The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Max Halbe has followed up his love idyll "Jugend" with three dramatic creations: the joke play "Der Amerikafahrer", the comedy "Lebenswende" and now "Mutter Erde". Something highly peculiar becomes apparent when one follows the development of Halbe's work. There is no doubt that each of his achievements is more mature, better than the one before. And yet none of them is as unclouded, pure and highly enjoyable as "Jugend". The scenes between the good Hans Hartwich and the graceful Ännchen do not warm us as devotedly as Halbe's other dramas. And even if the poet repeatedly succeeds in drawing human types who, like the two priests in "Jugend", make us wonder: where have we seen these people before; the effect he had with his "Liebesdrama" is not renewed.

One wonders when one sits down and thinks about the impression that "Youth" makes. It cannot be understood at all. You have to be satisfied even without concepts. For a dramatic action of such unreasonableness cannot easily be found a second time. An imbecile ensures the continuation of the constantly stagnating plot; the same imbecile brings about the conflicts and the catastrophe. This imbecile plays the role of fate in the drama. You have to switch off your mind if you want to enjoy the wonderful love scenes, if you want to take in the meaningful moods. And Halbe is the magician who forces us to switch off our minds. He puts our thinking power into a healthy sleep and we become all heart, all feeling. We feel nothing of the dramatic flaws of Idylis.

You have to be a great poet if you can allow yourself the kind of mistakes that "Youth" has, because you have to make hair-raising nonsense invisible through incomparable merits. Halbe has succeeded in this. And why did he succeed? Because he allowed the uniqueness of his talent to run free and unfettered in the field in which it is at home and did not overstep the boundaries of this field. In "Jugend", Halbe refrained from basing the progress of the plot on any inner necessity. And in doing so, he has made his fortune. The spectator says to himself, when his mind awakens against his will during the enjoyment: nonsense prevails in the progress of the plot; but he is sincere: he is not pretending to make sense.

You can only play such a magic game with the audience once. Halbe told himself that. He no longer wanted to do without the inner necessity in the progress of the dramatic action. He wanted to portray conflicts arising from human characters, from the cultural currents of the time and from the circumstances in which people live. I now believe that Halbe's powers of observation have failed him in this field. I have every confidence in his ability, but not in his powers of perception. He would depict the deepest social conflicts with the same ease with which he paints moods if it were only a matter of skill. But he does not see through these conflicts when they play out in reality; he does not know the moving forces. Therefore he constructs them arbitrarily and presents us with impossibilities every moment. The true dramatist lets one fact follow the other because he has recognized the natural connection between the two. Halbe does not recognize this connection. That is why he constructs one for himself. And how he constructs it is decided by his sympathies and antipathies. Paul Warkentin (in "Mother Earth") transforms himself from an enthusiast for women's rights into a worshipper of natural beauty and immediate female charms not because he is driven by an inner necessity, but because the poet's sympathies for unadulterated nature have led him to give the matter this twist.

And as little as the dramatic conflicts are, so little are the dramatic characters Halbe's element. He masterfully portrays what passive natures and average people feel. He sees them down to the marrow of their bones. What drives the active, the exceptional natures escapes him. He does not see what lies at the bottom of these people's souls. He is interested in individual characteristics of these natures. In the technician Weyland ("Lebenswende"), he has depicted the ruthless rigidity which, without looking to the right or left, sets off towards a goal. Halbe does not seek to explore further how the whole person must be constituted so that such a hankerdz can play an outstanding role in him. To cite another example, it is downright puzzling why the noble-minded, self-sacrificing, devoted Olga appears in "Lebenswende" with such tomboyish manners. Of course, it does not occur to me to claim that such character traits are incompatible. But we must understand why they are united in one person. In Halbe's case I understand nothing more than that he likes the one as well as the other, and that it is agreeable to him when he encounters both together. The effect of a drama depends on whether the spectator feels that the poet is superior to him at every moment, or whether he believes himself superior to the poet. The poet is always superior to us if we say to ourselves at every step the plot takes forward: it was bound to happen this way, we just weren't clever enough to know it beforehand. We are superior to the poet when we say to ourselves: no, it can't happen like this, it's against the possible. In this case, we feel that we know better than the poet. And that is bad for him.

The great playwright is like the discoverer of natural laws. We didn't know what either of them was telling us beforehand, but it makes sense to us as soon as we hear it. What the bad playwright presents to us seems to us like the speeches of a man who tells us about miracles. We go back to business as usual about him.

In "Jugend", Halbe renounced being a playwright. Today he wants to be. Four years ago he only let his merits work; now he disturbs their effect by also wanting to achieve what he cannot. The nonsense that drives the development forward does not distract us from the atmospheric images in the parsonage; but the progress of the plot in "Mother Earth" does, which we do not understand because it is arbitrarily constructed. We can tolerate the obvious nonsense; the lack of regularity spoils everything.

Emerson says: "The poet is devoted to the thoughts and laws that know their own way, and guided by them, he rises from interest in their meaning and significance, and from the role of an observer to the role of a creator." Halbe plays the role of creator too early. He should enjoy the role of observer for longer. He seems to lack the patience for this. The magic that the poet exerts on us is based on the fact that his creations have an effect on us like the products of nature, that we say to them: there is necessity, there is divine power. What must happen because nature wills it, the poet should show us; but not what he clings to with his inclinations. What must triumph by its natural power, he should let triumph; but not that which he 'would like to see triumph. Emerson's comparison of the poet with the dreamer is delightful: "This reminds me that we all possess a key to the wonder of the poet, that the stupidest fool has experiences of his own which can explain Shakespeare to him - namely dreams. In dreams we are perfect poets, we create the characters of the drama, we give them appropriate figures, faces and clothes. They are perfect in their organs, postures and gestures; moreover, they speak according to their own character, not ours - they speak to us, and we listen with astonishment to what they tell us." Halbe does not allow those of his characters who have a trait that particularly interests him to speak according to their character. Then he turns them all so that we can see whether he admires or detests this trait. We constantly see the poet on stage alongside the characters.

From A. Z.

What the pagan belief in the gods was for Homer, what the ideas of Christianity were for Klopstock: an element through which their poems rise above an ordinary image of everyday reality and appear imbued with an ideal world, is for Goethe his conception of love in the broadest sense.

The chapter “Goethe and Love” ¹ has already been dealt with in many ways; the merit of having shown that for Goethe love is not one characteristic of his being among others, but the fundamental trait of his entire poetry and thought, that it is his religion, that all his creations only receive the right appreciation when they are viewed from this point of view, is due to the writings of Schröer mentioned at the beginning.

While the character of Goethe's view of love naturally manifests itself above all in his relationships with the world of women, it merges more and more into that Spinozistic love of the world in which the individual forgets himself and finds his bliss in merging into the universe.

There is nothing easier than to cast Goethe's relationships with women in a false light. After all, it must particularly worry the world of women when one hears that Goethe loved passionately ten times in his life. But if one considers the essence of all these love affairs, one is soon rebuked of any accusation. There can be no question of a frivolous view of love that degrades women in Goethe's work. He seeks in women those aspects of the human spirit that are lacking in men: natural grace, perpetual freshness and childlikeness. For him, this is the "divine in woman", the "eternal feminine", to which he looks up adoringly and is absorbed in this adoration of the beloved being, forgetting his own self. In his imagination, the beloved is transfigured into a dream being, which of course only lives within him and goes far beyond reality. The latter was not enough to satisfy his powerful spirit. He sought a deepening of all sensations, exciting experiences that engaged the whole person. He had to create for himself what reality lacked. A love affair first had to take the form of poetic fiction in order to heap happiness and pain on the bosom of all mankind. Poetry and truth merge into one for him at such moments, love casts a poetic spell over the factual, he lives himself into an ideal situation, into a poetic dream and - a poetic creation naturally arises in his mind.

In the aforementioned writings, Schröer introduces us to the spirit of a series of Goethe's poems on the basis of the views presented. The essay "Goethe and Love" (pages 1 to 26) first shows us how one of the poet's most significant relationships, that with Lili, gave him the impetus for "Stella". This relationship even led to an engagement. But it was precisely this seriousness of the situation that woke Goethe from his reverie, he became aware of reality - and recognized the necessity of separating from Lili. As he contemplated his new happiness in love, the thought of tearing himself away from Friederike in Sesenheim, whom he had loved as a student in Strasbourg, must have loomed particularly vividly before his mind. This was the problem that "Stella" was supposed to solve: two women are attracted to one man, each of them claiming to be his. A side piece to Werther, where two men confront one woman.

In the second part of the essay: “Goethe and Marianne Willemer” (pages 27 to 63), we see how a relationship of the most tender nature inspired the poet, even in his old age, to write one of the greatest and most beautiful works of our literature, his "West-Eastern Divan".

The first volume of "Goethe's Dramas" contains Goethe's short youthful poems. A radically new arrangement of the dramas catches the eye here, in which everything that has emerged from the same need of the poet appears together, so that we receive an overall picture of Goethe's work and life, in which every smallest creation appears in its proper place, founded in Goethe's whole nature. The first volume comprises Confessions, Puppet Plays, Carnival Plays and Satires. Confessions are poetic confessions by Goethe, which were intended to free his troubled inner self when it emerged from an exciting, shattering experience depressed and often guilty. The lover's mood is a confession in which he repents for the folly he committed against Käthchen Schönkopf as a student in Leipzig; he had first loved her passionately, but then tortured her without need, even turning this torment of his beloved into an entertainment. We have seen in what sense "Stella" is a confession. But "Siblings" also belongs in this series. This small, soulful piece is a transfiguration of his noble relationship with the appeaser of his heart, Frau v. Stein, whose calm, resigned nature calmed his "Sturm und Drang", his passion, which he brought with him to Weimar.

The rest of this volume ("Das neu eröffnete Puppenspiel", "Satyros", "Hans-Wursts Hochzeit", "Prolog zu Bahrdt", "Götter, Helden und Wieland", "Triumph der Empfindsamkeit", "Die Vögel") shows us Goethe's selfless nature, which always seeks the genuine, the original in nature, in reality, in the struggle against the falsification of naturalness through fashion, pedantry, narrow-minded views, etc. The infatuation with nature, which degenerates into charlatanism, the intrusive parasitism, which pushes its way into outstanding personalities, interferes in all matters of the heart in order to serve its base purposes, are castigated in "Satyros" and "Pater Brey". Sensitivity, which was a disease of the time (Siegwart's fever), is dealt with in the "Triumph of Sensitivity". Klopstock's moralizing pathos is ridiculed in the moralistic Schuhu in "The Birds". Wieland's text is read in "Gods, Heroes and Wieland" because he presents the German public with a caricature of the old gods and heroes in his "Alceste" and in the "Teutscher Merkur". An overall picture of the literary conditions in Germany at the time is provided by "Das Jahrmarktsfest von Plundersweilen" and "Das Neueste aus Plundersweilen".

