but in one part it is more asleep and in another more awake; here more asleep, there more awake. People, in their eyes and other sense organs, also have sleeping, waking, and, dreaming side by side, all at the same time.

Now here is your task for tomorrow. Please make out a table; on the left place a list of the human soul characteristics, from thoughts down through all the emotions of the soul—feelings of pleasure and displeasure, actively violent emotions, anger, grief, and so on, right down to the will; certain specific plant forms can be compared with the human soul realm. On the right you can then fill in the corresponding plant species, so that in the table you have the thought plants above, the will plants below, and all the others in between.

Rudolf Steiner then gave a graphic explanation of the Pythagorean theorem and referred to an article by Dr. Ernst Müller in Ostwald’s magazine for natural philosophy, Annalen der Naturphilosophie, entitled “Some Observations on a Theory of Knowledge underlying the Pythagorean theorem.”

In the drawing, the red parts of the two smaller squares already lie within the square on the hypotenuse. By moving the blue and the green triangles in the direction of the arrows, the remaining parts of the two smaller squares will cover those parts of the square on the hypotenuse still uncovered.

You should cut out the whole thing in cardboard and then you can see it clearly.³

• 1. The original German exercise (which appears in the appendix) uses the “pf ” sound; the “ch” sound has been substituted in the English version.
• 2. Max Knight, trans., University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964.
• 3. The Pythagorean theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. For another brief discussion of the Pythagorean theorem in teaching see Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995, pp. 85–90.

The Same.

Enter left, Magnus Bellicosus, Romanus, Torquatus, and Hilary, in deep conversation, and pausing in their walk. While Torquatus is speaking (page 183), Ahriman enters left, glides stealthily across the stage unnoticed by the speaker and exits right.

Bellicosus:
And if his headstrong mood will not be changed,
How can prosperity attend the work
Which Hilary is fain to dedicate
In loving service to his fellowmen?

Romanus:
What our friend's true companion in his work
Did give as reason why he did object,
Hath weight not only amongst men who form
Opinions based on outer facts of life.
Are not these arguments advanced by him
Also in harmony with mystic views?

Bellicosus:
Yet it lies not within the spirit group
Which holds our projects in its firm embrace.
Those who succeeded to our mystic task
Were Benedictus' pupils;—'tis for them
That Hilary would make a field of work
In which their spirit-fruitage can mature.
The wise powers ruling over destiny
Have, in the temple, joined them to ourselves;
Our friend, however, represents alone
The wisdom which to us within the shrine
As spirit-law and duty was revealed.

Romanus:
But art thou sure that thou dost understand
This spirit-law? More simply it might mean
That Benedictus and his pupils too,
Whom in his way he to the spirit led,
Should still remain within the temple's shrine
And not at this time tread the hard rough road
To which friend Hilary would lead them on.
For but too easily can spirit-sight
Be turned, upon that road, to soul's dream-sleep.

Bellicosus:
I did not think to hear such words from thee.
To Hilary's companion, in his work,
Such words might be allowed, who knowledge gains
From books alone, of little inward worth.
But thou art bound to recognize the signs
Which are begotten on the mystic way.
How Benedictus' pupils were impelled
To come to us, speaks clearly to our souls.
They are joined with us that we may obey
What their clairvoyance doth to them reveal.

Torquatus:
Another sign doth still make manifest
That full rich blessing from the spirit-powers
Upon that project hath not been outpoured
Which in the temple showed itself to us.
Capesius hath now withdrawn himself From
Benedictus and his pupil's group.
That he should not yet in its fullness feel
The wakefulness of soul already sought
In him by Benedictus, doth cast sad doubt
E'en on our teacher's personal competence.

Bellicosus:
The gift of seership still lies far from me:
Yet intuition often doth reveal
Within my soul the meaning of events.
When for the first time in our sacred fame
I saw Capesius within our group,
The thought oppressed me, that fate set him there
To be both near to us and yet far off.

Romanus:
Thine intuition I can fully grasp.
But at that very moment none amongst
Our new-found mystic friends so closely knit
By fate to us as Strader, could I find.
Such intuition is to me a sign
To show my soul the road, where I may then
With reason search: but when I come to act
I cast aside the intuition dim
That first directed and inspired my thought,
Such is the mystic rule for me ordained.
In spirit-realms I find myself indeed
With Benedictus' pupils close allied;
Yet, if I leave my inner mystic group
And find my way back into life on earth,
By Strader's side alone dare I do this.

Torquatus:
But Hilary's companion in his work
Finds not in Strader's soul true spirit-strength
Such as can prove of use in outer life.
And if myself I heed my inner voice
It is revealed that he entirely lacks
The rightful mood to tread the mystic path.
What outward signs can show him of these things
And what his reason grasps of spirit-life,
Arouse the explorer's zeal in him;
From inward spirit-life he stands far off.
What can the spirit products of this man
Be but obscurely woven mystic dreams?

Romanus:
Upon the spirit path his friends have trod;
He hath not made sufficient progress yet
To join himself to foes of his own soul,
Who bring to many a mystic danger great
When they pursue him into life on earth.

Bellicosus:
If thou dost think him safe from such attacks
Nought hinders thee from working for him there
So that this great scheme may be brought to pass
Which Hilary would carry out through him.
For when our friend's companion comes to know
How highly thou dost rate the man whom he
Dares think of little worth, he will in truth
Misdoubt his own opinion. Thou alone
Canst win him over to the cause we serve.
For well he knows that in thine outer life
Thou hast invariably achieved success
In all thou hast with forethought wise essayed.

Romanus:
If thou wilt Strader take, dear Hilary,
As thy companion, and, from this thy work
Keep Benedictus' other followers
On spirit paths from all illusion free,
Thou shalt not stand alone;—I offer thee
Not only what now Bellicosus asks
As my assistance; but will also help
With all the worldly goods at my command
In making Strader's plan a real success.

Hilary:
How canst thou think that Strader at this time
From Benedictus' pupils would depart
To follow his own spirit-aims alone?
The others are as near him as himself.

Romanus:
In human life they well may stand so close;
But only that part of his soul which still
Is deeply sunk in spirit-sleep can hold
That they in spirit too are one with him.
But soon, methinks, it will be evident
How that part can grow ripe to waking life.

(Exeunt right.)

(Enter left—Capesius, Strader, Felix Balde, and Dame Balde; as if coming to a standstill during their talk because of the importance to them of the following dialogue.)

Capesius:
To seek the spirit in mine inmost soul
Is all I can accomplish at this time.
Were I to load myself with outward work,
That spirit might be brought to realms of sense.
Most rashly should I strive to grasp the cause
Of being in those worlds whose essence true
I have not fully grasped within myself.
Of cosmic being I can see no more
Than hath already shaped itself in me.
How shall my work do good to other men
If in creating I but please myself?

Strader (to Capesius):
Thy meaning is, I take it, that thy work
Will only carry thine own being's stamp,
And in that work, thou dost but manifest
To outward cosmic life thy personal self?

Capesius:
Till I encounter with mine inner world
A being strange to me, 'tis even so.
How far I now can pierce another's soul
I realized with pain, when for a while
I was awake and could with clearness judge.

Felix Balde:
Thou speak'st as I have never heard thee speak—
But ne'er could I so understand thy mind
As I do now, when naught speaks but thyself.
In all thy words there rings the mystic mood
Which I have sought unwearied many years,
And which alone can recognise the light
In which the human spirit feels itself
A part of cosmic spirit through clear sight.

Capesius:
Because I felt how near I'd drawn to thee
I sought thee, fleeing from the kind of life
That was about to slay mine inner world.

Strader (to Capesius and Felix Balde):
I often understood your present speech;—
And then I thought it wise;—but not a word
In all your speech can I now understand.
Capesius and father Felix both
Conceal dark meanings in transparent words ...

Do I not feel these words of yours are but
The cloak of forces; forces of the soul
That exile me from you unto those worlds
Which lie remote from all your spirit-paths?
Worlds I have no desire for,—since I must
Deep in my soul adore that world of yours.
The opposition I can lightly bear
Which from without now menaceth my work;
Yea, e'en if all my plans were devastate
Upon this opposition,—I could bear.
But your worlds I can never more forego.

Felix Balde:
A man cannot attain the spirit-world
By seeking to unlock the gates himself.
Once didst thou give me pleasure, when of old
Of thine invention thou wast wont to speak.
Then, when enlightenment was granted thee
By what thou didst not strive to understand
Thou wast far nearer to the mystic mood.

To strive for nought,—but just to live in peace,
Expectancy the soul's whole inner life:
That is the mystic mood. When waked in man
It leads his inmost soul to realms of light.
Our outward tasks do not endure such mood.
If them thou wouldst through mysticism seek,
Mystic illusion will destroy thy life.

Strader (to Capesius and Felix Balde):
I need you sorely,—yet I find you not.
The being that unites us you do scorn.
Yet how can men be found to undertake
True cosmic work if mystics all decline
To leave their separateness?

Felix Balde:
Into the world of active daily life
The tender being of the inner sight
Cannot be introduced, for it will fade
E'en as ye cross the threshold back again.
In faith devout, revering spirit-sway
With spirit-sight reposing in the heart:—
Thus mystics should draw nigh the world of deeds.

Capesius:
And if they strive to tread it otherwise
The work of error they will then behold;
But wisdom's radiance they will never see.
I once saw clearly through another's soul;
I knew that I saw truly what I saw,
Yet only that soul's error could I see.
This was my fate for spoiling spirit-sight
By my desire for outer deeds on earth.

Strader:
Thus speaks Capesius who hath advanced
Beyond me far upon the path of souls.
And yet my spirit-vision only wakes
When thoughts of action wholly fill my soul,
And it is flooded with a living hope
That for the spirit it may build a home
And kindle there on earth the light that shines
So warmly through the spirit-worlds on high,
And seeks, through human sense-activities,
A new home in the daily life of earth.

Am I a son of error—not your son,
Ye wide-flung spirit-realms where wisdom dwells!

(Strader turns away, for a moment, from the companions with whom he has been conversing; and now he has the following spirit-vision—Benedictus, Maria, Ahriman appear—in the guise of his thought forms but nevertheless in real spirit-intercourse; first Benedictus and Ahriman, then Maria.)

Benedictus:
In wide-flung spirit-realms where wisdom dwells
Thou seekest aid to still thy questioning doubt,
Which makes the secret of thine inner life
Lie like a burden on thine earthly thought.
And thou shalt have an answer, such an one
As spirit-spaces from the depth of soul
Are willing to reveal through this my voice.
But learn to understand thy fancied thought,
The knowledge thou hast oft made bold to speak,
Which thou wert only dreaming hitherto.
Give to thy dreams the life, which I am bound
To offer thee from out the spirit-world;
But turn to dreams whatever thou canst draw
By thought from all thy sense-experience.
Capesius and Felix cast thee forth
From out the spirit-light which they behold;
They place th' abyss betwixt themselves and thee—
Do not complain that they have done this thing,
But gaze in thine abyss.

Ahriman:
Aye, gaze therein!
Thou shalt behold there what to thee seems meet
For human spirits on their cosmic path.
'Twere well for thee, if other spirit-powers
Did tell thee when thy soul is sunk in sleep;
But Benedictus tells thee when awake,
So slayest thou the answer in beholding!
Aye, gaze therein.

Strader:
I will. What do I see?
Two forms confused? They change, yea, and they tear,
One at the other tears—a battle now—
The phantoms fight each other furiously,—
Destruction reigns, and from it gloom is born;—
From out the gloom now issue other shades
With ether's light around them,—flick'ring red;
One of the forms quite clearly leaves the rest;
And comes to me;—sent from the dark abyss.

(Maria steps forth from the abyss.)

Maria:
Thou seest demons;—summon up thy strength,
They are not thus,—before thee they appear
What they are not. If thou canst hold them fast
Until their phantom nature shall become
Illumined to the being of thy soul
Thou wilt behold what value they possess
In evolution of the cosmic scheme.
Thy power of sight doth fade ere they unfold
The forces which will make them luminous.
Illuminate them with thine own self's light.
Where is thy light? Thou rayest darkness out—
Perceive thy darkness all around thyself—
'Midst light thou dost create the baffling gloom;
And feelst it when created by thyself.
Yet then thou ne'er canst feel thyself create.
Thou wouldst forget thy longing to create,
Which reigns unconsciously within thy soul,
Because thou art afraid to ray out light.
Thou wouldst enjoy this light that is thine own
Thou wouldst enjoy therein thyself alone;
Thou seekest thyself, and seekest to forget;
Thou let'st thyself sink dreaming in thyself.

Ahriman:
Aye, list to her; thy riddles she can solve
But her solution solves them not for thee.
She gives thee wisdom—so that with its aid
Thou canst direct thy steps to foolishness.
Wisdom were good for thee—at other times,
When on thee spirit-day doth brightly shine.
But when Maria speaks thus in thy dreams
She slays thy riddle's answer by her words.
Aye, list to her.

Strader:
What mean such words as these?
Maria, are they born from out the light?
From out my light? Or is my darkness that
From which they sound? O Benedictus, speak;
Who brought me counsel from the dark abyss?

Benedictus:
At thine abyss's edge she sought thee out.
Thus spirits seek out men to shelter them
From those who fashion phantoms for men's souls
And so conceal the cosmic spirit's sway
With mazy darkness, that they cannot see
Reality, save in the web of self;
Look further yet within thy dark abyss.

Strader:
What now lives in the depth of mine abyss?

Benedictus:
Gaze on these shades; upon the left, blue-red
Enticing Felix—and the others see
There on the right—where red with yellow blends—
Who are intent to reach Capesius.
They both do feel the might of these same shades:—
And each in loneliness creates the light
Which foils the shades who would deceive men's souls.

Ahriman:
He would do better did he show to thee
Thy shades—yet this thing could he scarcely do;—
He hath the best intentions certainly.
He only sees not where to seek those shades.
They stand behind thee, critically near,
Yet thou thyself dost hide them now from him.

Strader:
So now I hear in mine abyss these words
Which once I thought the prating of a fool,
When Hilary's adviser uttered them ...

Maria:
Sire Felix tempers for himself the blade
That rids him of his danger; one who treads
The path thy soul takes needs another kind.
The sword Capesius doth fashion here,
And bravely wields in battle with his foes,
Would be for Strader but a shadow sword
Should he commence therewith the spirit-fight
Which powers of destiny ordain for souls
Who must change spirit-being, ripe for deeds
With mighty power, to earth activity.
Thou caust not use their weapons in thy fight;
Yet thou must know them, so that thou mayst forge
Thine own from out soul-substance thoughtfully.

(The figures of Benedictus, Ahriman, and Maria disappear; i.e., from outward sight; Strader wakes up from his spirit-vision; he looks round for Capesius, Felix Balde, and Dame Balde, who again approach him; he has seated himself upon a rock.)

Felix Balde:
Dear Strader, even now the spirit drove
Thee far from us—thus it appeared to me.

(He pauses a while in the expectation that Strader will say something, but since the latter remains silent Felix continues.)

I would not seem to cast thee coldly forth
From out our group to other paths of life.
I only wish to check thy further steps
In that illusion which confuseth thee.
What spirit sees in spirit must by souls
In spirit also be received and lived.
How foolish were it if Felicia
Should take the fairies living in her soul,
Who also fain would only live in souls,
And make them dance upon a puppet's stage;
Their magic charm would be completely lost.

Dame Balde:
I surely have been silent long enough,—
But speak I will, if thou art going to cast
Thy mystic mood upon my fairy sprites!
They would decline with thanks to have their power
Drawn out of them, that they might be brought up
And suckled fresh with mysticism's milk.
I honour mysticism; but I fain
Would keep it distant from my fairy realms.

Capesius:
Felicia, was it not thy fairy-tales
That set my feet first on the spirit-path?
Those stories of the air and water-sprites,
Called up so oft before my thirsting soul,
Were messengers to me from yonder world
Whereto I now the mystic entrance seek.

Dame Balde:
But since thou cam'st with this new mystic art
Into our house thou hast but seldom asked
What my fair magic beings are about.
More often thou hast only thought of worth
That wears a solemn air of dignity;
While those who caper out of sheer delight
Are uncongenial to thy mystic ways.

Capesius:
I do not doubt, Felicia, that I
Shall one day comprehend the meaning hid
Deep in the being of those wondrous elves
Who show their wisdom through a merry mask;
Yet now my power hath not advanced so far.

Felix Balde:
Felicia, thou knowest how I love
Those fairy beings who do visit thee;
But to conceive them as mechanical—
Embodied dolls—this goes against the grain.

Dame Balde:
As yet I have not brought them to thee thus;
Thy fancy flies—too high; but I was glad
When Strader's plan was told me, and I heard,
Thomasius also strives to represent
The spirit cased in matter visible.
I saw in spirit dancing merrily
My fairy princes and my souls of fire
In thousand doll-games, beautified by art;
And there I left them, happy in the thought,
To find their own way to the nurseries.

Evolutionary Events in the Human Organism up to the Departure of the Moon. Osiris and Isis as Builders of the Upper Human Form.

In the preceding lectures we have brought before our eyes, in connection with the nature of man, a long series of facts related to the evolution of the earth and of the whole solar system. In the last two lectures we directed our particular attention to bringing forward those facts of the evolution of sun, moon, and earth which had a sort of resurrection in the Egyptian mysteries, and which the pupil of these mysteries, as well as the whole Egyptian people, learned to know. In his clairvoyant seeing the pupil actually learned to know all the things mentioned here, as well as those that will be brought out today.

The greater part of the people, who were unable to raise themselves to clairvoyance, learned about all this in a most significant picture. We have often touched upon this picture, which was the most important one in the Egyptian world-view. It is embodied in the myth of Isis and Osiris. We are all acquainted with this picture, and no one who knows anything believes that it is without significance.¹ It was not only a picture for these people, but it was much more. What was contained in the Isis myth was told approximately as follows.

In earlier times Osiris long ruled the earth, to the blessing of humanity. This continued up to a particular moment, later characterized as the point when the sun stood in the sign of the Scorpion. Then it was that Typhon, or Set, killed his brother Osiris by inducing him to lay himself down in a chest, which Typhon then closed and committed to the sea. Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, searched for her brother and husband, and after finding him brought him to Egypt. But the evil Typhon, still striving for the destruction of Osiris, cut him in pieces. Isis gathered the fragments together and buried them in various places. (Various graves of Osiris are still shown in Egypt.) Then Isis bore Horus, who avenged his father on Typhon. Osiris was now again admitted into the world of the divine spiritual beings and is no longer active on earth, but he aids men when they sojourn in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Therefore in Egypt the path of the dead was called the way to Osiris.

This is the myth, which is one of the most ancient components of the Egyptian conception of life. Although there were later additions and changes, this legend pervaded all the cults of Egypt as long as any life remained in the Egyptian religious views.

Having directed our attention to this myth, into which was compressed what the pupil saw as a real event in the holy secrets of the mystery schools, we must now turn our attention to what we began yesterday and try to gain a clearer understanding of what was produced in man through the influence of the various aspects of the moon. We have spoken of the twenty-eight nerves proceeding from the spinal cord, which stem from the positions of the moon during the twenty-eight days that the moon requires to return to its first form. We have probed the mystery of how, through the cosmic forces, these twenty-eight pairs of nerves were formed in man from outside. Now I beg you to heed well the following.

So far as possible in a short discourse, we shall now describe, as precisely as possible, what the Egyptian pupil learned about human evolution in a still broader sense. Those who are too strongly infected by modern anatomy will say that this description is pure nonsense from the contemporary point of view. They may say this, but they should be aware that this is the doctrine that the Egyptian neophyte not only learned, but clairvoyantly observed. I shall speak to those who are perceptive enough to be able to follow. This teaching was not only the result of the vision of the Egyptian in the mysteries, but it is also accepted as true by the modern occultist of today.

Let us recall what was said in the last lectures about how the earth, while still at the beginning of its evolution, consisted entirely of human germs, which formed the primeval earth-mist. The Indian clairvoyant, as well as the Egyptian, could see the entire subsequent human form sprout forth spiritually out of this spiritual human germ. All that later grew out of this human germ could be seen clairvoyantly at that time. But one could also look back on those parts of man that first arose out of the germ. The first that arose out of this germ, when the sun was still connected with the earth, was actually like a sort of plant, which opened its chalice upward. These forms filled, so to say, the whole earth as they shaped themselves out of the primeval mist. But in the earliest time in which this arose, like a sort of flower corolla opening itself into cosmic space, this corolla was scarcely visible; man would only have been able to perceive it by feeling its presence as a chalice-shaped warmth-body. This was present at first as a warmth-body. While the earth was still connected with the sun, the inner part of this human formation began to light up and to shine into cosmic space. If at that time one had been able to see with the eyes of today, on approaching such a light-form one would have seen a sparkling sphere, like a glittering sun, which cast its gleams into space in a regular form. Today, one can hardly form a clear picture of what existed at that time. This would only be possible if one could conceive of the pure atmosphere of our earth as completely filled with fire-flies raying their light out into cosmic space. Thus would the first beginnings of man have shone into cosmic space when the earth was still connected with the sun. But this was not all that existed. At about the same time a sort of gas-body took form, outside and around the chalice form. Many substances were present in this, in solution, just as today we find fluid and solid substances in the human and animal bodies. At that time, however, they were air-forms. Soon after all this had arisen, other germs came out of the common earth-mass, germs that were the first indications of our present animal kingdom. Thus the human kingdom came forth first; then came the germs that gave rise to the animal kingdom. The earth still consisted of an air-mass, of gleaming light-disseminating bodies, which shone into cosmic space. Within this air-mass emerged the first traces of sexless animals, which stood at the lowest stage of the present animal kingdom. We shall see that these animals, then arising in their first outlines, had a certain significance for man.

The important thing is that these animals, which then made their appearance, composed the thickest of the gas-masses, like thick clots of gas. These animals developed through most diverse forms to a certain level, and when the sun had just gone forth from the earth, the highest animal form was the fish, although not the fish of today. The form of the animals of that time was entirely different from that of the present fishes, but it stood at the same stage. In the course of evolution our fishes have retained what could be achieved while the sun was still in the earth. Now the earth condensed to a water-earth and the densest forms, the animals, swam in this water-earth. Something singular now came about. Certain of the primitive fish-forms remained animals and troubled themselves no further about the progress of evolution. Others, however, retained a certain relation to the human shapes in the following way.

At the same time that the sun went out from the earth, the earth began to turn on its axis so that at one time one side of the earth would be shone upon by the sun, and at another time it would not be shone upon; thus day and night began. But at that time, the days and nights were much longer than today. At the time when the moon had not yet split off, whenever such a human form (already considerably condensed) was on the sunny side, there was organized into this gas-mass something of such an animal form below in the water-earth. Human and animal forms were combined so that there was a human form above and an animal form below. The upper part protruded toward the sun, but the lower parts were weaker, and the animal body joined itself to them. The upper part protruded out of the water-earth, and the sun influence, proceeding through the flower-men, worked on the inner forces of earth and moon. Because here an animal form was joined to the human body, which was then at the fish level, it was said that the sun, which illuminated the human body, stood at the sign of the Fish. The first hint of this formation actually coincided with the sun's being in the sign of the Fish, but the sun passed many times through this sign before the next formation took place. The beginning of this formation, however, was the time when the sun stood in the zodiacal sign of the Fish, and this sign received its name because beings at the fish stage united themselves with man at that time.

Now, as we know, evolution proceeded in such a way that moon and earth formed one body. At the separation of the sun, Yahweh remained with the earth along with the moon forces, and among his ministers was the godly form the Egyptians called Osiris. Until the moon left the earth, evolution proceeded in a strange way.

We know that the earth was a water-earth, and the formation in the water attained an ever lower stage during the time preceding the departure of the moon. When the moon withdrew, man's lower nature was at about the stage of a great amphibian. This is what the Bible calls the serpent, and what is elsewhere called the lindworm or dragon. During the time when the moon was withdrawing, more and more of the animal kingdom had worked itself into the lower human form. When the moon finally left, man had a hideous animal-like form in his lower parts, although above he still had the last remnants of a light-form into which the forces of the sun flowed from without. It was still possible for the light-beings to work into man. He moved about in the primal ocean, floating and swimming, with this remarkable light-form protruding out of the water-earth. What was this light-form? In the course of time it had transformed itself into a powerful and comprehensive sense-organ. When the moon withdrew, this transformation was complete. When man swam in the primal ocean, if some dangerous being approached him, he could perceive it with this organ. Especially could warmth and cold be perceived with it. This organ later shriveled up, so that today it is the so-called pineal gland. At that time man moved within the earth-mass, floating and swimming, using this organ as a sort of lantern. In very young children we still find a soft place in the head, and it was from there that this organ protruded into cosmic space.

There were ever higher animal forms, which man took into himself. At one time, what had developed out of the fish was called the Water-man, because it lived in the water and contained the germ of the later man. A still higher form that developed could be called the Goat. The singular thing is that what corresponded to man in his lower members actually gave the name to the then prevailing constellation. The feet are actually the original Fish; the calves or shanks are the Water-man, which for a long time enabled man to steer while swimming; the knee we find to be related to the sign of the Goat. The animal kingdom evolved more and more, and what became the thigh was designated as the Archer. It would lead too far if I attempted to explain this expression, but we shall try to give a picture of how man looked when the animal kingdom corresponded to the Archer.

Man was an animal then, which for the first time could move about on the islands that were forming in the water. In his upper parts he became ever finer, and at the top he actually preserved the flower-form. He was illuminated from above by an organ that he carried on his head like a lantern. The then human form is rightly conceived if we see the upper part as etheric and the lower part as animal-like. In older pictures of the Zodiac, the form of the Archer is shown as an animal below and a man above. These signs portray the stage of evolution at which man then stood, even as the centaur reflects an actual stage of evolution-upward man and downward horse. The horse must not be taken literally, but as a representative of the animal kingdom. This was the artistic principle in earlier times; the artist portrayed what the clairvoyant described to him or what he himself had seen. Artists were often initiates. It is said that Homer was a blind seer, but that means that he was clairvoyant. He could look back into the Akashic Record. Homer, the blind seer, was much more seeing in the spiritual sense than were the other Greeks. Thus, the centaur was once an actual human form. When man looked like this, the moon had not yet withdrawn. The moon force was still in the earth, and in man was still what had formed itself during the sun period, the shining pineal gland, which he bore like a lantern on his head.

When the moon withdrew from the earth, sexuality appeared. The centaur-man was still sexless. Sexuality appeared when the sun stood in the sign of the Scorpion, and this is why we always connect sex with this sign. The Scorpion is what in the animal kingdom corresponds to the stage of evolution at which man stood when he had developed sexuality. In his upper half, man was turned toward the cosmic forces, but in his lower half he was a bisexual being. He had become a sexual being. When the clairvoyant pupil of the Egyptian mysteries directed his gaze toward this period of earth-evolution, he saw the earth peopled by men whose lower bodily form was becoming denser, in harmony with their baser nature, but who had a luminous human shape above.

Then began the time when, through the forces of the moon, the nerve-filaments appeared in the region where the spine now is. The formation above the spine, the present head-region, had condensed and changed itself into the human brain; that was the completely transformed light-organ. Attached to this was the spine, from which the nerves proceeded, and attached to this in turn was the lower man whom we have described. This was revealed to the Egyptian pupil, and it became clear to him that any being wishing to incarnate on the earth would have to assume the corresponding human form. Osiris, as spirit, often visited the earth and incarnated as a man. Men felt that a god had descended, but he had a human form. Every exalted being who visited the earth appeared in the shape that man then had. This shape was then such that one still, saw that light-body, that remarkable head-ornament, the lantern of Osiris,² which has been described in a pictorial way as the eye of Polyphemus. This is the organ, the lantern, which at first was outside the human body, and which then transformed itself into an inner organ in the brain. Everything in early art is a symbol of actual forms.

When the Greek initiates became acquainted with these mysteries of the Egyptians, they had already learned many things. Basically, they had learned the same things as the Egyptian initiates, but they gave them different names in their language. The initiates of the Egyptians had developed the clairvoyant gifts to a high degree, so that many of their pupils could look back clairvoyantly into those most ancient times. The Egyptian initiate had a direct connection with those mysteries, hence the Greek priests seemed to him to be only childish stammerers. This is illustrated by the words that an Egyptian priest once spoke to Solon, “O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes remain always children, and there is not an old man among you. In spirit you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you from ancient tradition, nor any science that is hoary with age.³ Thus did the Egyptian point out that his wisdom stood infinitely far above anything that can be experienced materially. Only in the Eleusinian mysteries did the Greeks progress equally far, but only a few participated in them.

In his study of earth-evolution, the Egyptian initiate saw that the god Osiris had separated himself from the sun and had gone to the moon, whence he reflected the light of the sun. What this god did was also sacred to the Greeks. They too knew that it was this god, Osiris, who formed the twenty-eight moon-aspects, and thereby laid the groundwork for the twenty-eight nerves in man. Through Osiris, the nervous system is built onto the spinal column, thereby forming the whole upper body of man. For what appears as muscle can maintain its form only because the nerves are its shapers. All we have as muscles, cartilage, and other organs such as heart and lungs, maintains its form only through the nerves. Thus through the earlier sun-activity appeared what took form as brain and spinal column, and on this spinal column the twenty-eight aspects of Isis and Osiris work from outside. Isis and Osiris are the shapers of all this, and in the tentacles that the brain sends down into the spinal column, Osiris works upon the spine. The Greeks experienced this also, and as they became acquainted with the Egyptian mysteries they recognized that Osiris was the same as the god whom they called Apollo. They said that the Egyptian Osiris was Apollo, and that, like Osiris, Apollo worked upon the nerves so as to achieve a soul-life within man.