The second recently published volume of this drama edition contains Goethe's opera texts, preceded by a treatise on Goethe's relationship to music. The great lyricist, the passionate Goethe, in whom it always sang and sounded, could not remain without points of contact with this art. It is touching to see how he, without any real talent for music, set this art tasks that none of the many musicians with whom he had a close relationship were able to solve. "His intense participation in the development of this art is so powerful in his life that the unmusical Goethe often seems like the only musician in the desert, even in this respect going beyond his surroundings." He knew how to provide music with texts in such a way that Beethoven could say "no one can compose as well as he".

Both the smaller creations contained in the first volume and these Singspiele ("Erwin und Elmire", "Claudine", "Lila", "Jery und Bätely", "Die Fischerin", "Scherz, List und Rache", "Die ungleichen Hausgenossen", the second part of the "Zauberflöte") have so far attracted little attention from the educated public. They have taken a back seat to the poet's greater creations. Until now, Goethe scholars have known how to turn them into nothing more than objects of contemplation for literary historians. In this edition, the editor's loving devotion to the great poet makes them accessible to scholars. Everything appears in context, linked by the view of Goethe's powerful nature.

A complete presentation of Goethe's life and writings, imbued with the spirit that characterizes this edition, would be a national asset that would have a powerful promotional effect on the German people.

• 1. “Goethe and Love.” Two lectures by K. J. Schröer, Heilbronn, 1884. — “Goethe's Dramen” first and second volume in Kürschner's "Deutscher National-Litteratur". Edited by K. J. Schröer.

The Coming Day: Public Limited Company for the Promotion of Economic and Spiritual Values

[ 1 ] The shortest route to the wastepaper basket today is probably the one taken by mailings of this kind. There are so many of them, and we have experienced so often how little they deliver on their promises, that no one can be denied the right to choose this route in order to ward off superfluous literary intrusiveness. Should this announcement of a new publisher for some reason not happen, then - the senders hope - their readers will see that this justification is intended to bring about something that the events of the time really demand.

[ 2 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" was not founded out of the need to add to the many books that arise out of the confusion of contemporary intellectual life. Its founders are actually of the opinion, already expressed by Lichtenberg, that ninety-nine percent of the books with which the world is "blessed" are too many.

[ 3 ] But these founders see the declining intellectual life of the present. They see the other disasters of the present, the state and the economy, emerging from the decline of spiritual life. And they must imagine an ascending spiritual life from which the state and the economy must draw in order to recover.

[ 4 ] They want to serve this spiritual life.

[ 5 ] They want to deliver literary works to the world, which provide the ideas and the laws of the humanities for the recovery of the sick social life.

[ 6 ] Unfortunately, all too few people have an adequate idea of the unhealthy state of our intellectual life. They have no idea what devastating consequences for world civilization must result from this state. They therefore have no heart for efforts that are directed towards recovery out of conviction and unbiased observation of life.

[ 7 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" would like that.

[ 8 ] It will not serve a fragmenting academicism that only proliferates in books, alienated from life, and which is increasingly severing its ties to reality. He wants to serve a scientific attitude that warms the blood and sheds light on the meaning of human and world existence.

[ 9 ] He will not serve an attitude towards art that is alienated from life, parlor-smelling, or burdened with idleness. It will promote an artistic perception of the world that makes man a co-creator of the mysteries and development of the world through the true shaping of life.

[ 10 ] He will not serve a socially destructive view of life that preaches only moral laws and has no power to penetrate reality. He wants to contribute to the discovery of that moral basis of life that generates powerful will in ideas and gives birth to the impulses for the health of the soul and enthusiasm for action from the knowledge of life.

[ 11 ] He will not serve social fantasies which are beneficial to man if he can dream of their realization, or if he stages social orders which are devoid of human nature and the basis of nature, and which therefore awaken to social misfortune those who dream of them or act under their influence. He wants to allow social views and impulses to appear which are possible, universally human, worthy of existence, but which are drawn from the real human nature, observation of the world and living experience.

[ 12 ] So the "Kommende Tag Verlag" wants to serve social life, the moral shaping of life, the artistic revelation of existence, the scientific understanding of the world.

[ 13 ] It will endeavor not to lapse into one-sided promotion of this or that "point of view", but to deliver the spiritually valuable products of all directions to the judgment of the readers of its books. It is not opinions about this or that that should be favored according to the tastes of the leaders of the "Kommenden Tag Verlag", but those works which these leaders feel can serve the spiritual life demanded by the times. A materialistic book written with spirit will today - against the will of its author - do more to promote the development of spiritual life than a spiritless collection of amateurish slogans about a "spiritual world order". A will determined by these guidelines should permeate all the activities of the "Kommenden Tag Verlag". The many who still believe today that something can be achieved by merely "popularizing" the traditional spiritual life, by founding popular education centres in which what has been cultivated in places alien to the people is popularized: they will find this publishing house highly superfluous. For its justification is based on the conviction that what has led out of the narrow circles, through educational illusions, into the declining phenomena of the present cannot have a fruitful effect in the broad circles of the population.

[ 14 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" is a member of the overall enterprise "Der Kommende Tag, Aktiengesellschaft zur Förderung wirtschaftlicher und geistiger Werte, Stuttgart". The other members of this company have the task of developing economic activities that can provide the people with healthy economic forces. They are to participate in the reconstruction of economic life in the spirit of a national economy demanded by the times. They should also support free schools, scientific and medical institutes and the like through economically fruitful activities.

[ 15 ] The affiliation with such enterprises is what characterizes the "Kommender Tag Verlag". Spiritual creation has to be part of the whole circle of human life if it is not to run the risk of becoming a luxury of civilization. The spiritual and the material must support each other if the one is not to be alienated from the other to the detriment of humanity. Rudolf Steiner's book "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft" ("The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future") is to be one of the main pieces for the initial activities of the "Kommenden Tag Verlag". Over 40,000 copies of this book have already been sold in Germany and it has been translated into almost all cultural languages. From a practical observation of the spiritual, social and state conditions of human existence, it contains the justification of such a will as gives direction to the "Coming Day Publishing House" in a single area of life. In it, its author combines the anthroposophical direction he founded in spiritual science, in which he has published a large number of writings for 35 years, with the realistic observation of social life and will.

[ 16 ] The "Kommende Tag Verlag" thus places itself in the midst of the spiritual, ethical and economic tasks of the present; and it seeks to do justice to these tasks through its connection with the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum in Dornach, in which the anthroposophically deepened way of research, newly fertilizing all branches of life, also erects an artistic building which, although still unfinished, already represents the nurturing place of this way of research and art. In another way, in the field of education, this way of research and life practice has a place of activity in the Stuttgart Waldorf School.

[ 17 ] Through this connection in the most diverse directions, the "Kommende Tag Verlag" presents itself as an enterprise that has its widely ramified roots in the circle of a spiritual, artistic and social movement, which, out of a firm will, makes the necessary reshaping of the collapsing civilization its most serious task.

In December 1920, Der Kommende Tag AG
Stuttgart, Champignystrasse 17, publishing house

The etheric body is the creator of the physical body, while it itself is created by the astral body. The physical body can be seen as the manifestation and condensation of the creative part of the etheric body; whereas the receptive parts of it remain open to the influence of the astral body. The etheric body of a man is female, that of a woman is male. Originally, however, the etheric body is of both sexes. And this bisexuality is nothing other than the condensation of a part of the completely sexless astral body. The external physical sex arises only from the fact that one side of the bisexual etheric body condenses physically. The man arises through the condensation of the male side; the woman through the condensation of the female side. In the former, an ethereal-female remains, in the latter an ethereal-male.

These remaining parts of the etheric body are again divided into two parts, one of which retains its sexual characteristics, while the other takes on an asexual nature. That which remains sexual permeates itself with desire and becomes the basis for human physical reproduction. While the physical organs of reproduction are the expression of the lowest part of the etheric body, the organs of affection, the heart, are the creatures of the second part of the etheric body. The woman has a male heart, the man a female heart. The male heart expresses itself in active love, in compassionate devotion; the female heart of the man finds expression in courage and bravery. At this stage, one should no longer interpret the expressions male and female here as having exactly the same meanings as they have for physical corporeality. Although love and courage first reveal themselves to the opposite sex, they nevertheless take on a more general character that relates to more general life circumstances.

The third part of the etheric body contains the forces that produce the sense organs. The entire sensory apparatus is produced by this etheric body. But these sense organs would be without effect if the etheric body did not imbibe with the astral body. The eye and the etheric forces that produce it would bring forth something that is also present in the photographic apparatus, if these emanations were not transformed by the astral body into sensations of color.

What the astral body produces in connection with this third highest link of the etheric body and the physical organs it generates forms the basis of the soul's life. These are the perceptions.

When observing the eye, for example, one has to consider three things: firstly, the ether eye, which is the creator of the eye. Secondly, the creature, namely the physical eye itself. And thirdly, the astral limb that extends into this eye and in which, for example, the color “red” is formed.

The astral body also breaks down into three parts. The lowest is the one that fills the sense organs in the manner indicated. It is of a creative nature, for it has given the uppermost part of the etheric body the ability to form sense organs. The second, middle link of the astral body, on the other hand, is less creative. It has a character that finds expression in the preservation of what it has received, in pleasure and pain. It is connected to the heart in the same way that the first link is connected to the objects of the external world through the sense organs. It experiences the impressions that are conveyed through the heart.

The third limb of the astral body is essentially independent of the external world of the senses as well as of the internal world of the heart. It finds its expression in the “I”. But this limb can let etheric forces flow into it. These etheric forces at play in the I are initially thoughts. With these thoughts, the I enters into contact with the universal ether. The thoughts of things embodied in the ether flow into the ego, and so the ego first forms the third, uppermost limb of its astral body. With the help of this “ego work”, the astral body becomes an organized entity, whereas before it was a chaotic, virgin being. This astral body now in turn has an effect on the lower limbs of the astral body. First of all, on the second limb. The forms of the consciousness soul are imprinted on the desire soul. The heart undergoes a process of ennoblement and spiritualization. It is directed towards the spirit. Initially, this can only happen when the externally stimulated experiences are silent. In the quiet hours of life. Above all, during sleep, when the soul is disconnected from the body, the spiritualized astral part imprints its character on the intellectual and sensual part. Therefore, time must be given to the person to consolidate what the malleable astral soul absorbs. Forces must develop in the middle part of the soul that can then act on the heart. Then the heart will release its powers again, so that the physical parts for the spirit can also be formed. These are then clairvoyant organs.

When the uppermost part of the astral soul can no longer evoke mere thoughts but actual images, the next step can begin on the lowest part of the astral body. Before, it was only able to build sensory organs that reflected external things. Now it becomes capable of making these sensory organs the realization of internal things. The human perceptions are then no longer mere images of the external, but they radiate the things of the inner world outwards. Man becomes the bearer of causes, whereas before he could only receive effects.

In the waking state, the astral body works through the third part of the ether body in the senses.

In the dream state, the astral body withdraws into itself; the astral body transforms into images what the ether body has received from the senses. In the actual state of sleep, the astral body frees itself even from these perceptions of the senses. It lives only in the ether, which is not changed by the human being himself. He lives the general life of the world.

This latter state is connected with the waking life only through the ego-concept. It is pure will, creating out of nothing.

The dream state is connected to waking life through the desires and feelings. They only have an existence in the soul. You experience them, but you do not look at them. Clairvoyance consists of looking at this world. It then becomes images, just as the external world is represented by the sense organs in images. This is astral vision.

But when the will itself becomes pictorial, then mental seeing occurs. Man then sees thoughts as he sees trees.

If this state increases to such an extent that the thoughts of his seeing prove to be independent beings, spirit beings, then will perceives the will. And through the will perceived [a part of the manuscript is missing here]

In this state, the human being transforms the third and uppermost part of his etheric body himself. This becomes more and more his own creation.

Finally, this transformed highest part of the etheric body then influences the second. It makes it creative too. This has previously been stimulated to its productive achievements by the outside world. The most prominent stimulus came from the perception of sexual desire. Now the stimulus comes from within. The one-sidedness of the masculine or feminine disappears completely. A non-sexual generative power of this etheric body begins: Budhi. It again affects the physical organism, which now develops the organ of will in the highest sense.

Week 12

The splendor of Nature's beauty
Lures me out of my soul depths
To liberate for cosmic flight
The divine forces
Of my own existence.—
To abandon myself,
Yet trusting
And seeking myself alone
In cosmic light,
And cosmic warmth.

It is understandable that the arguments of this essay should give rise to the misgivings of many readers of the journal Luzifer-Gnosis. Indeed, the editor has often heard the opinion expressed that such arguments have no place in this journal. Such views, it has been said, are the product only of a fantasy that is incompatible with the purity of mind necessary for an elevation to spiritual life. I can understand all these opinions very well, and yet it seemed to me not only permissible but even necessary to present the comments of the esteemed author on the writings of Lanz-Liebenfels to the readers. I have not hidden from the author that I will openly express my opinion on the matter after publication. Today it shall be only a short one, because the space does not allow more; but in the next issue, I will deal with those questions from a secret-scientific point of view, to which the essay urges.

It seemed necessary to me to print this because Lanz-Liebenfels' explanations are a prime example of what happens when someone with a materialistic attitude approaches things of this kind. Lanz-Liebenfels is by no means the only one who thinks along such lines; what he says is only a radical example of a direction to which the present attitude tends all too easily. Everywhere one encounters the endeavor to bring human conditions as close as possible to animal instincts. People take pleasure in pushing this animalism into the foreground in all human considerations. Anyone who looks more deeply into these things will easily recognize that in an age in which natural science is as materialistic as it is in the present, there is a danger of going so far down the path that certain facts of human history are seen in a light that stems from a confluence of humanity with animality.

It is not possible to discuss LanzLiebenfels' research here. The only thing that can be done is to characterize it from the point of view of spiritual research. In the essay mentioned above, LanzLiebenfels quite rightly says in the text on which it is based: “The scientific writings of the ancients are written in a secret language and contain absolutely no contradictions or fables.” This is literally true; but for that very reason, in order to judge correctly about these writings, one must possess the key to this secret language. And this key can be attained only through a real knowledge of the secret science. And no one who possesses this key is still able to believe that the ancients really spoke of a physical animal man when they gave certain people animal names. They still had a real insight into the higher bodies of man. The astral body of man was given to them in experience. They knew that the physical body rests in an astral cloud, which is an expression of the drives, instincts, passions, etc. of the human being. And they saw how this mobile astral body is constantly changing, adapting to both a higher and a lower soul life. Just as the human being, the animal also has an astral body. It may be said that the human astral body rises higher in form, color, movement, etc. than the animal astral body, the more man ennobles his instincts and passions. But the less this happens, the more similar the human astral body appears to some animal astral body. The ancients simply based their descriptions and illustrations not on the physical human body, but on the astral body. In certain cases they did not want to depict the physical body at all, but to create a symbol for the astral body. When they spoke of peoples who were completely dominated by lower instincts, they indicated this by giving the people the animal name that corresponded to the nature of their astral body. If they called a person a “long-tailed monkey,” they meant nothing more than that his astral body appeared to them to resemble that of a long-tailed monkey. Thus it could also happen that “sober historical tribute lists” state that a king received “pagutu,” “baziati” and “udumi,” i.e., various types of animal people, from the land of Musri. Why should these not be mentioned alongside elephants, horses, camels, etc., which is declared to be quite impossible on page 559 (of issue 30 of Lucifer-Gnosis)? In terms of their physical body, these people did not resemble animals; such a description was based solely on their astral body.

The messages of the ancients can be understood with this key of esoteric science. Consider, for example, what is said in the essay “The Stages of Higher Knowledge” in this very issue. Those who attain vision of the astral world first see their own drives, desires and passions as an astral dream; and they appear to them like animals or demons that are outside of them. How clearly this makes a passage that Liebenfels, for example, cites from the Talmud: “All animals are good in a dream, except for the monkey and the guenon.” That such is said of these animals in particular is, of course, related to certain views of a certain time. From what has been said, it can be seen what the result is of applying to the physical world what in a description of the ancient world refers to the astral world. Given such a premise, what becomes of the assertion that, for example, a person belonging to a people with already refined instincts has engaged in sexual intercourse with a companion from a still inferior people? From this latter man a physical animal is made. Once this point has been clarified, there is really no need to go into the rest. For all the other grotesque interpretations are based on a similar lack of knowledge of the true key to the old “secret language”.

It will always be dangerous if the descriptions of the higher worlds fall into the hands of people who only want to know the physical world and therefore interpret all spiritual truths in a grossly sensual way. This danger is a reality for the “children of our age”. And the readers of the essay in question, who have become concerned, can still be given quite edifying things to hear and read. For we are still far from having reached the zenith of materialism. As a characteristic example of what this materialism leads to, something like this had to be printed here sometime. What occult science has to say about such things has been said in this journal and will often be said again. No reader of this journal can therefore really be misled by explanations such as those characterized. But anyone who is interested in occult matters should know that the materialistic interpretation of certain facts is relatively harmless when it is based on knowledge of physical science, but that it must become positively outrageous when someone has heard of higher things and enters into the materialistic channel with them.

The dangers to which this refers cannot be avoided in this day and age, since certain parts of occult science are now available in print. In an article that will soon appear, entitled “Secret Doctrine and Freemasonry, as well as related directions”, I will point out certain aberrations to which the public nature of our lives must necessarily lead. But the right relationship to these things is gained only through knowledge of them, and by no means through ignorance. That is why the article appears in this journal. I do not wish to discuss today what is said in it about the mysteries of the grotesque, for this will be discussed in the article just mentioned. The reader may also inform himself about two other errors from the explanations that will soon be contained in Lucifer-Gnosis, namely, the incorrect statement that in the course of human embodiments seven male and seven female should alternate. In reality, as a rule (although there are exceptions), a male is always followed by a female and so on. Nor is this true of the much-discussed double sexuality in the present human epoch. For this is nothing more than a regrettable relapse into ancient stages of human development.

The last time we gathered here I was able to speak to you of the deep foundations underlying the ideas of the Threefold Commonwealth. I was able to carry the lecture far enough for us to see in what sense one may say that we are living at the present time in a definite period of transition. You will not misunderstand that remark, for I have often told you that when I talk of a transition it is not meant in the trivial sense in which people often speak when they talk about living in a period of transition. Naturally as I have often said, every period is a period of transition from what went before to what is to follow. The essential thing is to direct our attention to what is changing. And from that point of view there are more important and less important moments in the great world evolution of mankind. And it is clear that beneath the surface, as it were, of outer events something is happening in our time with respect to enormously important impulses of human evolution. In my last lecture I drew your attention to the fact that one must see into the so-called unconscious, or subconscious, of the human being if one would recognize what is really vitally involved in the transition mankind is undergoing today. Not much in our consciousness today tells us about the evolution of mankind in general, although we are living precisely in that world-age in which a development of the consciousness-soul is normal for the individual. Mankind as a whole, as distinguished from the individual, is in this age passing through a development of inner soul and spiritual forces, and for that reason the development is more in the subconscious. For mankind as a whole we must look for the most important forces of transition in the subconscious; while for the individual, we will find the most important forces today in the tendency to develop complete consciousness. In the individual an instinctive, more naive soul-life is changing more and more to a conscious soul-life; in mankind as a whole, however, an important change is taking place unconsciously, without the individual often being aware of it unless he has deepened his vision by work in spiritual science.

This vital change, this most important happening, is not so easy to describe, for our language has been made fundamentally for the purpose of reproducing outer sense reality in the soul. This makes it difficult for us to describe precisely, or adequately, something that does not belong to sense reality, but to supersense existence. Often one has to make use of comparisons—not abstract ones but such as you are well acquainted with in spiritual science, where one phenomenon of life is placed by the aide of another so that one will throw light on another. If such comparisons are used it must at the same time be made very clear that only flexible thinking, thinking that does not stamp the concepts, the words, into a set shape, in really compatible with the sense of what is presented. If I want to characterize the most important thing that is happening to mankind as a whole at the present moment of world evolution (I have already pointed it out) I must compare it with the experience that an individual has (consciously, however) when he crosses the threshold, as it is called, into the supersense world. You all know from the description I have given of this individual experience in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment that the crossing of the threshold is an event of deepest significance for the human being. On this side of the threshold is the sense world for man's consciousness, and on the other, the supersense world. Truly, on that other side everything is different from things of the sense world here. And man experiences something there that is named by those who went through the same experience in the manner of former ages in the significant words, “passing through the gate of death”. Indeed, he who crosses the threshold has to learn to know death in its reality. He has to become acquainted with death in its meaning for humanity.