Now in a simple way, let us try to view this formation. Let us think of the brain as it might be sketched. This continues itself into the spine, and there the twenty-eight arms of Osiris enter in; there Osiris with his twenty-eight hands plays upon the spine as upon a lyre. The Greeks had a significant image for this—the lyre of Apollo. We need only think of it as transposed. The lyre is the brain, the nerves are the strings on which the hands of Apollo play. Apollo plays on the cosmic-lyre, on the mighty work of art that the cosmos has formed, and that causes to resound in man the tones that compose his soul life. For the Eleusinian initiate, this was what the Egyptians had given in their pictures.

From such a picture we can see that these things should not be expounded too rigidly, or we shall merely be forcing fantasies into them. For as a rule, our experience should be that these pictures are actually much deeper than anything we can dream into them by means of the intellect. If the Greek clairvoyant spoke of Apollo, he had before his mind the mystery of Osiris-Apollo and the human musical instrument. Osiris stood before the Egyptian pupil when he was initiated into the mysteries of earth-existence. Thus we must say that these symbols, these pictures, which have been preserved for us and which characterize what has been taken from the primeval mysteries, mean much more than can be expounded by the intellect. This lyre was seen, the hands of Apollo were seen. The important thing is that we should relate every symbol to some actual vision, to something really seen. There are no symbols, no legends, that have not first been seen.

The Egyptian pupil could penetrate to such mysteries only after a long time. He was first prepared through a definite course of instruction, which was somewhat similar to basic theosophy. Then only was he admitted to the real exercises. There he experienced a sort of ecstatic condition which, although not yet true clairvoyance, was more than a dream. In this condition he beheld what he was later to see in the form of pictures. The pupil actually beheld in a mighty living dream the departure of the moon, and of Osiris with it, and Osiris's working upon the earth from the moon. He dreamed the Osiris-Isis legend. Every pupil dreamed this Osiris-Isis dream. He had to dream it, for otherwise he would not have been able to come to a perception of the true facts. The pupil had to go through the picture, the imagination. The legend of Isis and Osiris was inwardly experienced. This ecstatic soul-condition was a preliminary to the true vision, a prelude to his seeing what takes place in the spiritual world. What has been described today could be read by the pupil in the Akashic Record only when he had reached a high degree of initiation. Tomorrow we shall speak further of this, and also of the other signs of the Zodiac and their significance.

• 1. In classical antiquity this feeling of baffling importance was already present. See Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris.
• 2. Pictures of this ornament may be found in E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London, P. L. Warner, 1911), pages 42 and 49.
• 3. See the opening passages of Plato's Timaeus.

This lecture is the 4th of 12 lectures from the lecture series entitled, The Human's Connection with the Elemental World, and the 3rd of 4 lectures in the series entitled, Olaf Asteson and the Awakening of the Earth Spirit.

The period from about Christmas to the present date (Jan. 7th) is really an important and significant period of the year, also in an occult connection. It is called “The period of the Thirteen Days.” The remarkable thing is that the importance of these thirteen days is felt by those who through the constitution of their souls have preserved an inkling of the ancient connection of the human soul with the spiritual world, of which we have often spoken. We know that the primitive human being who lives in the country or in a community which is little infected by our town life, preserves more of the connection with the spiritual world which existed in ancient times than one belonging to a town.We find many things in folk-poems regarding experiences of the soul during the period from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, Jan.6th.

This is the time when—after darkness has been greatest over the earth, directly after the winter solstice, when the sun again begins his victorious course,—together with the deepest immersion and subsequent liberation and redemption of nature,—the human soul can also have special experiences if it still has a definite connection with the spiritual world. Those who o longer possess the old clairvoyance, but who in their souls are still connected with the spiritual world, perceive a difference in the abnormal world of dreams at this period of the year. What the soul can then experience is important, because the soul—if it is still susceptible—can then really penetrate best into the spiritual world. To the modern man the course of the year is such that he can no longer distinguish the various seasons of the year; for while the snowstorms rage outside, when the darkness descends about 4 p.m. and it grows light late in the morning, the city man feels the same as in the summer months when the sun develops its greatest power. Man has been torn out of his ancient connection with the Cosmos in which he lived when he was outside in nature. To those however who have kept in touch with nature, what happens at Christmas time is not the same as what takes place at some other time in the year, for example, at midsummer. Whereas at midsummer the soul is most emancipated from what is connected with the spiritual world, at the time when nature has died away the most it is connected with the spiritual world and formerly had special experiences during this time.

Now there is a beautiful folk-poem in the old Norwegian language, a poem which was re-discovered a short time ago and has quickly become popular again owing to the peculiarly sympathetic understanding of the Norwegian people. It treats of a man who was still in connection with the spiritual world,—Olaf Oesteson. What he goes through in the time between Christmas and Epiphany is beautifully described in this poem. At the New Year Festival in Hanover on Jan. 1st, 1912, I tried to put this folk-poem “Olaf Oesteson” into German verse, so that it might come before our souls too. We will begin this evening with the song of Olaf Oesteson, which contains his experiences during the “Thirteen Nights.”

The Dream Song

O listen to my song!
I will sing to thee
Of a certain youth:
This was Olaf Oesteson,
who once slept so long.
Of him I sing to thee.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve.
A deep sleep fell upon him soon,
And he could not awake,
Till on the thirteenth day
The people went to Church.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
Who once slept for so long,
Of him I sing to thee.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve:
Long, long did he sleep!
And he could not awake,
Till the thirteenth day
The birds were spreading their wings.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
Who once slept for so long
Of him will I sing to thee.

Olaf could not awake
Till on the thirteenth day
The sun shone o'er the mountains
Then did he saddle his nimble steed,
And rode to the church in haste.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
Who once slept for so long,
Of him will I sing to thee.

The priest already stood
By the altar saying mass.
When by the church-door Olaf seated himself
To give tidings of many dreams,
Which during this long sleep
Had filled his soul.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
who once slept so long.
Of him I sing to thee.

Young folk and old ones too,
Give heed unto the words
Which Olaf speaks about his dreams.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
who once slept so long.
Of him I sing to thee.

II

I went to rest on Christmas Eve,
A deep sleep soon enveloped me;
And I could not awake,
Till on the thirteenth day
The people went to church.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

Up to the clouds was I lifted,
And flung to the depths of the sea.
Mirth cannot fall upon
ONe who follow me.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

Up to the clouds was I lifted
And thrust into dismal swamps,
beheld the terrors of hell
And also the light of heaven.
Brightly shone the moon
and the paths stretched far away.

Into earth's depths did I journey,
Where streams of Gods roar frightfully,
To look at them I was not able,
But I could hear their roaring.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

My black steed did not neigh,
And my dogs did not bark,
Nor did the bird of morning sing;
There was but one marvel everywhere.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

My spirit-land I had to travel o'er
The wide plane of a thorny heath,
And also the nails on my feet.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I came to Gjaller-Bridge
It hangs high up in windy heights;
It is covered with red gold
and has nails with sharp points.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

The ghostly snake did strike me,
The ghostly hound did bite me.
The bull, he stood across the way
These are three beasts of the bridge:
Of frightfully evil nature are they.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

The dog to bite is ready
The snake desires to sting,
The bull, he threatens violence:
They let none pass across the bridge
Who will not honour truth.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I went across the bridge
Narrow it is, and makes one dismay.
I had to wade through swamps ...
They lie behind me now!
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I had to wade in swamps,
Bottomless did they seem.
When I passed o'er the bridge,
I felt earth in my mouth—
Like the dead who lie in the grave.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

III

Then I came to waters
In which, like blue flames,
Masses of ice gleaned bright.
And God my purpose guided,
So that I shunned that region.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I turned my steps to the winter-path
On the right could I perceive it.—
I looked as into Paradise,
That threw its light afar.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

And the holy Mother of God—
I saw her there in radiance!
She made no travel to Brooksvaline:
Saying that there men's souls are judged!
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

IV

In other worlds I tarried
Through the length of many nights;
And God alone can know
How much distress of soul I saw
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

A young man there I saw,
Who had recklessly a boy had killed:
Now he must carry him eternally
In his own arms!
He stood deep in mire,
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Also an old man did I see,
He wore a cloak as though of lead.
Thus was he punished, because he
In avarice had lived on earth.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Ad men came into sight
Who carried fiery burdens;
Dishonesty weighs heavily
On their poor souls,
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Children too could I behold.
With glowing coals beneath their feet.
These worked their parents ill in life,
Which hurt their spirits grievously
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

I was charged to approach that house,
Where witches had to work
In the blood which in life
Had stirred them up to wrath,
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Down from the North in savage troops,
Come riding wicked spirits,
Led by the Prince of Hell.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

What came from out of the North
Seemed worst of all;
In front rode he, the Prince of Hell,
On his black charger.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

But from the South there came
In serene tranquility yet other bands.
Foremost rode St. Michael
At the side of Jesus Christ.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

The souls laden with sin
Could but in terror tremble!
Their tears ran down in streams—
The result of their bad deeds.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

In majesty stood Michael there
Weighing the human souls
Upon his scales for sin;
And giving judgment stood
The judge of the world, Jesus Christ.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

V

Happy is he who in earth-life
Gives shoes to those in need;
He need not walk with naked feet
In the field of thorns.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

Happy is he who in earth-life
Hath given bread to the poor!
He cannot in that world
Be injured by the dogs.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

Happy is he, who in earth-life
Hath given corn to the poor!
Threatened he cannot be
By the sharp horns of the bull,
When he must pass the Gjaller-bridge.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

Happy is he, who in earth-life
Gives clothing to the poor!
The ice-masses in Brooksvaline
Cannot avail to freeze him.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

VI

Young folk and old ones too,
Give heed unto the words
Which Olaf spake about his dreams.
Long didst thou sleep indeed ...
Wake now, Olaf Oesteson!

The poem itself is old; but as we have already said, it has recently reappeared as if of itself among the Norwegian people and is spreading with great rapidity. The fact of this poem spreading id one among the many things at the present time which shows how people are longing to understand the secrets now being opened up by Theosophy, for the fact that what is here described takes place—or at least could take place a comparatively short time ago—in a soul, is not merely “imagination.” Olaf Oesteson is a type of those people living in the North who, even in the Middle Ages, about the middle of that period, were able to experience literally, one might say, the things mentioned in this poem. When our Norwegian friends gave me this poem on my visit to Christiania the time before last, and wished me to say something about it, it was the fact just mentioned, one of general theosophical interest, which came particularly to notice, but what led up to include this poem in our theosophical understanding we can really penetrate more and more deeply into what comes to light in it. Thus for instance, it was significant to me that Olaf (that is an old Norwegian name) has the surname “Oesteson.” “Oesteson”—the son of what? Of “Oste”; and I tried to find what sort of mother this is the son of. Now of course we might adduce many things—including some that might lead to dispute—about he meaning of the word “Oste” (East): but it would be impossible to-day to explain all that is connected with it. If, however, we take into account all that comes into question, “Olaf Oesteson” means approximately this: One who is still a son of that soul which passes down from generation to generation, and is connected with the blood which is handed on from generation to generation. Thus we have traced this name back to what we have so often spoken of in Theosophy, namely, that in ancient times the old clairvoyance was connected with the relationship of the blood which passes through generations. We might translate “Olaf Oesteson” thus: Olaf, the one born of many generations and who still bears in his soul the characteristics of many generations.

Now when we examine his experiences, it is extremely interesting to notice that what Olaf Oesteson went through while he was asleep for thirteen days, beginning from Christmas Eve, during which time he did not woke was in a sort of psychic state. When we read these verses describing his various experiences with the broad homeliness of the nation, we are reminded of certain descriptions of the first stages of initiation, where we are told that so and so was led to the portal of death. We are shown in many places in the poem that Olaf Oesteson arrives at the portal of death. It is pointed out particularly clearly where he says that he feels like a corpse, even to the earth which feels between his teeth. When we remember that in initiation the etheric body extends beyond the limits of the skin and the neophite becomes larger and larger, so that he lives into the large, into the wide expanse of space, we are told in this poem how Olaf Oesteson descends deeply, feels himself in the depths of the earth and ascends to the clouds. Olaf Oesteson experience what man has to go through after death, for example, in the sphere of the moon. It is poetically described how the moon shines clearly and how the paths stretch far away, then the chasm is described which has to be passed over in the world which lies between the human world and the one leading out into cosmic space. The heavenly bridge connects what is human with what is cosmic. Our attention is then drawn to the beings expressed in the constellations; the bull and the serpent. To one who can look spiritually into the world, the constellations are only the expression of what exists spiritually in space. Then the world of Kamaloca is disclosed in the description of “Brooksvaline.” It describes how there is a sort of recompense, how people have there to experience what they have not acquired here on earth,—but in a compensating way.—We need not, however, go into all the details of the poem. We should not do this at all with poems such as this. We ought to feel they have originated from a frame of mind still closely connected with something which existed in such a people as this, much longer than among nations which lived in the more interior part of the continent or who were connected with the life in cities. In the Norwegian people, which still possesses in its national language many things which border closely upon occult secrets, it is possible to keep souls in touch for a long time with what exists behind outer material phenomena.

Remember who I explained that, parallel with the seasons of the year, there are spiritual facts taking place, how in the spring when the plants spring forth the earth, when everything wakens, as it were, when the days grow longer, we have to recognize what may be called a sort of sleeping of the elementary and higher spirits connected with the earth. In spring, when outwardly the earth awakens, we see that spiritually this is connected with a sort of falling asleep of the earth; and when outer nature dies down again it is connected with an awakening of the spiritual nature of the earth. When about Christmas time outer nature is as though asleep, it is the time when the spiritual part of the earth is most active, and includes elemental, less important beings, as well as great and mighty beings connected with earthly life. It is only when it is observed outwardly that it seems as though we must compare spring with the awakening of the earth and winter to its going to sleep. Seen occultly it is the reverse. The “Spirit of the Earth” which however, consists of many spirits, is awake in winter and asleep in summer. Just as in the human organism the organic and plant activities are most active during sleep, as these forces then work even into the brain, and as the purely organic activity is subdued while the person is awake, so is it also with the earth. When the earth is most active, when everything has sprouted forth, when the sun has reached its zenith about St. John's Day, the Spirit of the earth is asleep. In accord with this occult truth the festival of Christmas, the festival of the awakening of the spirit, was fixed in winter. Things which have been handed down as customs from ancient times often correspond to these occult verities.