Now you know from the description which I have given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds that in this crossing of the threshold the entire soul being of man goes through a transformation—but only, of course, for those times in which one remains consciously in the supersense world. The constitution of soul that one has here in the sense world, that is suited to life, to work and action, in the sense world: one cannot come into the supersense world with that. Here in the sense world our soul forces are as it were melted together, so that we never have the experience in our sense life of these soul forces being separated. Anyone who did not have a certain amount of willing in his soul at the same time that he was thinking, even though in a latent form, would not be really healthy physically. We are not in a position in our sense life to separate these three soul forces one from another, so that really we never develop a pure isolated thought, or a pure isolated feeling, or a pure isolated willing. In our conceptions, feelings, actions, and will, these three soul forces are still interwoven always, mixed up with one another. But as soon as we cross the threshold into the supersense world—that is, as soon as we get our soul to the stage where we are actually surrounded by supersense beings, by supersense deeds of these beings, just as formerly we were surrounded by a world of sense things and sense happenings—then, my friends, then there takes place in our soul an absolute separation of thinking, feeling, and willing. As you hove been able to gather from the description in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, a man must have so schooled himself that he is able then to summon sufficient power to hold together with his ego these three elements of the soul life, thinking, feeling, and willing:—otherwise he would split up into three persons.

Yes, my dear friends, one meets with a significant experience of inner activity when one has crossed the threshold; this finding oneself within in the most enhanced activity of the ego, in the highest manifestation of the ego, for the purpose of holding together the separated soul forces, thinking, feeling, and willing. And that accounts for the fear that a faint- hearted man today feels: fear of actual supersense knowledge, fear before the highest kind of inner soul activity. He would like all of his activity to be of such a kind as is aroused by the outer world and has effect in the outer world. Inner activity is not yet natural to him; more and more it must be developed by him for the future. And so, because at first this development is a task, because it is not actually already inherent, man is afraid, man is cautious about entering the supersense world. Unconsciously he is afraid of himself (if I may so express it) in face of the exertion necessary there to hold the separated soul forces together.

I am picturing this inner experience of the individual in order to have some way by which to characterize for you that which is happening in this age inside the soul life—and you know that one can speak of such a thing—of mankind as a whole. That which I have just described as an individual's experience when crossing the threshold into the supersense world is naturally a fully conscious experience for him, much more so then any conscious experience of his ordinary waking day consciousness. It is a heightened consciousness in which one crosses the threshold and in which one perceives in the supersense world the threefold nature of the human soul being. Something similar to that—but now not consciously—the whole of mankind is going through in the present age as a cosmic historical experience. It is not noticed, this unconscious process that is going on in all mankind, unless one in studying consciously in spiritual science. You know our age is the fifth since the great Atlantean catastrophe which made the configuration of our earth surface as it now exists. We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean period; and in this period mankind must go through in its evolution as a whole something similar to what the crossing of the threshold into the supersense world is for an individual. Mankind as a whole, I said, in its cosmic—or we can say if we like terrestrial—evolution, is crossing a threshold on one side of which, or in other words, for the time preceding which, an entirely different kind of world conception and knowledge was necessary for mankind as a whole than is necessary on the other side, or in other words, for the time afterward.

This process going on in the unconscious of all mankind today is what one must discover through spiritual science. It shows also how necessary spiritual science is to mankind today. For the crossing of this threshold must truly not remain in the unconscious. Men must become aware of it, otherwise they will sleep right through, or at least dream right through, an event that is very important for them. And this fifth post-Atlantean period is the very period in which we should be extending consciousness. But we cannot extend our consciousness of the most vital thing that is happening to mankind in any other way then by rising out of mere sense-science into spiritual science.

If you think about this, my dear friends, you will perhaps remember something that has been said again and again in the course of spiritual scientific, lectures which have been held now for such a long time in Stuttgart.

You remember I have had to emphasize this fact again and again: that Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, is not just something as it were to satisfy an individual's subjective thirst for knowledge. Spiritual Science is something that is connected with the taking up in thought, feeling, and will, of the fundamental impulse of mankind for our time. Therefore activity in spiritual science should not be a mere satisfying of an individual's longing for the newest thing, nor a mere satisfying of his desire, for knowledge. Spiritual Science should be the fulfilling of a certain duty that one has toward mankind as a whole, in order that it shall realize what is going on precisely at this moment in the depths of its evolution.

I showed you when I spoke to you last time that certain individuals who have a degree of external cleverness developed by the scientific training of the present day, are definitely aware of a phenomenon that is present in mankind in this epoch and that corresponds to something in the depths of mankind of which they are not aware. I showed you how such individuals as for example Fritz Mauthner, say that first and foremost in man is his sense perception; and that that is the only true reality of which one can speak. He reflects this reality in its highest form by his creation in art of the beautiful and the sublime. But it does not permit him to arrive at any satisfaction. He wants to penetrate things more deeply. If he tries to penetrate into the being of things through his inner self, then—Mauthner says—he does not arrive at a real contact with the true being of the world, but only comes to dreaming—dreaming which may be pleasing because he imagines it is connected with the central forces of the world, but which nevertheless, so far as knowing is concerned, is after all just dreams, just mysticism. Mysticism then is, for these persons, the second stage of man's inner soul-striving. Then they assert that mysticism is, from their point of view, dream knowledge, they are right, because they deny a supersense knowledge. The third stage, for Fritz Mauthner, is man's struggle to attain knowledge by busying himself with natural laws, historical laws, etc.; and he describes all that as docta ignorantia, on the ground that when we think we know something through science we are not merely dreaming, as in mysticism, but sleeping—sleeping as compared with what would be a real contact with the central forces of the world. Thus persons like Fritz Mauthner think that at the most man has a waking sense perception and can ennoble it through art; that he is doomed to dream when he attempts to connect himself with true reality in religion or mysticism through his inner nature; and that he is doomed to sleep when he believes he is connecting himself with things in any way through science and wisdom.

My dear friends, speaking in an absolute sense, that is all a mistake. But speaking relatively of the special soul-condition that mankind has evolved through the 19th century into the 20th century, speaking quite specifically of this mankind and not of mankind in general, it is a truth. With the means that natural scientific knowledge has made great, by which we have come to such a shipwreck of the social older, with those means the only possible soul life is what Fritz Mauthner has described; that is, the three stages—waking, in sense perception; dreaming, in mysticism; and sleeping, in science.

Such a man as Fritz Mauthner feels the crossing of the threshold by mankind as a whole. Whoever has read his Critique of Speech in which he criticizes not only concepts but speech itself -- or the two thick volumes of his Philosophical Dictionary, or even one or two of the articles in it (it is arranged alphabetically)—that person knows the soul condition he gets into as a result of this very work of Mauthner. I suggest especially—you will perhaps only be grateful for my suggestion from one point of view—that you read the article on “Christianity” in this Dictionary of Philosophy—or the article “Res Publican”, or “Goethe's Wisdom”, or “Immortality”. Everywhere you will have the feeling: first one reads a sentence; in the second sentence what one has just read is modified; in the third the modified statement is again modified; in the fourth one gets back to the first; in the fifth the entire thing is picked up again with all the assertions and modifications included. One undergoes a twisting of one's whole intellectual, rational, and soul system, and it is frightful what one experiences after such a reading. It is a frightful inner soul torture. And if one describes the inner soul torture that a man experiences after such reading—man, that is, who has sufficient courage to admit the final outcome of the present day condition of soul (there are many who have not that courage)—then in the exposing criticism that one would make, and such as I have just made, one will not be censuring Fritz Mauthner, for his very article is a confession that he suffers from the same condition of soul himself. For he says: With human knowledge one can come to nothing else than a kind of “spirit dance” in which one does not discover oneself. He mistakes the lack of knowledge that became necessary in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century for a supposed absolute incapacity for knowledge in all mankind.

What actually is the truth? Something quite different from what Mauthner believes.

In former ages, as you know, in the clairvoyance of Atlantean times, man did not dream in mysticism but had contact through mystic knowledge with reality. Also, he did not merely sleep in wisdom. We realize from what still remains of older wisdom, Plato, for instance—that they knew things to tell mankind. In Aristotle, that is already no longer true. Mankind of former ages did not have just a docta ignorantia; it had a wisdom in which it was connected with the central forces of he world, that are at the same time the central forces of the human being. But these faculties ebbed away. They had to, in order that man might then seek within himself for those strong powers that were previously given him by spiritual beings without any effort on his part. Today we are crossing the threshold, mankind as a whole; and we must develop out of our inner self the power with which to awaken mysticism, which otherwise by its very nature sleeps within us—by our own power to call mysticism from its dreaming to an experience of the spirit; and also by our inner activity, inner force, to raise what is otherwise dead abstract science to actual experience of supersense spiritual reality. Today, my dear friends, this is in our power. We must undertake the necessary training.

And men who are are willing to accept spiritual science will, like Fritz Mauthner, be obliged to experience the tragic soul condition that has been a necessary accompaniment to the evolving of man's inner forces. Men like Mauthner, who do feel such things and yet are not willing to accept spiritual science, will indeed have to despair of all possibility of contact with the central forces of existence which are at the same time the central forces of the human being. Therefore they will have to despair of the possibility of any knowledge of life. My dear friends, if you think earnestly of what I have just said, will you not have to say to yourselves: Man is confronted today in his evolution, through the fact of his unconscious crossing of the threshold, by a mighty test. It is that indeed. For if he will not develop activity of soul, intense activity of soul, then he is condemned to sink into inactivity, passiveness, and thereby into unbelief in existence—at the very least into some degree of uncertainty—when he considers his place in the whole current of world evolution. That is approximately the soul-condition of men of whom Mauthner is a type.

There are many such men in the present day; but Mauthner had sufficient inner courage to acknowledge it in many writings, while others are in the same condition of soul and do not acknowledge it. He finally had sufficient resignation to retire to Southern Bavaria after he had spent his whole life in journalism as a profession; and there he thought out the Critique of Speech, his book of bitter doubt of human knowledge; then afterwards he wrote his Philosophical Dictionary. He has withdrawn, but he still writes all kinds of articles that truly no more than his book tend to lead to a positive, forceful position within human evolution. They always show a kind of despair of the possibility of one's really comprehending existence, because as a matter of fact one cannot comprehend existence through knowledge. He has finally accepted the consequence, he has given in and withdrawn to a profession that to him is equivalent to journalism, and in which one can be a skeptic, a pessimist.

But there are pupils of Fritz Mauthner who have not been so resigned. Let us ask, what will become definitely, what will become of these pupils who subscribe wholeheartedly to Mauthner's conception of life? They will never be able to arrive at a living comprehension of reality at any comprehension that can penetrate reality fruitfully. They are unable to adapt themselves to life when they are placed in it. Fritz Mauthner got out of it. They only comprehend the sense life, and they believe that anything that goes on outside of that is only a dream or sleep. Look at one of these pupils of Mauthner—Gustav Landauer, for instance—noble, upright, but altogether useless or the social life of the present day. He is a real pupil of Fritz Mauthner. It is not enough today merely to judge life from the surface. We are confronted with tasks that can only be master- edit we are willing to go down into the foundations of life. We may not seek thought impulses today for a new social order—as do such men as I have described—out of whet the time has already brought. No we must seek even social impulses out of the age that is dawning, out of the impulses that are just arising, the impulses of spiritual knowledge. Otherwise we will not arrive at real social impulses. Then when they are found, they can be comprehended, like all spiritual scientific knowledge by a healthy human understanding. It is in such a sense that I wanted to speak of the Threefold Commonwealth.

Today it is essential that men learn to speak in all things with deepest earnestness, first for true self knowledge, secondly for true world knowledge.

Consider Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, from the most varied points of view. Certainly the need for self knowledge and the need for world knowledge are emphasized by it, just as in abstract mysticism and in much abstract occultism. But they are spoken of in a different way. And in that way I should like to write the very heart of our time: One can never attain real self knowledge without seeking this self knowledge through world knowledge. Brooding within oneself does not bring self knowledge. World knowledge must first discipline one so that one can then come to self knowledge. Also, one cannot attain world knowledge without making the way through one's self. World knowledge is not possible without self knowledge. The two things seem to contradict each other, perhaps, but this contradiction is living and fruitful. No world knowledge without self knowledge, no self knowledge without world knowledge. It is like the swinging of a pendulum back and forth. Man must seek continually in his life the swing of the pendulum from self experience to world experience, from world experience to self experience. That will give the strength of soul, that inner activity of soul, which becomes today, and in the future will become, ever more and more necessary to all mankind. Because it is so very easy today for men to brood within themselves, out of a certain egoism that is natural in this age of the development of the consciousness-soul; for that reason they have fallen in love with abstractions. They themselves cannot really judge correctly how strong their love is, in this age, for mere abstractions. For that reason it is all-important—in order to cross the threshold which I have described in the right way—that we arouse ourselves from a mere abstraction-necessity, a mere thought-necessity, to fact. From mere abstract knowledge to an experiencing of fact. To a thinking within ourselves that is not mere thoughts but that sinks us into the things, that thinks with the things and events of the world. Only then can we wake to the present.

I will give you an example of what I mean. But first I would say that, you should not interpret what I am going to say as if, when I have to characterize this or that world conception, I wanted also to take a stand against them. I only want to characterize, not criticize. What one calls “the natural scientific world conception”, or thinking orientated in the direction of natural science, has evolved in a way that I have characterized for you from most varied points of view. It has finally reached such an outlook as Mauthner's; and it has expressed itself in other variations. I wonder whether you remember a man whom I mentioned here once years ago in another connection: the man who wanted to describe the difficulty of self knowledge in one of his books called An Analysis of Experience. He wants to describe the external difficulty of self knowledge, and for that purpose gives two instances of his having been thoroughly illusioned with respect to knowledge of his own external self. Once, he says, he was walking up the street and suddenly someone was approaching him (the writer was a professor), and he thought to himself, “What a strange looking school master that is coming toward me! The person was very unattractive to him, he says. Then he noticed what actually had occurred: he cam in front of a show window and found he was facing himself in the glass. On another occasion he got into an onmibus. Opposite the door by which he entered was a mirror. He was extremely tired. He sw the image and said to himself:“What a funny looking tramp that is coming in the opposite door!” It took him a long time to realize that it was himself. There is the tale, and you will be able to judge that after all here is a man to be taken seriously: Ernst Mach, who from a natural researcher became a philosopher. He has various pupils. His world conception is not unlike Mauthner's except that he came less to uncertainty, less to skepticism; he simply believes in the play-quality of thought. The ego itself is merely a myth to him, as also to Mauthner, only Mach is content. One must study Ernst Mach, and then become acquainted with his life and his whole personality. I remember when I saw him for the first time, in the Vienna Academy of Science, where he was giving a special lecture on the Economy of Thinking, in the course of which he explained all thinking as merely an arrangement according to the principle of the smallest amount of force. I was greatly enraged at the time by this presentation of the thought process. Afterwards he elaborated the theory and wrote his books, and they had a great influence over many people. One who knows his life knows that he was undoubtedly a very excellent citizen, obedient to the city he served throughout his teaching career, and in his teachings a typical example of the thinking that has evolved in recent times.

I might name another similar thinker. Mach himself did not teach in Zurich, but a pupil of his, Adler—the same Adler who shot the Austrian minister Stürgkle. But there was even a much more abstract thinker in Zurich, and his world conception was very similar to the philosophy of Mach—Richard Avenarius. I shall not recommend that you read his books; You would throw them away after the second page. They are written in unintelligible language. And the most unintelligible thing for you would be, how it happens that so very many people have wormed their way into Avenarius's books and have formed a world conception out of his philosophy.

You see, these are extreme cases to show you the difference between a logic of mere abstract thoughts and a logic of fact. Avenarius was also in his life a good middle-class citizen, an excellent citizen of the state in the best sense of the word. But such people as Ernst Mach, his pupil Adler, in whom it was even more apparent, and Avenarius—let us take just Mach and Avenarius—they feel nothing of that logic of fact within which they stand through their on actions. For, look you, what became of the world-conception of this Ernst Mach, solid Bourgeois teacher? What became of it? It became the political philosophy of the Bolshevists; it is the world-conception that lies at the bottom of Bolshevism. Only it went through other human temperaments, through other human soul conditions. That is the actual consequence! The consequence according to fact-logic, of what Ernst Mach and Avenarius taught. It was not just by external chance that some gifted young Russians studied with Avenarius and then with Adler in Zurich; and that then this philosophy happened to be carried over into Russia. No, there is an inner spiritual connection there. It can only be grasped by one who does not think about things, but who thinks in things; he then knows that no system of abstract logical consequences leads from Avenarius and Mach to Lenin and Trotsky, but only a very living logic leads from one to the other. Those are the things upon which so much depends today. They are only comprehensible to one who has sufficient earnestness to study fro the inside how things become, how things metamorphose. We have come to a time when inner life is complicated: when anyone can believe, just as Mach and Avenarius did, that he is a law-abiding man who lives only “on the heights in spiritual serenity”, and does not for a moment suspect that his teachings are capable of becoming political dynamite when they are passed on to other minds.

The great call to men today is to develop in themselves a sense for the deeper connections of life. Without that sense we can go no further. If we want to arrive at fruitful social, ideas then we must not search, as Mach and Avenarius did, for the dead ruins of old self-annihilated world-conceptions. We must turn to the new structure, the world-conception that can only be found in Spiritual Science and that alone understands how to ask: That kind of social order must come, since from now on man, as he passes through the world, will be ever more and more threefolded in his inner nature—for that is how he is crossing the threshold. The external social order must also be threefold. Then outer and inner fact will correspond. This threefolding, if one will really examine it earnestly through Spiritual Science, is not something invented; it is something, that has been learnt from listening to the actual inner metamorphosis of mankind as it moves from the present into the future.

Among all the necessities confronting the man of the present day, is this one: that he develop the willingness to concern himself with the spiritual world; that he develop first of all the willingness so to observe himself—that he is able to see the spiritual man that is underneath. The materialism of natural science has not been worthless. It has been significant and useful even in the form of Haeckelism. That is all a test that must be undergone. It classes man with the animals, because with respect to practically everything that it considers important, man appears to be nothing more than a highly developed animal. However, as soon as we begin to consider man in his relation to the world with respect to self knowledge, then at once the thing is different. Then facts which before were of no importance become important, and vice versa. From a certain perspective a new light streams upon the whole being of man. We know it is a fact (and the exceptions only teach more bout the fact) that the animal walks about the earth with his backbone parallel to the earth's surface. Man makes himself erect in the very first period of his life; he places his body, or his backbone, at right angles with the earth's surface, and thereby forms a cross with the earth's surface and also a cross with the position of the animal's backbone. That fact expresses clearly man's relation to the outside world. It is different from the animal's relation. Of course you can read in Haeckel: Man has just as many bones and muscles as the higher animals. But there are other things to he compared which in an intuitive, or, better, an imaginative grasp of various relations between them, demonstrate the common form of the cosmos and the earth; and this manner of comprehension of the human form is more important than counting bones and muscles, more important than what comparative morphology has to say about man.

I could say a great deal in this connection that would show you,that where the old world conception which has ripened such thought-habits in man as have plunged him into his present misfortune—that where this thinking and these thought-habits end, now a new world conception must begin which, for instance, will comprehend the human form. Then it will give a spiritual view of the world that will fructify the independent spiritual member of the social organism. And at a still higher stage one will have a living knowledge of that existence which is always around us, the “open secret”, as Goethe called it. From there one will rise to an “awakening” such as I have described in my books, Human Riddles and Soul Riddles; one will rise beyond mere comprehension of the relation of the human form to the cosmos to the stage that is actual participation in the great rhythmic swing of the cosmos.

You know that man consists of these three members: nerve-sense system, rhythmic system, and metabolic system. He stands within his nerve-system in such a way as to be able to comprehend the relation of his form to the cosmos. With respect to his feelings—his rhythmics or breathings or breast-system—he stands with this rhythm within the rhythm of the whole world. We can only just touch upon this rhythm now from one angle—we could naturally do much more, but we have mentioned it often in the course of these years from the most varied points of view. I will only repeat what I have often said.

Look at our breathing. Normally, we take 18,breathe a minute. That makes about 25,920 breaths a day. So that in a day we breathe in and out alternately 25,920 times. That is the average number of breaths that a man takes. Now you know that the Old Testament puts the age of a patriarch at 70 years. Naturally one can grow older or die younger, but that is the average age of man. How many days of life is that? An average of 25,920 days. Now if you count that huge breath that we take when we enter in the morning with our ego and astral body into our etheric and physical bodies, so that in the morning we breathe in our spiritual psychic being, and in the evening we breathe it out again—if we count that as a a breath that is drawn every day, then our life-day which consists on the average of 71 years, draws 25,920 breathe. In other words, that great spirit that breathes when we are born and when we die, breathes in his life-day which includes our whole human life, the same number of inhalations and exhalations as we do in our day of 24 hours. So we are related with our human breath to that breathing of the the product of his breath in our waking and sleeping life. And the sun—which you can at least suspect to have some relation to our life—men observe how its rising moves back in the Zodiac a certain number of degrees every year, in such a way that if spring comes at a certain place in a certain constellation one year, the next year it shifts back a few degrees. So the rising of the sun circles around the whole ellipse in what is called a Platonic world-year, which consists of 25,920 years. A life-day for and death consists of 25,920 life-years. A life-day for us consists of 25,920 breaths; our life between birth and death consists of 25, 920 life-days; a great sun-year consists of 25,920 of our life-years. Thus we are brought to what is breathed in the whole sun-earth-process through a Platonic world-year. There you see into a world rhythm of which is a part within the cosmos.