Now one who knows how to live with the spirit of the earth celebrates, for example, the festival of St. John in summer, for this festival is a kind of materialistic festival; it celebrates that which is revealed in an outward materialistic form. One who is connected with the Spirit of the Earth, with what lives spiritually in the earth, awakens in his inner being—that is, he sleeps outwardly like Olaf Oesteson—best at Christmas time, during the “Thirteen days.” This is an occult fact, which to occultism signifies exactly the same as, for example, the fact of the outer solstitial point to ordinary materialistic science. Of course materialistic science will consider it to be an obvious thing that in astronomy it should describe the activity of the sun in summer and in winter in a purely external manner, it will consider foolish what to occultists is a fact, namely that the spiritual solstice is at its highest point in winter, that therefore the conditions are then the most favorable for those who wish to come in touch with the Spirit of the Earth and all that is spiritual. Therefore to one who wishes to strengthen his soul's powers it may come about that he can have his best experiences during the thirteen days after Christmas. At that time, without noticing it, experiences come forth from the soul,—although the modern man is emancipated from outer processes, so that occult experiences can come at any time, but in so far as outer conditions can have an influence, the time between Christmas and New Year is most important.

Thus are we reminded by this poem in quite a natural manner, that a great deal of what we are able to relate regarding the period between death and rebirth was known among certain peoples a comparatively short time ago, many knew it from direct experience.

Through spiritual scientific investigation, we see how the world and all nature surrounding us becomes intelligible. It also becomes increasingly clear to us how the outer facts of our surroundings can have a more-or-less profound significance for the inner being of man. Today we will develop further the theme of why music affects the human soul in such a definite, unique way. In doing this, we will cast light on the very foundations of the soul.

To begin with we must ask how a remarkable hereditary line such as we see in the Bach family, for example, can be explained. Within a period of 250 years, nearly thirty members of this family exhibited marked musical talent. Another case is the Bernoulli family, in which a mathematical gift was inherited in a similar way through several generations, and eight of the family members were mathematicians of some renown. Here are two phenomena that can be understood by heredity, yet they are totally different situations.

To those who have sought to penetrate deeply into the nature of things, music appears to be something quite special. Music has always occupied a special place among the arts. Consider this from Schopenhauer's viewpoint. In his book, The World as Will and Idea, he speaks of art as a kind of knowledge that leads more directly to the divine than is possible for intellectual knowledge. This opinion of Schopenhauer's is connected with his world view, which held that everything surrounding us is only a reflection of the human mental image or idea. This reflection arises only because outer things call forth mental images in the human senses, enabling man to relate to the things themselves. Man can know nothing of that which is unable to make an impression on the senses. Schopenhauer speaks physiologically of specific sense impressions. The eye can receive only light impressions; it can sense only something that is light. Likewise, the ear can sense only tone impressions, and so on. According to Schopenhauer's view, everything observed by man as the world around him reflects itself like a Fata Morgana within him; it is a kind of reflection called forth by the human soul itself.

According to Schopenhauer, there is one possibility of bypassing the mental image. There is one thing perceptible to man for which no outer impression is needed, and this is man himself. All outer things are an eternally changing, eternally shifting Fata Morgana for man. We experience only one thing within ourselves in an immutable manner: ourselves. We experience ourselves in our will, and no detour from outside is required to perceive its effects on us. When we exercise any influence on the outer world, we experience will, we ourselves are this will, and we therefore know what the will is. We know it from our own inner experience, and by analogy we can conclude that this will working within us must exist and be active outside us as well. There must exist forces outside us that are the same as the force active within us, as will. These forces Schopenhauer calls “the world will.”

Now let us pose the question of how art originates. In line with Schopenhauer's reasoning, the answer would be that art originates through a combination of the Fata Morgana outside us and that within us, through a uniting of both. When an artist, a sculptor, for example, wishes to create an ideal figure, say of Zeus, and he searches for an archetype, he does not focus on a single human being in order to find the archetype in him; instead, he looks around among many men. He gathers a little from one man, a little from another, and so on. He takes note of everything that represents strength and is noble and outstanding, and from this he forms an archetypal picture of Zeus that corresponds to the thought of Zeus he carries. This is the idea in man, which can be acquired only if the particulars the world offers us are combined within man's mind.

Let us place Schopenhauer's thought alongside one of Goethe's, which finds expression in the words, “In nature, it is the intentions that are significant.” We find Schopenhauer and Goethe in complete agreement with one another. Both thinkers believe that there are intentions in nature that she can neither bring completely to expression nor attain in her creations, at least not with the details. The creative artist tries to recognize these intentions in nature; he tries to combine them and represent them in a picture. One now comprehends Goethe, who says that art is a revelation of nature's secret intentions and that the creative artist reveals the continuation of nature. The artist takes nature into himself; he causes it to arise in him again and then lets it go forth from him. It is as if nature were not complete and in man found the possibility of guiding her work to an end. In man, nature finds her completion, her fulfillment, and she rejoices, as it were, in man and his works.

In the human heart lies the capability of thinking things through to the end and of pouring forth what has been the intention of nature. Goethe sees nature as the great, creative artist that cannot completely attain her intentions, presenting us with something of a riddle. The artist, however, solves these riddles; he thinks the intentions of nature through to the end and expresses them in his works.

Schopenhauer says that this holds true of all the arts except music. Music stands on a higher level than all the other arts. Why? Schopenhauer finds the answer, saying that in all the other creative arts, such as sculpture and painting, the mental images must be combined before the hidden intentions of nature are discovered. Music, on the other hand, the melodies and harmonies of tones, is nature's direct expression. The musician hears the pulse of the divine will that flows through the world; he hears how this will expresses itself in tones. The musician thus stands closer to the heart of the world than all other artists; in him lives the faculty of representing the world will. Music is the expression of the will of nature, while all the other arts are expressions of the idea of nature. Since music flows nearer the heart of the world and is a direct expression of its surging and swelling, it also directly affects the human soul. It streams into the soul like the divine in its different forms. Hence, it is understandable that the effects of music on the human soul are so direct, so powerful, so elemental.

Let us turn from the standpoint of significant individuals such as Schopenhauer and Goethe concerning the sublime art of music to the standpoint of spiritual science, allowing it to cast its light on this question. If we do this, we find that what man is makes comprehensible why harmonies and melodies affect him. Again, we return to the three states of consciousness that are possible for the human being and to his relationship to the three worlds to which he belongs during any one of these three states of consciousness.

Of these three states of consciousness, there is only one fully known to the ordinary human being, since he is unaware of himself while in either of the other two. From them, he brings no conscious recollection or impression back into his familiar state of consciousness, that is, the one we characterized as waking day-consciousness. The second state of consciousness is familiar to an extent to the ordinary human being. It is dream-filled sleep, which presents simple daily experiences to man in symbols. The third state of consciousness is dreamless sleep, a state of a certain emptiness for the ordinary human being.

Initiation, however, transforms the three states of consciousness. First, man's dream-life changes. It is no longer chaotic, no longer a reproduction of daily experiences often rendered in tangled symbols. Instead, a new world unfolds before man in dream-filled sleep. A world filled with flowing colors and radiant light-beings surrounds him, the astral world. This is no newly created world. It is new only for a person who, until now, had not advanced beyond the lower state of day-consciousness. Actually, this astral world is always present and continuously surrounds the human being. It is a real world, as real as the world surrounding us that appears to us as reality. Once a person has been initiated, has undergone initiation, he becomes acquainted with this wonderful world. He learns to be conscious in it with a consciousness as clear—no even clearer—than his ordinary day-consciousness. He also becomes familiar with his own astral body and learns to live in it consciously. The basic experience in this new world that unfolds before man is one of living and weaving in a world of colors and light. After his initiation, man begins to awaken during his ordinary dream-filled sleep; it is as though he feels himself borne upward on a surging sea of flowing light and colors. This glimmering light and these flowing colors are living beings. This experience of conscious dream-filled sleep then transmits itself into man's entire life in waking day-consciousness, and he learns to see these beings in everyday life as well.

Man attains the third state of consciousness when he is capable of transforming dreamless sleep into a conscious state. This world that man learns to enter shows itself to him at first only partially, but in due time more and more is revealed. Man lives in this world for increasingly longer periods. He is conscious in it and experiences something very significant there.

Man can arrive at perception of the second world, the astral world, only if he undergoes the discipline of so-called “great stillness.” He must become still, utterly still, within himself. The great peace must precede the awakening in the astral world. This deep stillness becomes more and more pronounced when man approaches the third state of consciousness, the state in which he begins to have sensations in dreamless sleep. The colors of the astral world become increasingly transparent, and the light becomes ever clearer and at the same time spiritualized. Man has the sensation that he himself lives in this color and this light, and if they do not surround him but rather he himself is color and light. He feels himself astrally within this astral world, and he feels afloat in a great, deep peace. Gradually, this deep stillness begins to resound spiritually, softly at first, then louder and louder. The world of colors and light is permeated with resounding tones. In this third state of consciousness that man now approaches, the colorful world of the astral realm in which he dwelt up to now becomes suffused with sound. This new dimension that opens to man is Devachan, the so-called mental world, and he enters this wondrous world through the portals of the “great stillness.” Through the great stillness, the tone of this other world rings out to him. This is how the Devachanic world truly appears.

Many theosophical books contain other descriptions of Devachan, but they are not based on personal experiences of the reality of the world. Leadbeater, for example, gives an accurate description of the astral plane and of experiences there, but his description of Devachan is inaccurate. It is merely a construction modeled on the astral plane and is not experienced personally by him. All descriptions that do not describe how a tone rings out from the other side are incorrect and are not based on actual perception. Resounding tone is the particular characteristic of Devachan, at least essentially. Of course, one must not imagine that the Devachanic world does not radiate colors as well. It is penetrated by light emanating from the astral world, for the two worlds are not separated: the astral world penetrates the Devachanic world. The essence of the Devachanic realm, however, lies in tone. That which was light in the great stillness now begins to resound.

On a still higher plane of Devachan, tone becomes something akin to words. All true inspiration originates on this plane, and in this region dwell inspired authors. Here they experience a real permeation with the truths of the higher worlds. This phenomenon is entirely possible.

We must bear in mind that not only the initiate lives in these worlds. The only difference between the ordinary human being and the initiate is that an initiate undergoes these various altered conditions consciously. The states that ordinary man undergoes unconsciously again and again merely change into conscious ones for him. The ordinary human being passes through these three worlds time after time, but he knows nothing about it, because he is conscious neither of himself nor of his experiences there. Nevertheless, he returns with some of the effects that these experiences called forth in him. When he awakens in the morning, not only is he physically rejuvenated by the sleep, but he also brings back art from those worlds. When a painter, for example, goes far beyond the reality of colors in the physical world in his choice of the tones and color harmonies that he paints on his canvas, it is none other than a recollection, albeit an unconscious one, of experiences in the astral world. Where has he seen these tones, these shining colors? Where has he experienced them? They are the after-effects of the astral experiences he has had during the night. Only this flowing ocean of light and colors, of beauty and radiating, glimmering depths, where he has dwelt during sleep, gives him the possibility of using these colors among which he existed. With the dense, earthy colors of our physical world, however, he is unable to reproduce anything close to the ideal that he has experienced and that lives in him. We thus see in painting a shadow-image, a precipitation of the astral world in the physical world, and we see how the effects of the astral realm bear magnificent, marvelous fruits in man.

In great art there are wonderful things that are much more comprehensible to a spiritual scientist, because he discerns their origin. I am thinking, for instance, of two paintings by Leonardo da Vinci that hang in the Louvre in Paris. One portrays Bacchus, the other St. John. Both paintings show the same face; evidently the same model was employed for both. It is not their outward narrative effect, therefore, that makes them totally different from each other. The artistic mysteries of light contained in the paintings are based more purely on their effects of color and light. The painting of Bacchus displays an unusual glistening reddish light that is poured over the body's surface. It speaks of voluptuousness concealed beneath the skin and thus characterizes Bacchus's nature. It is as if the body were imbibing the light and, permeated with its own voluptuous nature, exuded it again. The painting of John, on the other hand, displays a chaste, yellowish hue. It seems as if the color is only playing about the body. The body allows the light only to surround its forms; it does not wish to absorb anything from outside into itself. An utterly unselfish corporeality, fully pure and chaste, addresses the viewer from this painting.

A spiritual scientist understands all this. One must not believe, however, that an artist is always intellectually aware of what is concealed in his work. The precipitations of his astral vision need not penetrate as far as physical consciousness in order to live in his works. Leonardo da Vinci perhaps did not know the occult laws by which he created his paintings—that is not what matters—but he followed them out of his instinctive feeling. We thus see in painting the shadow, the precipitation, of the astral world in our physical realm.

The composer conjures a still higher world; he conjures the Devachanic world into the physical world. The melodies and harmonies that speak to us from the compositions of our great masters are actually faithful copies of the Devachanic world. If we are at all capable of experiencing a foretaste of the spiritual world, this would be found in the melodies and harmonies of music and the effects it has on the human soul.

We return once again to the nature of the human being. We find first of all the physical world, then the etheric body, then the astral body, and finally the “I” of which man first became conscious at the end of the Atlantean age.¹

When man sleeps, the astral body and the sentient soul release themselves from the lower nature of man. Physical man lies in bed connected with his etheric body. All his other members loosen and dwell in the astral and Devachanic worlds. In these worlds, specifically in the Devachanic world, the soul absorbs into itself the world of tones. When he awakens each morning, man actually has passed through an element of music, an ocean of tones. A musical person is one whose physical nature is such that it follows these impressions, though he need not know this. A sense of musical pleasure is based on nothing other than the right accord between the harmonies brought from beyond and the tones and melodies here. We experience musical pleasure when outer tones correspond with those within.

Regarding the musical element, the cooperation of sentient soul and sentient body is of special significance. One must understand that all consciousness arises through a kind of overcoming of the outer world. What comes to consciousness in man as pleasure of joy signifies victory of the spiritual over merely animated corporeality [Körperlich-Lebendige], the victory of the sentient soul over the sentient body. It is possible for one who returns from sleep with the inner vibrations to intensify these tones and to perceive the victory of the sentient soul over the sentient body, so that the soul feels itself stronger than the body. In the effects of a minor key the sentient soul vibrates more intensely and predominates over the sentient body. When the minor third is played, one feels pain in the soul, the predominance of the sentient body, but when the major third resounds, it announces the victory of the soul.

Now we can grasp the basis of the profound significance of music. We understand why music has been elevated throughout the ages to the highest position among the arts by those who know the relationships of the inner life, why even those who do not know these relationships grant music a special place, and why music stirs the deepest strings of our soul, causing them to resound.

Alternating between sleeping and waking, man continuously passes from the physical to the astral and from these worlds to the Devachanic world, a reflection of his overall course of incarnations. When in death he leaves the physical body, he rises through the astral world up into Devachan. There he finds his true home; there he finds his place of rest. This solemn repose is followed by his re-entry into the physical world, and in this way man passes continuously from one world to another.

The human being, however, experiences the elements of the Devachanic world as his own innermost nature, because they are his primeval home. The vibrations flowing through the spiritual world are felt in the innermost depths of his being. In a sense, man experiences the astral and physical as mere sheaths. His primeval home is in Devachan, and the echoes from this homeland, the spiritual world, resound in him in the harmonies and melodies of the physical world. These echoes pervade the lower world with inklings of a glorious and wonderful existence; they churn up man's innermost being and thrill it with vibrations of purest joy and sublime spirituality, something that this world cannot provide. Painting speaks to the astral corporeality, but the world of tone speaks to the innermost being of man. As long as a person is not yet initiated, his homeland, the Devachanic world, is given to him in music. This is why music is held in such high esteem by all who sense such a relationship. Schopenhauer also senses this in a kind of instinctive intuition and expresses it in his philosophical formulations.