Without at least the willingness to gain an active knowledge of man's relation to the cosmos you can attain no knowledge of man. You can comprehend nothing more through the natural science of today—however strangely this sounds—than man's life up to birth. After man is born something enters into his lie that natural science can no longer comprehend. Therefore natural science has to stay dallying in the method it especially loves, embryology. That is especially apparent today in the fact that the entire teaching of evolution is only an elaboration of embryology. All the rest is phantasy. As soon as man begins to live on earth the necessity immediately arises of contemplating him in imaginative and inspired knowledge. For that is the only means by which one can perceive what man experiences at death, and what death is. At the highest stage of knowledge, true Intuition, which you find described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, one attains to that insight into being which is wonderfully indicated in the German language, for one says when a man dies—with a certain fitness—he verwest. (perishes) If today one could still feel something in words, one would truly feel that verwesen means ins Wesen übergehen, ins Wesen hineingehen, mit dem Wesen eine werden. (To go over into being, to go into being, to become one with being) When the language speaks of verwesen it truly is not talking of vergehen (to pass away) [Translator's Note: Although in English one says “pass away”, the German word vergehen which means that, is apparently never used in connection with death; verwesen is the word in common use.] And that mysterious process the deep knowledge of which will create a natural science of the future, the process that is only completed when the human body apparently perishes or is reduced to ashes, is not a destructing; it is a significant constructive part of the event.

Through this kind of consideration I should like to arouse a feeling for the inner connection that lies between what is the dying world-conception and scientific tendency of the old time, and the Spiritual Science that is still in the seed today, really just emerging, in the sense of what it will be in the future. But now the two things are roughly pushed together, and that is the deep tragedy of modern life which we must overcome by inner human power. What I call—one may perhaps be offended by it—the dying bourgeois conception of the world and of life, is at an end; it has brought about its on ruin. What is emerging today as proletarian longing—although still very far from what it will be—has other human foundations. While the bourgeois world-conception is dying in the ether body, what is evolving out of the proletarian world is springing to in the astral body. An extraordinarily significant symbol of the dying world-conception was the egoism of Max Stirner. You will find it described in my book Riddles of Philosophy. We live in an age when we must always try not to judge the thing that is just arising by its outside. However many mistakes it may be making here and there, we must be able to see that the social movement is evolving today among the proletariat out of man's spiritual outlook as the seed of the future. We must be able to see that mankind is passing over a threshold and has to enter into supersense knowledge. And the key that reveals this tendency to one who has supersense—spiritual—knowledge, is precisely the fact that the proletarian world is behaving itself very materialistically indeed, in this or that leader, this or that political boss, fighting against that which it will be someday. It fights against it. It has accepted the bourgeois way of thinking as a final bequest; but it is called in human evolution to cross the threshold consciously, to work its way out of materialistic delusion to real knowledge of the supersensible.

These things that we are considering must be studied by observing their spiritual foundations, so that they do not merely become abstract knowledge but, become an inner impulse for our will. Then we will be able to establish our position within this present social order at the right time and in the right way, with full consciousness.

In a series of talks, I have spoken of the ideas about the supersensible world and its connection with the sensuous world. It is only a matter of course that the question appears repeatedly, where from does the knowledge of the supersensible world come? Today we want to deal with this question, or with other words, with the question of the inner development of the human being.

Inner development of the human being is meant here in the sense that the human being advances to such abilities that he must acquire to himself if he wants to make that supersensible knowledge his own. Do not misunderstand the intention of this talk. This talk is remote from establishing rules or principles that have something to do with general human morality or with the demands, which belong to the general zeitgeist. I must note this expressly because over and over again in our time of equalisation where one does not accept any difference between human being and human being the misunderstanding appears, as if anybody who speaks of occultism establishes any general human demands, moral principles or the like which apply to everybody without distinction. This is not the case. This talk must not at all be confused with a talk on general principles of the theosophical movement. Occultism is unlike theosophy. The Theosophical Society has not only and indeed not exclusively the task to maintain occultism. It could be even possible that anybody who joins this Theosophical Society considers occultism as something completely unacceptable.

Among those matters that are maintained in the Theosophical Society to which also a general ethics belongs is also occultism, which encompasses the knowledge of those principles of our existence that escape from the usual sensory observation in the everyday human area of experience. However, by no means the principles are those, which have nothing to do with this everyday experience. “Occult” means: concealed, mysterious. However, I emphasise again and again that occultism is something that needs certain preconditions. As incomprehensible as higher mathematics is for the usual farmer who has never heard of it, it is occultism for many people of our time.

However, occultism stops being occult if one has taken possession of it. With it, I have strictly limited the field of this talk. Thus, nobody can object—and this must expressly be emphasised after the millenniums-old experiences and often performed experiments—that the demands which occultism puts up could not be fulfilled, they would contradict a general human culture. The fulfilment of it is required from nobody. If, however, anybody comes to me and wants to get the convictions which occultism conveys, but refuses to deal with occultism, he is in the very same situation as the schoolchild who wants to make a glass rod electric, but refuses to rub it. It will not become electric without friction. Somebody who behaves like that who has to make any objection to the methods of occultism.

Nobody is asked to become occultist; everybody must come voluntarily to occultism. Someone who objects that we do not need occultism does not need to deal with it.

Occultism does not appeal to the general humanity today. Moreover, in our present civilisation, it is exceptionally difficult to fulfil the demands of a life, which makes the supersensible world accessible.

Two preconditions are completely absent in our civilisation. The first demand is the isolation, that which esoteric science calls the higher human loneliness. The second one is the overcoming of an egoism that has risen high concerning the innermost soul qualities, in large part unaware to humanity.

The lack of these preconditions makes the developmental way of the inner life almost impossible today, because life is dispersed more and more, demands external sensuousness. In no other culture, the human beings lived in the exterior in this way as just in ours. Now I ask you again not to take anything that I say as criticism but only as a characteristic.

Of course, someone speaking that way as I do today knows exactly that this cannot be different, that just the great advantages and significant achievements of our time are based on these qualities. However, that is why our time is without any supersensible knowledge and without any influence of supersensible knowledge on our culture. In other cultures—and there are some—the human being is able to maintain his inner life more and to withdraw from the effects of the outer life. Then, within such cultures, that prospers which one calls inner life in the higher sense. In the Eastern cultures, there is something that one calls yoga and those who live according to the rules of yoga yogis. Therefore, a yogi is someone who aims at the higher spiritual science, but only, after he has looked for a master of the supersensible for himself. Nobody looks for yoga in another way than under the tutelage of a master, a guru. If he has found him, he must use a big part of the day regularly, not irregularly, to live completely in his soul. All forces that the yogi has to develop are already in his soul, they are there as certain as it is true that the electricity in the glass rod appears by friction. It is true that no one knows on his own how to cause these forces as also no one knows on his own that he can make the glass rod electric by friction.

One has to use the observations made in millenniums and the esoteric methods developed thereby to evoke the soul forces. This is very difficult in our time, which demands from every human being because of the struggle for existence that he splits himself. He does not come to the big inner contemplation, not even to a concept of contemplation, which one had in yoga. No consciousness is there of the deep loneliness which the yogi must search for. He has to repeat the same thing rhythmically, even if only for a short time, with tremendous regularity every day, with complete seclusion of anything that lives in him otherwise. It is necessary and essential that all life, which surrounds us, dies down before the yogi that his senses become unreceptive to any impression of the outside world. The yogi has to make himself blind and deaf to the environment for the time, which he dictates to himself. He must be so composed—and he has to acquire the practise in this contemplation—that one may shoot a gun beside him, and he is not disturbed directing his attention upon his inner life. In addition, he has to become free from any memory of the everyday life.

Consider now how exceptionally hard these preconditions are to be produced in our civilisation, how little one has an idea of such isolation, of such spiritual loneliness. You have to achieve all that on one condition, namely on that never to lose the harmony, the complete balance compared with the outside world in any way. This is exceptionally easy with such a deep sinking in your inside. What settles down deeper and deeper in your inside has to produce the harmony with the outside world even more distinctly at the same time. Nothing that is reminiscent of estrangement, of distance from the outer practical life is allowed to appear with you, otherwise you go astray, and otherwise, perhaps, you are not able to distinguish your higher life from insanity to a certain degree. It is really a kind of insanity if the inner life loses its relations to the outer one. Imagine once—to give you an example—you are clever concerning our earthly conditions; you have all experience and wisdom that can be collected on earth. You fall asleep in the evening, but you wake in the morning not on the earth, but on Mars. However, on Mars are conditions quite different from those on the earth. Any science, which you have collected on earth, benefits you by no means. There is no longer any harmony between your inner life and that, which takes action outside you. Hence, you would be probably put into a Mars lunatic asylum already after an hour because you cannot find the way in the new conditions. To such a road, anybody can be easily directed who loses the connection with the outside world developing his inner life. One strictly has to pay attention to it that this does not happen. All that causes big difficulties in our civilisation.

The other obstacle is a kind of egoism concerning inner soul qualities, an account of which the present humanity normally gives to itself. This is tightly connected with the spiritual development of the human being. For it belongs to the preconditions that one does not strive for it from egoism. Who strives for it from egoism cannot come far. However, our time is selfish until the inside of the human soul. You can hear repeatedly: on the other hand, how useful are these teachings to me which occultism propagates if I myself cannot experience them?

Who starts from this condition and also does not desist from it, can hardly get a really higher development, because the most intimate consciousness of human community belongs to the higher development, so that it is irrelevant whether I myself or another experience this or that. Hence, I must meet somebody whose development is higher than mine is with boundless love and full trust. First, I have to bring myself to this consciousness, to the consciousness of infinite trust towards my fellow man if he says I have experienced this and this. Such trust must be a condition of the community life, and wherever such occult abilities are used more extensively, there it is unlimited trust; there one has the consciousness that the human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The basis is trust and confidence at first because we are searching not always only in ourselves for our higher selves, but also in our fellow men. Everybody who lives round us is according to his inner nature in undivided unity with us.

As long as it depends on my lower self, I am separated from other human beings. However, if it concerns my higher self—and only this can ascend to the supersensible world—, then I am no longer separated from the fellow men, I am a uniform being with my fellow men, then is that who speaks to me of the higher truth: I myself. I must drop this difference between him and me completely, I must overcome the feeling completely that he has something over me. Try to settle down in this feeling completely, so that it penetrates till the thinnest little fibres of the human soul and any egoism disappears, and the other who is farther than you stands like your own self before you, then you have understood one of the preconditions that are necessary to wake the higher spiritual life.