Through esoteric knowledge the world, and above all the arts, become comprehensible to us. As it is above so it is below, and as below so above. One who understands this expression in its highest sense learns to recognize increasingly the preciousness in the things of this world, and gradually he experiences as precious recognition the imprints of ever higher and higher worlds. In music, too, he experiences the image of a higher world.

The work of an architect, built in stone to withstand centuries, is something that originates in man's inner being and is then transformed into matter. The same is true of the works of sculptors and painters. These works are present externally and have taken on form.

Musical creations, however, must be generated anew again and again. They flow onward in the surge and swell of their harmonies and melodies, a reflection of the soul, which in its incarnations must always experience itself anew in the onward-flowing stream of time. Just as the human soul is an evolving entity, so its reflection here on earth is a flowing one. The deep effect of music is due to this kinship. Just as the human soul flows downward from its home in Devachan and flows back to it again, so do its shadows, the tones, the harmonies. Hence the intimate effect of music on the soul. Out of music the most primordial kinship speaks to the soul; in the most inwardly deep sense, sounds of home rebound from it. From the soul's primeval home, the spiritual world, the sounds of music are borne across to us and speak comfortingly and encouragingly to us in surging melodies and harmonies.

• 1. A note in the German edition states that a brief description followed here concerning the various members of the human organization but that the transcript was too poor to be reproduced. They were similar to those given in Steiner's Theosophy in the chapter “The Being of Man.” In particular, the separation of the astral body into sentient body and sentient soul was emphasized.

Following last Thursday’s introduction, I would now like to begin by giving you an outline of world evolution such as we are able to give on the basis of theosophical insights. Please take note that time being short, I can only give a brief outline, with many things only mentioned in passing. Perhaps we will have opportunity to go more fully into them at a later date.

Before going through the evolution of the universe and above all the development of our planet Earth in theosophical terms, we need to establish some concepts which Western people no longer have since they have been devoting themselves exclusively to physical phenomena for such a long time. It says in every book on cosmology that we only need to look out into cosmic space to see thousands upon thousands of worlds spread before us that are like our own solar system, and that our Earth, the planet on which our life has been going on for millennia, is like a tiny grain of dust among those many worlds, with the human being just a tiny life form on this grain of dust in the universe. All this, it is said, scientists have discovered since the time of Copernicus. We are told by scientists how wrong people were in earlier times when they saw the Earth as the centre of the world, believing that cosmic evolution had only been a preparation for their own human existence. It has been made very clear to us how small the human being is compared to the universe. The authors write that it is sheer presumption to think that the world was created to be the way it is just for the sake of man. Schiller spoke out against this way of looking at things most beautifully:

Don’t chatter so much about nebulas and suns! Is nature great just for giving you things to count? Your object is, of course, the most sublime in space; But, my dear friends, the sublime does not dwell in space.³¹

And Goethe, whose knowledge of occult things is known to you from other lectures, said more or less the following on the subject: ‘What, after all, would be the purpose of the whole world with its solar systems and stars if it did not exist for the human being, so he may delight in it all and grow through it?’³² You see, people like these two, who took a truly spiritual view of the world, did not find the idea of the smallness of the human being and the dust-grain size of the world adequate.

Let us now consider cosmology and the human being in relation to the whole of evolution as we know it through theosophy. I need to say a few things first. Let us consider the position which present-day man holds in the world from the cosmological point of view. Everything we are able to perceive through the senses—be it the macroscopic senses we use every day or the more refined sensory perceptions available in science with its microscopes and dissection methods—everything we come across there in human beings is after all only the external physical human being. Those of you who have heard quite a few theosophical lectures before will know that this external human being is only the shell, an outer revelation of the actual, inner human being. What is the physical human being? If you study the anatomy you’ll find that he consists of a number of systems—the skeletal and muscular system, the nervous system, which has shaped itself into a brain, and so on. You also know that the brain is the organ of thought. As theosophists you also know that it is not the brain which does the thinking but that the brain is only a tool, so that the true essential human being only uses the brain as a tool for thinking. The spirit which thinks in the human being cannot be perceived with the tools provided by our physical senses; even someone whose astral senses have developed cannot see it. It therefore needs a well-developed sense of clairvoyance to really perceive what is truly doing the thinking in the human being. In theosophical terms we call this the true self. This inner core of essential human nature, the true self, is spiritual by nature. It does not occupy space, nor does it progress in time. It is beyond time and space, eternal. A description of this self was given in my lectures on the devachan,³³ and you will also be able to find an exact description in my book Theosophy, due to appear in a few days’ time?³⁴

The spiritual self needs a physical brain in order to live and think in the present period of human evolution. We would be able to perceive things without a physical brain through our spiritual self in the astral world and in the devachanic or mental world, but in this external, physical world we can only perceive things with a physical brain. If we truly want to understand the human being of today, we have to say that today’s human being is a Spirit Self embodied in a physical brain. This physical brain first had to develop, however, it is not eternal like the spiritual self. The Spirit Self can be traced back to infinitely distant times in the past and we can also follow it to infinitely far distant times in the future. From a certain point in time onwards, this Spirit Self enveloped itself in the brain, creating the brain for itself in accord with its own inherent nature. Such an organ is not so easily created. It would be quite impossible for someone to create a viable brain in physical space by means of some process in the world. It would be an artificial object, but not a viable brain which a spirit might use for its instrument. Other organs had to be developed before such a brain could arise. A brain can only develop in the kind of physical body we have in the human physical body. It was therefore necessary for the development of our brain tool to be preceded by the development of the rest of the human body. Looking back on the developmental stages which preceded our present one, we see how the tool which human beings have today, the means for communication with the world around us, only evolved slowly and gradually. It is the aim and purpose of our present evolution on Earth that the human being with his spiritual self should have organs that would make it possible for him to understand the world in this particular way. Everything which has happened on this Earth through millennia has happened for the purpose that evolution might reach the point where a Spirit Self would have a brain it could use.

Just go back with me to the beginning of our development on Earth for a moment. Someone who has developed mental vision will perceive the following. At the beginning of our planetary evolution, our Spirit Self had reached a particular level in its existence. At that time, when the Earth was in its seed stage, each of us was at a particular level of development. Imagine all the spiritual selves which were, are and will be incarnated on Earth taken back to the time when our evolution on Earth began. All of you did already exist at the time, though not the way you are today but in a completely different state. We have a specific mission in our Earth evolution; human beings are intended to be something as the result of this evolution.

Let me tell you in a few words, in narrative style, what the Spirit Self was when it entered into evolution on Earth. Standing at the gates of our earthly existence, the Spirit Self had quite a different kind of consciousness from today. We can get an idea of it by entering into the position of someone in a dim dream state who is unable to reflect on the images that flit past his conscious mind and use concepts; he merely sees them put before him and proceeding before his mind’s eye in a panorama. Each individual Spirit Self had this dream level of consciousness, and this had to go through earthly evolution and evolve from the dim awareness of perceiving images to the bright, clear conceptual conscious awareness we have in the daytime. The dreamy state of consciousness which the spiritual self had at the beginning of earthly evolution may be compared to that of the animals, though the level of conscious awareness is not the same. The mission our spiritual self has to accomplish in the course of this planetary period is to let conscious awareness grow clearer and clearer; when we are going to leave this earthly evolution in the far distant future, we will have taken this bright, clear conscious awareness to its highest point.

We call the spirits that entered into earthly evolution at that time the pitris, which means ‘fathers’. We were such pitris at the time; this was the nature we had made our own at that earlier state of evolution. We had gone through preliminary stages before we entered into earthly evolution and worked our way up to the dream-like pitri state. So now we know where we ourselves had got to when earthly evolution began. The pitris had to vest themselves step by step with all the organs they needed so that they might use a physical brain within the physical bodily constitution we know today to communicate with an environment which is also physical. The final thing the human being had to achieve—this is evident from what has gone before—was that he had to become a thinking physical entity, so that his self might be able to think in the physical realm. I now come to the second idea we have to consider in advance. If you examine the brain scientifically in all its aspects, using only the senses, you will find that it consists of the same kind of matter and is controlled by the same kind of forces as all other physical entities on earth. If you look at a rock crystal, a piece of calcite or rock salt, a plant or an animal and investigate it chemically and physically, you will find that the whole of our physical nature, in so far as it can be seen by eyes and taken hold of by hands, consists in a similar way of the same chemical and physical forces which are active in the mineral, plant and animal worlds. We therefore say in theosophy that to reach his present level of development, the human being had to vest his spiritual self in a mineral body. The spiritual self created a mineral body for itself. This took a long time, and the process has not yet come to an end. In future human beings will continue to evolve in this mineral vestment. Some organs are still in the seed stage in our bodies,³⁵ and they still need to develop. These are new senses, of which only vestiges exist at present. You see, the human being—his spiritual self—needed a long time to vest himself in the physical body which he has today.

Go back to the time when the spiritual self of man started the work of creating this mineral body for itself, a body able to walk and to stand, with all the mechanisms for growth and reproduction which are a necessity for man, with a nervous system and with the kind of brain the human being needs. Go back in your mind to the time when all this was in the early seed stage, and then move on to the time when the human being will have reached the highest point in his evolution, when an organ will have developed in the middle of his head that will enable him to have different perceptions from those we are able to have today. The whole mineral evolution of the present human being is taking place between these two points. In theosophical terminology we call such a period a ‘round’. The round I have just been describing for you, this period of evolution, is called the 'mineral round’. Yet before the human being developed this body in a way that allowed him to create the brain as a tool, he had to prepare other parts of his nature. The spiritual self, being a purely spiritual entity, could not have controlled such a mineral body just like that. Think of the spiritual self as a dot, if you like, and imagine this dot inside a mechanism such as our body; this dot would never have been able to move the mechanism, it would never be in a position to think by means of a physical brain.

We thus have two things. We know that our spiritual self had a dream-like state of consciousness in the beginning, when it would never have been able to control the mineral body. It needed to create a mediator if it was to control the body. What makes me move my hand? First of all I have the thought: I want to move my hand. If I had only the thought, this would be alive in me, but it would never be able to move a physical hand upwards, just as mere thought could not lift a bottle, for instance. If you want to move the bottle, a power would have to be added to the thought which mediates between the thought and my physical body. Such a power exists in the astral world. I would not be able to move my arm if there were not an astral power between my thought and my physical body, of which the arm is a part. This astral power acts as mediator between thought and physical body, physical arm. There has to be a mediator between my spiritual self and my physical body, and this mediator is astral by nature. If I move my leg or my hand, if I set my brain in motion to hatch ideas—my physical body must be connected with my thought by the astral body.

You know from previous lectures that the human being has such an astral body. A clairvoyant sees it in an astral cloud which we call the aura of a person, with his wishes, will impulses and desires living in it. When I have a thought, the thought is unable to do anything by itself. If wish or will impulse is added, this is a power, something shining out, which the clairvoyant is able to perceive. Before the human being developed the physical and mineral body he has today, he had to create an astral body for himself, a wish body, which can mediate between his thoughts and his physical and mineral nature. Another period of development had to precede the one which I have called the ‘mineral round’, and the astral body had to be developed in this. So you need to go back to a period when the human astral body was in preparation. It was only after this that the physical and mineral body could be embedded in the astral body. This period, which also had its beginning and end and which preceded the mineral round, is called the ‘astral round’.

So you see there are two ‘times’. We are living in one of them now, in the mineral round. It was preceded by another, the astral round. But the human astral body also needed to be prepared for. It could only be made part of human nature in a quite specific way. The astral body did not exist before we were born, and it will be gone some time after our death. It arises and disappears again, being subject to specific laws. Look at a child. The astral body of a child is correspondingly small; it grows as the child grows physically. Growth and reproduction are the basis of the mineral and physical and also the etheric nature of the human being. We have to develop according to the laws of growth and reproduction in our life on Earth. The basis for such origin and growth does not lie in the astral body. This only holds wishes, will impulses and desires. We are astral entities just as animals are, and we share a quality with plants and animals which is capable of reproducing itself out of the organism and let it grow from small to large size. If you want to put it in words, you may say that what I have been describing is the configuring principle, which configures the form. Our physical body and our ether body must have a specific configuration as they arise, and this must be able to grow and enlarge. You can get an idea of this if you consider a seed ... [gap in the notes].

The power of configuration does not belong to the astral sphere. The astral is able to live to the full within something that has been configured, but it first needs to be configured itself. The human astral body could not have arisen if it had not been preceded by a period of evolution during which the human form was prepared. Let me call this the configuring period, in theosophical terms the ‘rupa round’. This is the period during which the configuration of the human form was prepared for, so that his present form could then evolve.

Everything we are able to follow up in these three ‘rounds’ are the vestments enveloping the spiritual self of man. In the mineral round the human being put on the mineral vestment. In the astral round which went before this, the human being prepared the astral vestment, and in the rupa round, which came even earlier, the human being gained the ability to give himself the configuration which he needed if he was to perceive, think and act as a human being.

As theosophers we can say: When we were pitris, living in that dream-like state of consciousness at the beginning of our evolution on Earth, we were outcome, fruit, if I may put it like this. We did not come from nothing at the time, but had already gone through stages of development; we were the result of earlier periods which we will describe later. Very much as a plant sprouts from a seed when this is put into new soil in spring, so we, too, have to prepare for the arena which is the Earth, so that we might be able to evolve on it. We were the outcome of another world, and now had to be the beginning of a completely new world. Yet we first had to get our bearings in this new world. You may keep a seed obtained in autumn through the winter and then put it in new soil in the spring, and that is also how pitri nature does it, in a way. It must first be put into a new environment, into a form of matter in the earthly world which had not existed in earlier planetary periods. If you wanted to get an idea of the forces and forms of matter existing at the earlier planetary stage in which we evolved into pitris, you would find them very different. This means that yet another period of evolution must have preceded that one, a period when the human Spirit Self, having come across from an earlier period, first of all had to get used to the new environment. This, then, takes us to a period of evolution that goes very far back.

The further we go away from the present, the harder is it to form ideas. A theosopher does not think he can go back to the beginning of the world with his questions. When people hear something about theosophy for the first time they’ll often ask: ‘How did the world come into existence?’³⁶ As theosophers we are no longer able to ask quite a number of those questions, for we do not get back to a beginning. You saw the time when we came across from pitri nature. A clairvoyant is able to study this time by using specific methods. But the human being did not come into existence then, for he had already reached a particular level of development by that time. A theosopher does not speculate or think about these things in abstract terms. He pursues the things to be learned, his experiences, intuitions in the supersensible sphere, and he will tell of anything learned and experienced. Just as an explorer would only describe the regions he has visited, let us say in Africa, and not anything which he has not seen, so a theosopher would not say anything about the beginning of the world which is far, far away. A theosopher can only follow our evolution for some distance, and we do this through what we learn and not through speculation.

A seed entered into our evolution from an earlier time. The human being was a formless seed on Earth. We call this time the ‘arupa round’ or ‘formless round’. Thus we have four periods of time up to the point where we are now. We call them ‘rounds’. The first, second and third rounds have passed. We are now in the fourth round, and three more will follow. We will speak of these later. We call the human being of the fourth round the human being of the mineral world, because he has configured himself in the mineral forces. We call someone of the preceding round, the astral round, when he was able to shape his astral body, a human being of the third elemental world. We distinguish human beings of the third, second and first elementals worlds. During the first elemental world, or the first round, human thoughts moved in formless thought matter. During the second elemental world, or the second round, human thoughts moved in configured thought matter. And in the third elemental world, human thoughts could be configured to wish level; they were able to assume the configuration we are able to perceive as astral rays in the astral world. It was only in the fourth round that the human being reached the point where he could control the mineral world. Just as a human astral brain developed from astral matter in the third round, so the human being was able to create a physical brain for himself in the fourth round that allows him to think.

We thus have three elemental worlds and the mineral world. The three elemental worlds are where the human being of the past lived. What follows can only be touched on lightly. But you’ll be able to grasp it if we use analogy. Our present round will be followed by another, when the human being will reach an even higher level of evolution. He will then be able to think not only in his physical brain, but in the power which we call the astral power. He will be able to control not only physical matter but also the astral power. To make this clearer, let me give you an example. If I want to move this glass from here to here, I need physical mediation—my hand. The human being of the fourth round has reached the point where he can act with conscious deliberation in the physical, the mineral world. He is not yet, however, capable of conscious control of the astral power and has not yet developed an astral organ for the will. He will be able to do this in the fifth round. The human being of the fifth round will be able to control the astral world just as he is today able to control the physical world. In the sixth round the human being will have progressed even further. He will then be able to control the configuring world, just as today he controls the physical world and in the fifth round will be able to control the astral world. In the fifth round the human being will be able to fulfil a wish not just in the place where he has it. He will be able to send his wishes to distant places. In the sixth round the human being will have the power to configure. He will then be able to control rupa power himself. After the sixth round our earthly evolution will have been completed. The human being will then have taken in everything he is able to learn on Earth. Only then will he have gained a real, clear self-awareness. He will then no longer need mediation, having reaching his goal. In the seventh round the human being, having reached his goal, will again be formless. He will, however, have taken in all the things which he had to learn.

The human being has to go through seven rounds. I have only been able to give an approximate description of these. One thing we must remember is that the human being and the Earth have not been physical for the whole of our mineral round. They had to reach this state first, assuming it in order to become physically perceptible. We look back from our mineral round to the other stages of development. We are able to perceive that we are looking at a seven-stage evolution of our Earth, and that the Spirit Self had to go through seven levels or rounds. During each of these rounds the Spirit Self was in one of the natural worlds. Let us look at the human being. He has gone through the first, second and third elemental worlds and is now in the fourth round, which is our present world.

The next time we meet I will show that only the human being reaches the mineral stage during this fourth round. Today’s mineral matter, unenlivened natural matter such as rock crystal, calcite and so on, reached the peak of its evolution in the first round. The plants of today reached their peak in the second round, and today’s animals did so in the third round. The human being achieved physical and mineral evolution in the fourth round.

We thus see that millennia ago another Earth preceded our own. The mineral world then arose. The human being was then only in his first elemental world. In the second round, plant nature evolved; both mineral and plant nature then existed, with the human being in his second elemental world. Then came the third round, when animal nature became part of earthly evolution. The human being as such was still astral then and not yet able to descend into mineral embodiment. In the fourth round, finally, with mineral, plant and animal already extant, the human being was able to achieve embodiment in the mineral principle. We thus have four worlds side by side in the four rounds: the mineral world in the first, the plant world in the second, the animal world in the third and the human world in the fourth round. The human world sent the other three worlds ahead as preparatory stages. Goethe was right, therefore, to ask: ‘What would the whole of nature be if it did not have the human being for its goal?’ This great cosmic process had to be instituted; the human being had to evolve through three rounds so that he might assume mineral form in the fourth. The human being has been the creator, the co-creator, though his form was not visible. As pitri, he came across from another period of evolution. We worked on those first rounds in a dream-like state of consciousness. We worked to prepare for the creation of our Earth, so that a world would arise that could be the basis for our evolution.

This is the process of Earth evolution from a beginning (which I have been able to show you today) to the point in time where we are now. We will add to this the next time we meet.

• 31. Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), An die Astronomen.
• 32. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). The actual words in Goethe’s work entitled Winckehmann und sein Jahrhundert, Kapitel ‘Antikes’ are: ‘For why all the suns and planets and moons, stars and milky ways, comets and nebulae, worlds in existence and others evolving, unless ultimately there is a happy human being who innocent of all this takes delight in his existence?’
• 33. In German in Über die astrale Welt und das Devachan, GA 88.
• 34. Chapter 9, on body, soul and spirit.
• 35. See Foundations of Esotericism (note 13).
• 36. See part 2 of this volume.

Our study of the life of Christ Jesus according to what I have called the “Fifth Gospel” will certainly have brought home to us all the significance of what took place after the conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and the mother, of which I spoke here. And I want now to speak, in the way that may be possible in the intimate circle of a group like this, of what transpired immediately after that conversation, that is to say, of what happened to Jesus of Nazareth on his way to the Baptism by John in the Jordan.

What I have to tell consists of a number of facts which are revealed to the eye of Intuition; they are simply narrated, so that it is for each of you to form your own thoughts about them.

We have heard that after the life of Jesus of Nazareth from his twelfth until about his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, a conversation took place between him and the mother who was, actually, his step- or foster mother. In this conversation, the effects of the experiences through which he had passed poured with such intensity into the words uttered by Jesus of Nazareth that together with his words a mighty force flowed into the soul of the foster-mother, a force of such power that the soul of the mother who had borne the body of the Nathan Jesus was able to descend from the spiritual world (for since the twelfth year of the Nathan Jesus the soul of his mother had been in the spiritual world), and permeated the soul of the foster mother. From then onwards, the foster-mother bore within her the soul of the mother of the Nathan Jesus. What had happened in Jesus himself was that together with the words, the Zarathustra-Ego had to a certain extent gone out of him. The being who now made his way to the Baptism in the Jordan was the Nathan Jesus as he had been up to his twelfth year, that is to say, without the Zarathustra-Ego; but the effects left by the Zarathustra-Ego were still present—the effects of all that the Zarathustra-Ego had been able to pour into the threefold sheath. And so we can understand that Jesus was prompted to make his way to the Baptism in the Jordan by an undefined Cosmic urge -—that is to say, in him it was an undefined urge, but in the Cosmos it was definite and deliberate. It is also obvious that this being was not like an ordinary human being, for the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him and only the effects remained. The “Fifth Gospel” reveals that as this being, Jesus of Nazareth, made his way to the Jordan, he met, firstly, two Essenes. They were two with whom he had often conversed on the occasions of which I have told you. But as the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him, for to physical eyes the outer physiognomy—which had developed under the influence of the indwelling Zarathustra-Ego—had not changed. The two Essenes addressed him with the words:

“Whither go you, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Jesus of Nazareth said: “I go whither souls of your kind are unwilling to gaze, where the pain of humanity can feel the rays of the forgotten Light!”

The two Essenes did not understand his words, and they perceived that he had not recognised them. Then they said to him:

“Jesus of Nazareth, do you not know us?”

And be said:

“You are like lambs gone astray, but I was the shepherd's son from who you strayed. When you truly recognise me you will stray yet again. It is so long since you fled from me into the world.”

The Essenes were greatly perplexed for they did not understand how such words could be uttered by any human soul, and they gazed at him questionly. He spoke again:

“What manner of souls are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in sheaths of deceit? Why does there burn within you a fire that was not kindle in my Father's House? You have upon you the mark of the Tempter. With his fire he has made your wool shining and glistening. The hairs of this wool prick my eyes, you erring lambs. The Tempter has filled your souls with pride. You met him on your flight.”

When he had said this, one of the Essenes answered:

“Have we not shown the Tempter the door? He has no longer any part in us!”

And Jesus spoke:

“True, you showed him the door, but he ran and came to the other men. Therefore he leers at you from the souls of these others. Do you then believe that you can exalt yourselves by abasing others? You do not exalt yourselves when you abase others; you think yourselves exalted but this is only because the others have been abased. You remain as you were, and it is only because you have abased the others that you imagine yourselves to be great.”

The Essenes were afraid, but at this moment Jesus of Nazareth vanished from their sight. And after their eyes had been as if clouded for a little while, they beheld in the distance a kind of Fata Morgana, revealing to them, but enlarged to gigantic proportions, the countenance of the one who had just stood before them. And then from this Fata Morgana they heard words which filled their souls with dread:

“Vain is your striving, for your heart is empty. Your heart is filled only with the spirit which conceals pride in the deceptive guise of humility.”

And when they had stood there for a time as it stupefied by this countenance and these words, the Fate Morgana vanished. But Jesus of Nazareth too had passed further on his way. The two Essenes went home and spoke to no one of what they had experienced, keeping silence about it their whole life long.

As I said before, I shall simply narrate the facts as they present themselves in the Akashic Record, and each one of you must think about them as you will. This is important at the present time, because it is possible that this Fifth Gospel will be revealed in greater detail as time goes on, and may kind of interpretation at this stage might well be a disturbing factor.

When Jesus of Nazareth had gone a little further on his path to the Jordan, he met a man in whose soul there was deep despair. And Jesus of Nazareth said:

“Whither hath thy soul led thee? Aeons ago I saw thee; then thou wert different.”

And the despairing man said:

“I was of high degree; I have risen to high positions in life; I have filled offices of distinguished rank. And often I said to myself that my learning and accomplishments had made me an exceptional human being. Then one might when I was asleep, I had a dream and in the dream it was as if a question were put to me. I knew at once that in the dream I was beholding myself, for the question was thine Who hath made me great? And there stood before me in the dreams, being who said: I have raised thee up, and in return for this thou art mine!—And I was ashamed, for I had believed that I owed everything to myself. And now this being was telling as that it was he who had raised me to a high position! Then, in the dream, I took flight; I left all my offices and honours behind and now I wander about seeking for something but not knowing what I seek.”

As the despairing man was speaking, the being he had seen in the dream again stood before him, between him and Jesus of Nazareth. And a feeling came to the despairing man that this being had something to do with Lucifer. Then Jesus of Nazareth vanished, and the other being too; and the man saw that Jesus of Nazareth had already passed on. And be went on
his way.

As Jesus of Nazareth continued his path, he met a leper, and to him he said:

“To what hath thy soul led thee? Aeons ago I saw thee; then thou wert different.”

The leper answered:

“Men have thrust me away; they have made we an outcast because of my disease; none would come near me; I could not even beg my bread. Then I wandered about, and in my wanderings I came one night into a wood. There I saw a shining, luminous tree which drew me towards it. And as I drew near, it was as if a skeleton came from the shimmering light of the tree. Dearth himself stood before me, and said: I am in thee. I feed on thee. Fear not! Why art thou fearful? Didst thou not once love me?—And yet I knew that I had never told him! And as he said: ‘Didst thou not once love me?’ his nature changed into that of a beautiful Archangel. And when I awoke in the morning I found myself beside the tree and my leprosy grew steadily worse.”

Then the being who had been transformed into the Archangel stood again before the leper and he knew: Ahriman or a being of Ahrimanic nature is standing before me. While he was still gazing, the being disappeared, and Jesus of Nazareth also, and the leper was left to go on his way.

After these three experiences Jesus of Nazareth came to the Jordan for the Baptism. And here too, I repeat that the Baptism in the Jordan was followed by an event that is also described in the other Gospels, namely, the Temptation. But in this Temptation Christ Jesus was confronted not only by the one being—the Temptation took its course in three stages. First there came a being who was now known to Him because he had seen him when the despairing man had come to him; hence he could recognise him as Lucifer. And then, through Lucifer, came the Temptation that is expressed in the words: “All these kingdoms and their glory I will give to thee if thou wilt acknowledge me as thy Lord.” Lucifer's attack was repulsed, but now came two attacks. Lucifer came again, but with him the being who had stood between Jesus of Nazareth and the leper, and whom He therefore now recognised as Ahriman.

And then came the Temptation which in the Gospels is clothed in the words: “Cast Thyself down; nothing can happen to Thee if Thou art the son of God.” But as Lucifer and Ahriman mutually paralysed each other's power, their attack failed. It was only the third Temptation—“Make stones into
bread”—that was not fully answered. This Temptation came from Ahriman alone. And the fact that Ahriman was not completely satisfied, led to events taking the course they did. Because of the unanswered Temptation, Ahriman was able to work through Judas, and all the later events became possible in the way of which we shall hear.

You see, my dear friends, an “Akasha-Intuition” here sheds light on the moment that is of such infinite significance in the whole development of the life of Christ Jesus and in the evolution of the Earth. It was as if the connection of Earth-evolution with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces were mirrored in the events between the conversation with the mother and the Baptism by John in the Jordan. He who was the Nathan Jesus, who for eighteen years had borne the Zarathustra-Ego within him, was made ready, by these events, to receive the Christ Being.

And this bring, us to the point where it is of vital importance to have right and true conceptions. That is why I have tried to bring together various results of occult investigation which can make our human evolution on the Earth intelligible. It may, perhaps, be possible to speak here too about matters that were the subject of the Lecture-Course in Leipzig, where I tried to indicate the connection between the Christ Event and the Parsifal event. To-day I will speak of one or two points only.

I want to show you how the whole meaning and course of the evolution of humanity comes to expression in manifold events if only they are understood in the right light. I do not want to go into the idea behind the story of Parsifal and its connection with the development of the Christ Impulse, but to speak of something that underlay everything that was said in Leipzig. I shall begin by asking: How does the figure of Parsifal come before us?—Parsifal was one who some centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha was destined to represent an important stage of the further development of the Christ Impulse in a soul. We know the story. Parsifal was the son of an adventurous knight; his mother was Hezeleide. The knight bad ridden away before Parsifal's birth. His mother suffered deep pain and grief before he was born. She wished to shield her son from the vaunted qualities of knighthood and she reared him in isolation, protecting him from the consequences of intercourse with others. He was to know nothing about what goes on among other human beings. We are also told that be knew nothing about what the external world calls religion. From his mother he heard only that there is a God, a God behind all things, a God whom he must serve... but more he did not know. But a meeting with two knights caused him to leave his mother, in order that be might discover to what his inner urge was leading him. And after may wanderings he was led to the Castle of the Holy Grail. What he there experienced is described best of all by Chrestian de Troyes—a source upon which Wolfram von Eschenbach also drew.