You can hear just where the instructions of the occult life are given—often very incorrectly and erroneously—: the higher self lives in the human being, he only needs to let his inside speak and the highest truth is revealed.—Nothing is more correct on the one hand and, on the other hand, more infertile than this assertion. If the human being tries once to let his inner human being speak, he will see that as a rule his lower self speaks, even if he imagines ever so much that his higher self appears. We do not find the higher self in ourselves at first. We have to look for it outside ourselves first. From anybody who is farther advanced we can learn a piece, because we keep it in sight as it were. We can never profit anything from our own selfish ego for our higher self. Where anybody is who has farther advanced than I have, there I am in the future. According to my disposition, I really bear the seed in myself of that which he is. However, first the ways to Mount Olympus must be illumined, so that I can pursue them.

A feeling is the basic condition of any esoteric development, you may believe it or not—every practical occultist who has experience confirms it to you—, a feeling which is mentioned in the different religions. The Christian religion calls it with the known sentence that one must understand as an occultist completely: “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15, Matthew 18:3). Only that understands the sentence who has learnt reverence in the highest sense of the word. Assume once that you would have heard of an adorable person in your earliest youth, a personality by which in you the highest idea has been woken in a direction, and the opportunity is offered to you to get to know this personality closer. A holy shyness of this personality lives in you during the day, which should bring you the moment where you see him in person for the first time. Standing before the door of this person, you can have the feeling to be afraid to touch the handle and to open the door. If you look to such an adorable personality this way, you have understood the feeling approximately which also Christianity means if it says that one should become like the little children to participate in the kingdom of God. It depends not so much on whether that to whom the feeling is directed deserves it in full measure, but it depends on the fact that we have the ability to look up reverentially at something from our inside. This is the important aspect of admiration that you yourselves are drawn up to that at whom you look up.

The feeling of admiration is the raising force, the magnetic force that pulls us up to the higher spheres of the supersensible life. This is the principle of the occult world that everybody who looks for higher life has to write into his soul as with golden letters. From this basic mood of the soul, the development has to begin. Without this feeling, one can generally attain nothing. Then that who looks for inner development must be clear in his mind that he does something tremendous concerning the human being. What he looks for is nothing more and nothing less than a new birth, namely in the proper sense. The higher soul of the human being should be born. As well as the human being was born with his first birth from deep inner reasons of existence as he came to the sunlight, somebody who looks for inner development steps out of the sunlight, out of that which he can experience in the sensory world, to a higher spiritual light. Something is born in him that rests in the usual human being, who represents the mother, as deeply as the child in the mother before it is born. Who is not aware of the far-reaching consequences of this fact does not know what is called occult or esoteric development. The higher soul that is deep in the whole human nature at first and is interwoven with it is got out. If the human being stands in the everyday life before us, his lower and higher natures are closely related, and this is a piece of luck in the everyday life.

Somebody, who lives among us, would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if he followed his lower nature, but within him, mixed with the lower nature, the higher one lives which keeps it in check. You can compare this mixture with a mixture of a yellow liquid and a blue one in a glass, resulting in a green liquid in which we can no longer distinguish yellow and blue. The lower nature is mixed with the higher one in the human being that way and both are not to be distinguished. As you can extract the blue liquid from the green liquid by chemical means, so that only the yellow fluid remains, and the uniform green is separated into a duality, in blue and yellow, you separate the lower nature from the higher one by means of the esoteric development. You pull the lower nature out of the body like the sword from the scabbard, which remains alone then for itself. This lower nature comes out in such a way that it appears almost nightmarish.

When it was still mixed with the higher nature, nothing of it was to be noticed. Now, however, when it is separated, all evil, bad qualities come out. Human beings who had seemed benevolent before often become quarrelsome and envious. These qualities sat already in their lower nature, however, were controlled by the higher one. You can observe this with many people who are led on anomalous ways. The human being becomes a liar very easily when he enters the supersensible world. He easily loses the ability to distinguish true from wrong. It belongs inevitably to the esoteric training that the strictest training of the character is paralleled by it. What history tells of the saints as their temptations is not a legend but literal truth.

Someone who wants to develop in any way to the higher world is easily exposed to this temptation if he has not developed the strength of character and the highest morality in himself to be able to hold down everything that approaches him. Not only that desire and passions grow, this is not even so much the case, but—and this seems miraculous at first—also the opportunities increase. Like by a miracle, opportunities of the evil, which were concealed to him before, lie in wait of someone who ascends to the higher world. In every fact of life, a demon lies in wait for him which tries to lead him astray. What he has not seen once, he sees now. The splitting of his nature conjures up such opportunities as it were everywhere from the secret sites of life. Therefore, the so-called white magic—that school of esoteric development which leads the human being to the higher worlds in good, real and true way—demands a particular development of character as essential. Every practical esoteric says to you that nobody should dare to pass that narrow gate—one calls the entrance to the esoteric development that way—without practicing these qualities repeatedly. They are a necessary pre-school of the esoteric life.

The first ability that the human being must develop is to separate the unimportant from the significant, the transient from the imperishable on all his ways through life. One can demand this easily, but it is often difficult to carry it out. It is, as Goethe says, indeed, easy, however, the easy is difficult. Have a look, for example, at a plant or at a thing.

You learn to recognise that everything has an important and an unimportant side and the human being mostly is interested in the unimportant, in the relation of the thing to him or in a subordinated quality. Someone who wants to become an esoteric has to get into the habit of seeing and looking for a being in everything. Seeing a watch, for example, he has to be interested in its principles. He must be able to disassemble it in the minutest detail and develop a feeling of its principles. Suppose further that a mineralogist looks at a rock crystal. He gets already by an external view to a significant knowledge of the crystal. However, the esoteric must take a stone in hand and can vividly feel what is indicated in the following monologue: in certain respect, you are below humanity, but in certain respect, you outrank humanity by far. You are below humanity because you cannot conceive ideas of human beings because you do not feel. You cannot imagine, you cannot think and you do not live, but you have something over humanity, you are chaste in yourself, you do not have any wish and desire. Every human being, every living being has wishes, cravings, desires; you do not have them. You are perfect and contented with that which was bestowed on you, a model for the human being with which he has still to connect his other qualities.

If the esoteric can feel this rather deeply, he has grasped the significant that the stone can say to him. Thus, the human being can take something important from everything. If this has become a habit that he separates the significant from the unimportant, then he has appropriated another of the feelings, which the esoteric must have. Then he must connect his own life with the significant. The human beings are deceived in that in particular very easily in our time. The human beings believe very easily that the place on which they stand is not commensurate with them. How often are people inclined to say, my destiny has put me in a place in which I do not fit. I am, we say, for example, postal clerk. If I were put to another place, I could provide high ideas to the people; I could give great teachings and so on.

The mistake of these human beings is that they do not connect their lives with the significant of their occupations. If you see anything significant in me because I can talk to the people here, you do not see the significant in your own life and occupation. If the postmen did not carry away the letters, the whole exchange of letters would come to a standstill, a lot of work, which has already been performed by others, would be in vain.

Hence, everybody is of extraordinary importance for the whole on his post, and nobody is higher than the other is. Christ tried to indicate this the nicest in the downright marvellous way in the thirteenth chapter of the St. John's Gospel with the words: “a servant is not greater than his master, nor a messenger than the one who sent him” (13:16). These words were spoken, after the master had washed the disciples' feet. With it, he wanted to say, what would I be without my disciples? They must be there, so that I can be there in the world, and I have to pay tribute to them degrading myself before them and washing their feet.—This is one of the most significant hints to the feeling, which the esoteric must have towards the significant. One is not allowed to confuse the externally significant with the internally significant. One has to pay strict attention to that.

Then we must develop a number of qualities. First, we have to become masters of our thoughts, of the chains of our thoughts in particular. One calls that the control of thoughts. Consider once how in the human soul the thoughts are bustling about, how they are wandering around aimlessly: here appears an impression, there another, and every single one changes the thought. It is not true that we control the thoughts; rather the thoughts control us completely. However, we must advance so far that we are engrossed in a certain thought during a certain time of the day and say to ourselves, no other thought is allowed to enter my soul and to control me.—With it, we ourselves lead the reins of the thought life for some time.

The second quality is that we behave in a similar way to our actions, that is that we control our actions. It is necessary that we reach so far at least to commit such actions now and again to which we are caused by nothing that comes from outside. Nothing that is induced by our state, our occupation, and our position leads us deeper into the higher life. The higher life depends on such intimacies, for example that we make the decision to do something for the first time, something that arises from our very own initiative, and even if it is a quite unimportant fact. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life.

The following, the third quality is endurance. The human beings alternate between joy and grief, once they are on top of the sky, then they are down in the dumps. Thus, the human beings drift on the waves of life, of joy and grief. However, they have to attain equanimity, calmness. The biggest grief, the biggest joys must not confuse them, they must stand firm, get endurance.

The fourth quality is the understanding of any being. What it means to understand any being is nowhere better expressed than in a legend about Christ Jesus, which has been preserved to us not in the Gospels, but in a Persian story. Jesus walked with his disciples overland, and they found a rotting dog on the way. The animal looked awkward. Jesus stopped and glanced admiring at it, saying, “However, what nice teeth has this animal.” Jesus spotted the beautiful of the awkward. Strive for approaching the marvellous everywhere in such a way, and then you see something in everything outdoors to which you can say yes. Make it like Christ who admired the beautiful teeth of the dead dog. This direction leads to great tolerance and to the understanding of anything and any being.

The fifth quality is the complete impartiality towards everything new that faces us. Most people judge something new according to something old that they know already. If anybody comes to say anything to you, you immediately answer: I am of another opinion about that.—However, we are not allowed to confront a communication, which we get with our opinion immediately, we must be on the lookout for something new that we can learn. We can still learn something from a little child. Even if one is the wisest human being, he must be inclined to restrain his judgment and to listen to others. We must develop this ability of listening to anybody, because it enables us to face the things with maximal impartiality. In esotericism, one calls this “confidence,” and this is the strength to maintain the impressions, which the new makes on us, by that which we hold against it.

The sixth quality is that which everybody receives by itself after he has developed the cited qualities. This is the inner harmony. The human being who has the other qualities has the inner harmony. Then it is also necessary that the human being who looks for the esoteric development has developed the feeling of freedom to the highest degree. This feeling of freedom which enables him to look for the centre of his being in himself and to stand firm on own feet so that he does not need to ask anybody what to do, but that he stands straight and acts freely. This is also something that one has to acquire.