We are told that one day Parsifal came to wooded country at the edge of a lake where.two men were fishing. In answer to his question, these men directed him to the Castle of the Fisher-King. He went into the Castle and there found a man lying weak and ill on his bed. The sick man gave him a sword—it was the sword which belonged to Parsifal's mother. Then came a page carrying a lance from which blood was dripping on his blood; then came a maiden, carrying a golden Cup radiating light more brilliant than all the lights in the room. This Cup was carried into the adjoining room where lay the father of the Fisher-King, who is nourished by what this Cup contains. Now Parsifal had previously been advised by a knight to abstain from asking many questions. At the time, therefore, he put no questions but the next morning decided that be must ask about these strange things. When he woke up the following morning, however, the Castle was empty. In the courtyard be found his horse ready saddled and when he had mounted and galloped away the drawbridge was immediately raised behind him. There was no sign of any of those whom he had found in the Castle the previous day.

As we know, the point of salient significance is that Parsifal asked no questions, although miraculous things had been revealed to him. And as the story goes on we hear again and again from those persons who meet Parsifal and who are connected with his mission, that he ought to have asked, that his troubles were to some extent due to this. He is told that by not asking he has brought about disaster.

And now think of Parsifal. He had remained apart from outer civilisation and culture; he is led to the Holy Grail with his virgin soul untouched by the mundane world... Now the Christ Impulse was a Deed which mankind had not at once been capable of understanding, But because the Christ had passed into the Aura of the Earth, He was working on—as indeed men had conjectured in their dogmas and teachings. Christ was working in the hidden foundations of the human soul, in the hidden depths of historical evolution, not in the surface consciousness of men or in the wranglings of Theology. In Parsifal we have a picture of the moment when a further stage was to be reached; therefore he had learned nothing of the teachings of the Gnostics, the Apostolic Fathers or the various theological movements. He was to know nothing of these things; his connection with the Christ-Impulse was to be purely in the life of soul, in his sub-consciousness, where standards of contemporary life played no part. His connection with the Christ Impulse would have been impaired and clouded by knowledge of man-made doctrines. Only the supersensible influences in the onflowing Christ Impulse were to work in Parsifal. External doctrine belongs to the material world but Christ works in the supersensible and it was this supersensible influence that as to come to expression in Parsifal. He must ask only at that place where the living essence of the Christ Impulse confronts him, that is to say, in the Holy Grail. He should have asked what the Holy Grail contains, what the Christ Event actually signifies. He should have asked!

Mark this word my dear friends. There was another, the disciple of Sais, who was not allowed to ask. The disciple at Sais was doomed in that he felt constrained to ask why it was not lawful for him to ask; he desired that the veils of Isis should be lifted. The disciple at Sais represents the Parsifal of the epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha! But in that age the disciple was told: “Take heed that what is behind the veil be not disclosed until thy soul is prepared and ready.” The disciple at Sais after the Mystery of Golgotha is represented in the figure of Parsifal. Parsifal was to undergo no special preparation; he was to be led to the Holy Grail with a virgin soul. And he missed the vital opportunity, for he neglected to do what the disciple at Sais was forbidden to do.—Parsifal ought to have asked about the mystery of his soul... Thus do the times change in the onward march of evolution.

To begin with we can only think of these things in a more abstract sense... What was the mystery of Isis? We are told of Isis with the Child Horus, of the mystery of the connection between Isis and the Child Horus, of the Connection between the Son of Isis and Osiris. A deep, deep mystery lies here. The disciple at Sais was not ripe for the disclosure of the mystery.

When Parsifal rode away from the Grail Mountain, having neglected to ask about the wonders of the Holy Grail, one of his first experiences was that he met a woman, a bride, weeping over the dead bridegroom in her arms.—A true picture, this, of Mary mourning for her Son—the motif of so many Pietàs later on. This is the first indication of what Parsifal would have experienced if be had asked about the wonders of the Holy Grail. Knowledge would have come to him of the new connection between Isis and Horus, between the Mother and the Son of Man. Parsifal ought to have asked. Now significantly this points to the progress that had taken place in the evolution of mankind! What was not lawful before the Mystery of Golgotha, was now, after the Mystery of Golgotha, both lawful and necessary. For in the meantime the evolution of mankind had progressed.

These things are only of value when we turn them to real disciple at Sais is that in accordance with the nature of the times, we must put the right kind of questions, for here lies the secret of ascent. Since the Mystery of Golgotha there have been two main currents in evolution: one which bears within it the Christ Impulse, the other which is, as it were, the continuation of the process of decline and leads to the materialism of the present age. In our age, by far the greater part of external culture is steeped in materialism. And everything that Spiritual Science can tell us about the Christ Impulse makes us realise how deeply the souls of men need the inner impulse of spirituality to counteract the steadily increasing materialism, of external life. To this end we must all learn to question, to ask! But the current of materialism leads men away from questioning. Let us compare the two currents.—There are people who really cling to materialism, even while they assert their belief in this or that spiritual dogma, or profess to acknowledge the existence of a spiritual world in words and theories. Mere words are of no account. What matters is that we shall live with our whole soul in the current of spiritual life. It can be said of those who cling to materialism that they do not question, for they claim to know everything already! It is characteristic of materialistic culture that even the young and immature think they know everything and therefore do not question. To give one's opinion at every turn is thought to be a matter of personal freedom. But it is not usually realised to what these opinions amount.—We grow up in the world, absorbing more and more without noticing it; according to our Karma, we find one thing more pleasing, another less; we reach, say, the respectable age of twenty-five and feel absolutely mature and certain in our judgment because we think it comes from our own soul. But such judgment contains absolutely nothing more than our experiences in the external world. And in that we feel obliged to assert our own judgment in the outer world, we become all the more slavishly dependent upon our inner life. We pass judgment, but we omit to question, to ask. We learn to ask aright only when we acquire that inner sense of proportion which maintains respect and reverence for the things that are holy as sacred in life, when we enter the sacred domains of life in an attitude of waiting without asserting our own judgment. A certain diffidence is necessary in face of things that are holy. We must ask the spiritual world—to which we bring, not our own judgments but our questionings, and a mood-of-soul which asks. Try, my dear friends, to understand the difference between facing the spiritual world in an attitude of “judging” and in an attitude of questioning. There is a radical difference between the two attitudes. Moreover something is connected with this to which we ought to give particular heed in our Movement, for this Movement will not thrive unless we understand the difference between questioning and judging. Naturally, we must also judge, but over against the mysteries of the spiritual life we must unfold the attitude of questioning, of expectancy. The progress of our Movement will be furthered by this attitude of questioning; it will be hindered by the contrary attitude. And when in solemn moments we ponder the story of the one who ought to have asked about the Mystery of the Holy Grail, the figure of Parsifal becomes the personification of an Ideal for our Movement.

Human souls before the Mystery of Golgotha possessed the old, inherited clairvoyance which had been carried over from incarnation to incarnation, but it was gradually fading away. This fading clairvoyance was bound up with that upon which our external sight and other sense-activities are also dependent. When human beings who lived before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were growing up as children, they learnt not only how to walk and talk, but they also learnt clairvoyance. Clairvoyance arose from the nature and organisation of man, just as speech arises from the organisation of the brain and larynx. Human beings in those times did not stop at learning to speak, but they also learnt clairvoyance. The old clairvoyance therefore was bound up with the human organism. as it was in the physical world. Clairvoyance in one who was a libertine was tainted by his particular characteristics; clairvoyance in a pure man bore the mark of his purity. The consequence of this fact was that a certain mystery, the mystery of the connection between the spiritual world and the physical world as it existed before the descent of Christ, might not be disclosed to an ordinary, unprepared human being. His constitution must first have become mature and ready. It was not lawful for the disciple at Sais to gaze upon the image of the soul of Isis.

In the Fourth post-Atlantean age, when the mystery of Golgotha took place, the old clairvoyance had faded away. The new constitution of the human soul is such that the soul must remain shut off from the spiritual world if it does not ask concerning the spiritual world, if it lacks the urge that is contained in questioning. The harmful forces which in ancient times drew near any human soul who desired to penetrate into these mysteries without due preparation, cannot now approach when a man asks in the right way about the Mystery of the Holy Grail. For in this Mystery there is concealed the power which since the Mystery of Golgotha has flowed into the aura of the Earth but was not previously there. It remains shut off, however, from one who does not ask. There must be an urge really to unfold what is contained in the soul. Before the Mystery of Golgotha this urge was not present, for the Christ had not yet passed into the Aura of the Earth. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, merely by gazing at the image of Isis and striving to fathom the mystery in the lawful way with such powers of clairvoyance as still existed, a human being would have poured all his forces into such an act and thus have recognised the mystery. In the age after the Mystery of Golgotha, a soul who learns to ask in the right way will be able to perceive and feel the new Mystery of Isis. Hence, my dear friends, everything depends upon asking, upon the right attitude to the spiritual conception of the world that is made known in our time. One who comes merely with the intention of judging, may read all the books and the lecture-courses, but he will gain nothing whatever, for he lacks the attitude Parsifal. If a man comes as one who truly asks, a great deal more than what the mere words contain will be revealed to him—for the words will then bear fruit in his soul as actual experience. And this above all is important—that the spiritual teachings should become actual experience.

These things are brought home to us by such events as transpired between the time of Jesus of Nazareth's conversation with the mother, and the Baptism by John in the Jordan. Such things will have meaning for us only when we ask what it is that distinguishes the time before the Mystery of Golgotha from the age that followed it... It it best to allow these things to work upon the soul; all that they can say to us is really contained in the story.

At this point in our study of the “Fifth Gospel” I wanted merely to indicate how important it is in this age to understand the attitude of Parsifal. It was brought to the fore by Richard Wagner, who tried to clothe it in musical and dramatic form. I do not propose to enter the lists of the fight that is going on about it in the outer world, because it is not for spiritual science to mingle in such strife. I shall not pronounce judgment as between those who wish to preserve it in Bayreuth and those who want to consign it to Klingsor's realm—which has, as a matter of fact, already happened. My aim is to show that in the onward flow of the Christ Impulse, the Parsifal attitude must come into play in domains that are beyond the reach of the power of judgment belonging to man's ordinary consciousness but to which this consciousness can more and more be directed by a spiritual conception of the world.

The following lecture is included in Bn/GA 275. It is lecture 8 of 8 in the series entitled, Art in the Light of Mystery Wisdom. It is also known as, Working with Sculptural Architecture—2.

To the impulses necessary for the transformation of the present age belongs an ever wider and more comprehensive understanding of the processes of the human soul in those regions which open to Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive observation. For what first makes our world into a whole, raising us above Maya and leading us into true reality, lies within those spheres which open to this observation. It must be emphasized again and again that what we are striving towards as a new spiritual knowledge cannot consist in any warming-up of the results of an earlier clairvoyance. It is true that many people aspire to such a warming-up of an earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is past, and only atavistic echoes of it can appear in certain individuals. However, the stages of human existence that we must surmount do not disclose themselves through a revival of old clairvoyance, and thus we will endeavor to consider once again that which must lie at the basis of the new clairvoyance. We have often spoken of the principle of this, and today we shall try to do this again, but from another side.

Let us start once more from something we all know, from the fact that, during daytime waking consciousness, man lives with his ego and astral body in his physical and etheric body. During the last few days I have emphasized that this waking state of man, from waking until falling asleep, is not a fully-awake condition, because there is still something asleep in man. What we experience as our will is really only partially awake. Our thoughts are awake from waking until falling asleep, but the will is something which we exercise quite dreamily. On this account much of the pondering on the freedom of the will, and on freedom in general, is in vain, because people have not noticed that what they know of the will in waking daily life is really only a dream or a tale of will impulses. When they will, and represent something to themselves concerning it, they are of course awake. But how the will arises and passes over into action, of this man can only dream in daily waking life.

If you lift a piece of chalk and then think about this action, then you have of course an idea of it in your mind. But without clairvoyance, how the ego and astral body flow into the hand—how the will spreads out there—you can know nothing more of this in ordinary day consciousness than you know of a dream while you are dreaming. Man only dreams of real willing during ordinary waking life, and in most things we do not even dream, we sleep. You can clearly conceive of how you put a morsel of food on a fork; you can also conceive to a certain extent of how you bite this morsel; but how you swallow the morsel, this you do not even dream. For the most part you are quite unconscious of it, just as you are unconscious of your thoughts when you are asleep. A great part of the activity of will while man is awake is similarly performed in a half-sleeping condition.

For instance, if we were not asleep as regards our powers of desire and the feeling impulses connected with them, we would develop an extraordinary activity. We would follow the actions we perform right into the body; everything we fulfilled as will impulse we would follow inwardly—into our blood, and into all the blood vessels. This means that if you could follow the lifting of a piece of chalk with reference to the will impulse, you would be able to follow what takes place in your hand, right into all the blood vessels. You would see from within the activity of the blood and the feelings attached to it, for example, the gravity of the particles of chalk, and things of that nature, and would thereby become aware that you were following your nerve-paths and the etheric fluidity found therein. You would inwardly experience yourself, along with the activity of blood and nerves. This would be an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But during our life on earth this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity must be withheld from us, otherwise we would go through life in such a way that in everything we did we would experience this inner self enjoyment. But man, as he has become, may not have this enjoyment, and the secret of why he may not we again find expressed in a part of the Bible towards which we should always feel the greatest reverence.

After those things had taken place which are expressed in the Paradise-Myth, man was permitted to eat of the Tree of Knowledge but not of the Tree of Life. Eating of the Tree of Life would mean this inner gratification, and this must not happen to man. I cannot develop this motif further here today because it would us lead too far, but through your own meditation on the motif here touched upon you will be able to make further discoveries for yourselves. However, starting from this point, there is something else you can keep in mind which can be of essential importance for you: we are unable to eat of the Tree of Life, i.e., enjoy within our inner being our own blood and nerve activity—we cannot do this—yet something happens, especially when observing the world through our senses and our intellect, which is closely connected with such an inner enjoyment. In the perception of any object in the outer world, and in pondering over any object in the outer world, we follow the senses, that is, when we follow the eyes, nose, ears and taste nerves, we follow the path of the blood vessels. And when we think, we follow the path of the nerves. But we cannot perceive what else might have been perceived along the path of the blood and the nerves. What we might have perceived in the blood is reflected through the senses; it is as it were thrown back, and from this, sense impressions arise. And that which is conducted along the path of the nerves is also reflected and brought to where the nerve paths reach their end, and is then reflected as our thoughts.

Just suppose for once that a man appeared who was in a position not merely to follow along the path of his blood under the influence of the outer world, and then to receive reflection of what his blood does; not merely to follow his nerves, and receive reflected back what his nerves do, but to experience inwardly what is denied us in regard to the blood and sense nerves, to experience inwardly what leads to the eye, to experience inwardly the blood as it tends towards the nerves and the eyes. This he would enjoy inwardly, at least in regard to those parts of the blood and nerves. It was in this way that those forms arose that belong to the old clairvoyance. For what is reflected back for us are but images, finely filtrated images, as it were, of what is contained in the blood and nerves. Cosmic mysteries are contained in our blood and nerves, but such cosmic mysteries as are already exhausted, because we have developed beyond them. We only learn to know ourselves when we learn to know the Imaginations which are revealed to us when we experience ourselves within the blood extending to the senses; and we only learn to know those Inspirations destined to up-build us when we live within the nerves extending to our senses.

A whole inner world is thus built up. This inner world can consist of a sum of Imaginations, whereas in perceiving the outer physical world in a way fitted to our earth evolution we perceive reflections and reflected images of what takes place in blood and nerves. We are unable, when deeply sunk in the inner enjoyment of ourselves, to get beyond the senses, but only reach the point where the blood streams enter the senses. Man then experiences the Imaginative world so that he seems as it were to swim in the blood as a fish in water. But this Imaginative world is in truth no outer world, but a world which lives in our blood. When a man lives in the nerves which extend to the senses, he experiences an Inspired world, a world of sphere-tones, and a world of inward pictures. This is also cosmic, but it is nothing new, it is merely something which has completed its task in that it has streamed into our nerve and blood system.

The clairvoyance which thus arises, and which does not lead man beyond himself, but leads him rather deeper into himself, is a self-enjoyment, truly a real self-enjoyment. This is why in a certain sense it produces a higher bliss in people when they become clairvoyant in this way, that is, when they experience a new world. This way of becoming clairvoyant is on the whole a falling back to an earlier stage of evolution. For what I have just described, the life within ones own sense organs and blood, did not exist at that time in the form it does now, although the nervous system was already foreshadowed.

This kind of perception was the normal kind of perception on the Old Moon, and in what existed at that time in the tendencies toward the formation of nerves, a man was inwardly aware of himself. Blood was not yet developed within him, it was more something which came to him from outside like a warm breath, as the sun's rays come to us. Therefore what now on earth is a conscious perception of the inner blood system was on the Moon the normal perception of the outer world.

If therefore the nerve is here the boundary between the human inner and outer world, then what is now nerve was already foreshadowed on the Moon. While following the nerves a man was able to perceive what revealed itself to him as an inner, Imaginative world, which was a part of himself. He perceived how he himself is included in the cosmos. He also was aware Imaginatively of what came to him as a breath from outside… not from within. This perception has now fallen from him, what was outside him on the old Moon has become inward, as the circulation of the blood in earthly evolution. The old perception is therefore a going-back to the Old Moon evolution.

It is well to know of such things, because again and again things arise that are of this kind of clairvoyance. What appears clairvoyantly in this way has no need of being developed by those difficult paths of meditation and concentration described in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. This clairvoyance, which arises through learning to live inwardly in ones nerves and blood—to feel satisfaction in oneself—is in general but a finer development of the organic life, a refinement of what a man experiences when he eats and drinks. When all is said such clairvoyance is not the task set before man today, but is rather something that arises as a hothouse plant through our bringing to a more refined existence that self-enjoyment afforded us by eating, drinking and similar things. Just as an inner after-effect arises in an epicure when he has drunk Rhinewine or Mosel, which of course rises only to an Imagination of taste but does not work formatively, so in many people a refined inner enjoyment arises, and this is their clairvoyance.

A great deal of clairvoyance is nothing else but a refined, rarified, hothouse-like after-enjoyment of life. Attention must frequently be drawn to these things in our day. For I may tell you that the last time the secrets concerning these things were still known, when people still spoke of them in literature, was really the first half of the 19th century. Then came the second half of the 19th century, with its so highly-rated discoveries—highly-rated from their point of view—when all understanding for these things and for the finer connections of existence was lost. It may be added parenthetically that people have not yet lost the enjoyment experienced under the influence of the coarser, let us say more selfish enjoyment; they can still live with the after-pleasure of eating and drinking, in fact these have even been developed to a certain high degree in this materialistic age.

But in such things, man lives in a cyclic, rhythmic movement. And the materialistic age, because it has extinguished what was formerly a general feeling—the passing of self-enjoyment into the senses, nerves, and blood-circulation—can therefore give itself up ever more thoroughly to the impressions of eating and drinking. We can easily observe the complete “volt face” and transformation which has taken place in this connection within a relatively short time. We have but to look at a hotel menu card from the 70's, and compare it with one of today, and we see what strides life has made in refined enjoyment, in the self-gratification of our own bodies. But such things also progress in cycles, for everything can only be reached to a certain degree, and just as a pendulum can only rise to a certain point and must then return, so mere physical enjoyment must recede when it has reached a certain point. It will then come to pass that when the keenest epicures, those who have the greatest longing for enjoyment, stand before the most daintily prepared repast, they will not yearn for it, but will say: “Ah! I cannot. All that is finished for me.” This also will come in time, for it is a necessity of evolution. Everything passes in cycles.

The other side of life is that which man experiences during sleep. His life of thought is asleep, and naturally, entirely different connections make their appearance. I have already said that in the first half of the 19th century people still had insight into these things. The clairvoyance which arises through following ones own blood and nerve paths was still called, in accord with certain memories, the Pythic clairvoyance, because it was in fact related to what lay at the root of the pythic clairvoyance of antiquity.

Other connections are present during the life of sleep. Man with his ego and astral body is then outside the physical and etheric body. Ideas from ordinary life are then suppressed and weakened, but man lives continually from falling asleep till waking in a state of longing for his physical body. Sleeping consists essentially in this, that man, from the moment he begins to sleep, develops longings for his physical body. These longings increase until a climax is reached when he is forced back more and more towards his physical body. The longing for ones physical body becomes ever greater and greater in the state of sleep. And because longing fills the ego and astral body like a cloud, the life of thought is dimmed. Perceptions become dim because desire for the physical body pervades the ego and astral body like a cloud. Just as we cannot see the trees in a wood if mist spreads over everything, neither can we ask variance of our inward life of perception if the mist of our desire spreads over it.

But it may happen that this life of desire becomes so strong during sleep that man not merely develops this desire when outside his physical and etheric body, but he becomes greedy to such an extent that he partially seizes on this inner part of his physical and etheric body so that he reaches with his desire to the furthest limits of his blood and nerve paths, he sinks through as it were from outside into the extremities of the senses of circulation, and into the ultimate ends of the nerve paths.

In ancient times, when the Gods still helped man with such experiences, they were entirely regular and good. The ancient Hebrew Prophets, for example, who did such great things for their people, performed what they did and received their prophetic gifts because they applied such infinite love to the blood and nerve structure of their people, and even in the sleeping state they did not entirely absent themselves from what lived physically in this people. These ancient Hebrew prophets were seized by such longing, filled with such love, that they remained united even in sleep with the blood of the people to whom they belonged. It was because of this that they received their prophetic gifts.

This is the physiological origin of these gifts, and most beautiful and splendid results came from what has just been told you. The prophets of different peoples were of such significance to these peoples just because, while outside the physical body, they still lived with this physical body in the way described.

As explained, a certain consciousness of this still existed up to the first half of the 19th century in the life of mankind. As the first clairvoyance described here was called Pythic clairvoyance, so the clairvoyance of which I have just spoken, in which a man dives down into the blood and nerve paths of the physical body with what otherwise lives outside the physical and etheric body during sleep, was called Prophetic clairvoyance.

If you pursue the literature of the first half of the 19th Century—even if it cannot be described with the exactitude and precision of modern spiritual science—you still find descriptions of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance. The distinction between them is not recognized today, because people can no longer understand what they read of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance.

Neither kind of clairvoyance is that which is really capable of advancing mankind at the present time. These are the kinds of clairvoyance that were valid for ancient times. The modern clairvoyance, which must develop more and more towards the future, can come neither by enjoying what penetrates our body from within during waking conditions, nor by diving down into this body from outside in a state of sleep, but from love—not for ourselves, but for that portion of mankind to which our body belongs. The earlier forms are stages of development which have been outgrown.

Modern clairvoyance must develop as a third kind of clairvoyance that does not involve desire for laying hold of the physical body from without, nor as enjoyment of the physical body from within.

That which lives within and is capable of penetrating our body, enjoying it inwardly, and that which can seize the body from without, must be detached from the body if modern clairvoyance is to arise. Neither must enter into any further connection with the body other than in the [normal] incarnation between birth and death, so that blood and nerves can be enjoyed neither from within nor from without; but each must remain connected with the body in pure renunciation of such self-enjoyment and such self-love. A connection with the body must nevertheless remain, for otherwise, death would take place. Man must remain united with the body which belongs to him during his physical incarnation on earth, remain united with it through those members which in a sense stand far, or at least relatively far, from the activity of blood and nerve. A release from blood and nerve activity must be attained.

When man no longer finds inward enjoyment along the paths which lead to his senses, or penetrates his own being from outside as far as to the senses, but when he can enter into such union with himself both from within and from without so as to really lay hold in a living way of that which in physical existence is the symbol of death, and can unite himself with that which gives the expectancy of physical death, the condition we are considering is then reached. For considered physiologically, we really die because we are capable of developing a bony system—a skeleton. When we are capable of comprehending our bones, which through a wonderful intuition people recognize as the symbol of death—the bony skeleton—and which is so far removed from the blood and nervous systems, we then attain to something which is higher than pythic and prophetic clairvoyance, we come to what we can call the Clairvoyance of Spiritual Science.

In this spiritual scientific clairvoyance, we no longer grasp only a part of human nature, we grasp the whole man. And fundamentally, it is all one whether we grasp it from within or from without, because this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an “enjoyment,” it is no longer a refined pleasure, but a going forth into the divinely spiritual forces of the All. It is a becoming-one with the cosmos, an experience no longer of man and of what is secreted in man, but an experience that is a living within the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, a real raising of oneself above self-enjoyment and self-love. Just as our thoughts are members of our souls, so man must become, as it were, a thought, a member of the higher Hierarchies. To allow oneself to be thought, pictured, perceived by the higher hierarchies, this is the principle of the clairvoyance of spiritual science. It is being taken up, not taking up.

I hope that what I am now saying may very definitely become the subject of your further meditations, for precisely those things that I have explained today are capable of stimulating very much in all of you, and this can serve toward an ever deeper and more comprehensive penetration to the real impulses of our spiritual scientific stream. How much earnestness is necessary for this penetration into our spiritual scientific stream has been spoken of often in these past days. Something might be realized of what is—I do not say willed, but what must be willed—within this spiritual stream, if as many as possible would resolve to ponder in a living way this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds, so that clearer and ever clearer ideas might arise concerning what we all desire at bottom, and which is so easily confused with what is far easier and more comfortable to acquire.

We have in fact worked from cycle to cycle of lectures for no other purpose than to bring together, ever more and more, ideas and concepts. It is necessary to study these ideas and concepts, and in this way we prepare in ourselves those impulses of soul which lead to real spiritual scientific clairvoyance. Often because one has sipped a little here or there of what is imparted within our spiritual scientific stream, and thereby given some part of our human nature to pythic or prophetic clairvoyance—because of this one may perhaps become proud and haughty. When this is the case opinions arise as are often heard when one or another says: I need not study every detail, I do not require what is said in this cycle. What I hear I already know, and so on. The principle of living in a few Imaginations which might be called blood and nerve Imaginations, still exists in many. Many think they possess something quite special if they have a few blood and nerve Imaginations. But this is not what leads us to selfless labor for human evolution; such a tarrying in blood and nerve imaginations leads only to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a refined egoism. In this event, it may be that a more refined egoism is cultivated through the pursuit of spiritual science than exists even in the outside world.

Naturally, in referring to such things, one never speaks of these matters to those who are present, and never of the members of the anthroposophical society who are present. Yet it may be mentioned that societies exist in which people are to be found who, according to the principles of these societies, bring themselves to co-operate, not with true selflessness, but to undertake preferably that which kindles the blood or nerve Imaginations. They then think they can be excused from anything else. They attain to such an atavistic clairvoyance—or perhaps they do not attain to it, but merely to the feelings which are held to be an accompaniment of the phenomenon of such Imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not a conquest of egoism, but only a higher blossoming of it. One finds within such societies—the anthroposophical society being excepted from politeness—that although their duty is to develop love and esteem, harmony and compassion, at the profoundest depths of their souls one finds disharmony, quarrelsomeness, mutual calumniation, etc, growing more and more from member to member. I venture to express myself thus, because, as I have said, I always exclude the members of the anthroposophical. society.

We then see how, that where an especially strong light should arise, deep shadows are also cast. It is not so much as if I wished to place blame on such things, or believed they could be rooted out at once, between today and tomorrow. That is impossible because they arise naturally. However, each one can at least work on himself. And it is not good if the consciousness is not at least directed to such matters.

One can thoroughly understand that just because a certain stress must be worked out within such societies, the shadow-sides also make themselves felt, and that what flourishes outside in life often flourishes all the more vigorously within such societies. Nevertheless a certain bitter feeling is evoked when this appears in societies that should naturally (otherwise the society would have no meaning) develop a certain brotherliness and unity, and when, with this closer contact, certain qualities that exist but fleetingly outside are developed with all the greater intensity. Since the Anthroposophical Society—being present—is excepted, it is all the more possible for us to think over these things objectively, as non-participators, so that we can learn to know them more intimately. And if we find such things anywhere in the world, we do not regard them as anything other than what they are. We believe—if anyone thinks he understands anthroposophy with especial depth, yet reveals certain qualities which not only show themselves in him as they do in the world, but more intensely—that these things are not incomprehensible, but realize that they are comprehensible, yet as matters we must fight. We can frequently only fight them when we have really understood them.

This is also something which shows us how life is connected with the spiritual scientific view, and can only reach its goal when it is understood as acceptance of life, as an art of life; when it is carried into all life. How beautiful it would be if each single relationship of life, let us now say of the Anthroposophical Society, showed itself to be in such mutual harmony as is attempted in the forms of our building, where the separate forms pass over into each other, and all are in harmony one with another; if it could be in life as it is in the building, if the whole life of our society could be as we would have it through the beautiful co-operation of those who are active on the building; so that this labor which is already something harmonious and noble, might be a copy of that which finds expression in the building itself.

Thus the inner meaning of the life-principle of our building, and the inner meaning of the co-operation of the souls should ... no, would rather not say that. Thus the inner meaning of the co-operation in the forms of our building should find a path outwards into each separate relationship of the life of our Society—should in its inward construction stand before us as an ideal. I should like to assure you that I did not make a slip when I omitted a sentence just now. I left it out with full intention, and many a time that also is said which one did not say.

Summing up, what I have put before you during the last few days is a theme varying in the most diverse manner, and what I would fain lay on your hearts especially is this: that you not only place the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual investigation, before your intellect, before your reason, but that you receive that which lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of the future progress of mankind really depends upon this. I say this without presumption, and anyone who attempts to study but a little the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our time can recognize this for himself.

With this the series of lectures, what I have permitted myself to give you at this turning point of the year is concluded.