If the human being has developed these qualities in himself, he is above any danger that could cause the splitting of his nature in him. Then the qualities of his lower nature can no longer work on him, and then he can no longer lose his way. Hence, these qualities must develop very exactly. The esoteric life comes then whose expression causes a certain rhythmisation of life. The term rhythmisation of life expresses the corresponding ability. If you look at nature, you find a certain rhythm in it. You will consider it as a matter of course that the violet blossoms annually at the same time in the spring that the grain on the field, the grapes on the grapevine become ripe at the same time. This rhythmical succession of the phenomena is found everywhere outside in nature. Everywhere is rhythm; everywhere is repetition in regular sequence. If you go up to the higher beings which, you see this rhythmical sequence more and more decreasing. You also see with the animal, still in a higher degree, all qualities rhythmically arranged. At certain time of the year, the animal gets particular functions and abilities. The higher the being is developed, the more life is given in own hands of the being, the more this rhythm ceases. You must know that the human body is only one of the members of his being. Then the etheric body comes, the astral body, and finally, the higher members, which form the basis of those.

The physical body is highly subject to the rhythm to which the entire external nature is subjected. As the plant life and animal life proceed in their external form rhythmically, the life of the physical body proceeds. The heart beats rhythmically, the lung breathes rhythmically and so on. Everything proceeds so rhythmically because it is ordered by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by that which the scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, and in particular the astral body, are left, I would like to say, by these higher spiritual powers in a certain way and have lost their rhythm. Can you deny that your activity is irregular concerning wishes, desires, and passions that it cannot be compared with the regularity that prevails in the physical body? Who learns the rhythm of the physical nature finds the model of spirituality in it. If you look at the heart, this marvellous organ with the regular beat and its implanted wisdom, and compare it to the desires and passions of the astral body that release all possible actions against the heart, then you recognise how disadvantageously the passion works on its regular way. However, the functions of the astral body must become as rhythmical as the performances of the physical body are.

I want to state something that will seem absurd to most people, namely concerning the fasting. We have completely lost the consciousness of the importance of fasting. However, from the point of view of the rhythmisation of our astral body, fasting is something exceptionally meaningful. What is fasting? It means to control the desire of eating and to eliminate the astral body concerning the desire of eating. He who fasts eliminates the astral body and has no appetite. This is in such a way, as if you switch off a force in a machine. Then the astral body sleeps, and the rhythms of the physical body and its implanted wisdom work on the astral body and make it rhythmic. As well as the seal is imprinted by a signet, the harmony of the physical body is imprinted in the astral body and it would be transmitted much more permanently if it were not always made irregular by the desires, passions and wishes, also by spiritual desires and wishes.

The modern human being needs more than in former times to bring in rhythm to his entire higher life. Just as God planted rhythm into the physical body, the human being must make his astral body rhythmic. The human being must dictate the course of the day to himself; arrange it for the astral body in such a way as the spirit of nature arranges it for the lower realms. Early in the morning, at a particular time, one must do a spiritual exercise, at another time, which must be again observed strictly, another exercise, in the evening another exercise again. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable to the continuing development of the higher life. This is a kind to take charge of life and to control it. Determine an hour in the morning where you concentrate. You must observe this hour. There you have to produce a kind of calm, so that the great esoteric master can wake in you. There you have to meditate on big contents of thought, which have nothing to do with the outside world, and to liven these contents of thought up in you.

A short time is enough, maybe a quarter of an hour, even five minutes if one does not have more time. However, it is worthless and useless if one exercises irregularly. If one exercises regularly, so that the activity of the astral body becomes regular like a clock, then these exercises have value. The astral body gets another appearance if you exercise regularly. Sit down in the morning and exercise; the forces develop which I described to you. However, it must happen regularly because the astral body expects that the same is carried out with it at the same time, and it gets into a mess if it does not happen. One must have a mind to exercise regularly at least. If you make your life rhythmic in such a way, you perceive the results in not too long a time, namely the spiritual life, which is hidden to the human being at first, becomes apparent to some extent.

As a rule, the human life changes between four states. The first state is the perception of the outside world. You look with the senses and perceive the outside world. The second state is that which we can call imagination which is somewhat related to the dream life, even belongs to it. There the human being is rooted not in the surroundings, but is detached from them, there he has no realities before him, memories at the most. The third state is the dreamless sleep. There the human being has no consciousness of his ego, and the fourth state is that in which the human being lives in his memory. This is different from perception; this is something abstract, spiritual. Had the human being no memory, he could not get any spiritual development generally.

Inner life starts developing by means of tranquillity and meditation. The human being notices then eventually that he is no longer dreaming chaotically, but that he dreams in extremely significant way and that to him strange things manifest, which he recognises gradually as manifestations of spiritual truths. Of course, one can easily raise the trivial objection: all that is just dreamt, what does this concern to us?—However, if anybody invented the dirigible airship in his dreams and carried out it, this dream would just have revealed the truth. Thus, an idea can be grasped still in a way different from the usual, and then the truth of it must be found in the realisation. We have to be convinced of its inner truth from the outside.

The next stage of the spiritual life is that where we grasp truth using our own qualities and direct our dreams consciously. If we start directing the dreams regularly, we are on that level where truth becomes transparent to us. One calls the first stage the material knowledge where the object must be there. The other stage is the imaginative knowledge. One develops this by meditating, organising life rhythmically.

It is laborious to gain it. If it is obtained, the time also comes when there is no longer any difference between the perception in the usual life and the perception in the supersensible. If we live among the things of the everyday life, in the sensuous world, and change our spiritual state, we experience the spiritual supersensible world perpetually if we have exercised enough in this way. This is the case, as soon as we are able to become blind and deaf compared with the sensory world, to remember nothing of the everyday life and still to have a spiritual life in us. Then our dream life starts becoming conscious. If we are able to pour something of it in our everyday life, then also that quality appears which makes the spiritual qualities of the beings round us perceptible.

Then we do no longer see the outside of the things only, but then we also see the inside, the concealed essence of the things, the plants, the animals, and the human beings. I know that most people say: these are other things.—This is quite right; these are always things quite unlike those, which the human being sees, who do not have such senses. The third state is usually completely empty, but starts to be animated if the continuity of consciousness occurs. The continuity comes completely by itself, and then the human being does no longer sleep unconsciously. He experiences the supersensible world during the time when he sleeps otherwise.

What does sleep consist of, otherwise? The physical body lies in the bed and the astral body lives in the supersensible world. In this supersensible world, you are strolling. As a rule, the human being of the present disposition cannot go far away from his body. If anyone has now developed organs of the astral body, strolling during sleep, by the rules which spiritual science gives, he starts realising during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes and ears, and the astral body that strolls at night is blind and deaf because it still has no eyes and ears. However, these develop by meditation; it is the means of forming its organs. This meditation must then be performed regularly. It is performed in such a way that the body of the human being is the mother and the spirit of the human being is the father. The body of the human being, as it stands physically before us, is in every member, which it shows to us, a mystery, namely in such a way that any member belongs in certain but concealed way to a part of the astral body. The esoteric knows these matters. He knows, for example, where to the point between the eyebrows belongs in the physical body. It belongs to a certain organ in the astral organism. While the spiritual scientist indicates how to direct your thoughts, feelings and sensations to the point between the eyebrows, you connect something that develops in the physical body with the corresponding part of the astral body and you get a certain sensation in your astral body.

However, it must happen regularly, and one must know how. Then the astral body starts being structured. It develops from a lump to the organism in which the organs form. I have described the astral senses in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis. One also calls them lotus flowers. These lotus flowers develop using certain formulae. If they have developed, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world, which he enters when he walks through the gate of death. The saying by Hamlet is then wrecked that from that unknown land no traveller has come back.

You can go or, better said, you can slip from the sensuous world into the supersensible world, and live here and there. This is no life in a cloud-cuckoo-land, but a life in that area which only makes the life in our area explicable and clear. As well as a usual human being who has not studied the principles of electricity goes into an electrically powered factory, sees the miraculous activities and does not understand them, he also does not understand the activities in the spiritual world.

The ignorance of the visitor of this factory exists as long as he does not know the principles of electricity. Thus, the human being is also ignorant in the fields of the spiritual, as long as he does not know the principles of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that does not depend on the spiritual world wherever one goes. Everything that surrounds us here is an external expression of the spiritual world. There is no material. Every material is compressed spirit. To somebody who looks into the spiritual world, the whole material, sensuous world, the world generally spiritualises itself. As the ice melts before the sun to water, everything sensuous melts to something spiritual before the soul, which looks into the spiritual world. The primal ground of the world reveals itself bit by bit before the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear.

In reality, this life, which the human being gets to know in this way, is the spiritual life that the human being has already led inside perpetually about which he knows nothing because he does not know himself until he has developed the organs for the higher world. Imagine once that you would be a human being with the qualities, which you have now, however, you would have no senses. You would know nothing about the world round you, you would have no understanding of the physical body, and, nevertheless, you would belong to the physical world

Thus, the human soul belongs to the spiritual world, however, it does not know it because it does not hear and see. As our body is taken from the forces and materials of the physical world, our soul is taken from the forces and materials of the spiritual world. We do not recognise ourselves in ourselves, but only in our surroundings. As true as you cannot see the heart and brain, without perceiving them with your fellow men by your senses—even with the help of the X-rays your eyes can only see the heart—, it is true that you cannot see or hear your own soul, without recognising them by the spiritual senses in the environment. You can recognise yourselves only by your environment. There is no inside knowledge in reality, no introspection, there is only a knowledge, a revelation by organs of the physical as well as of the spiritual life around us. We belong to the worlds around us, to the physical, astral, and spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical world, if we have physical organs and from the spiritual world, from all souls if we have soul organs, spiritual organs. There is no other knowledge than world knowledge.

It is idle and empty tranquillity if the human being is brooding in himself and believes to be able to reach anything by mere introspection. The human being finds God in himself if he wakes the divine organs in himself and then finds his higher divine self in his environment, as he can only find his lower self in the surroundings using his eyes and ears. We understand ourselves as physical beings by the contact with the sensory world, and we understand ourselves in a spiritual respect while we develop spiritual senses in ourselves. Developing the inside means opening ourselves to the divine life in the outside world round us.

You understand now why it is necessary that someone who ascends to the higher world experiences an infinite consolidation of his character first. The human being can get to know by himself at first how the world is because his senses are already opened. For a benevolent divine spirit that had seen and heard in the physical world stood beside the human being aeons ago, before he could see and hear, and opened his eyes and ears. Just from such beings, the human being has to learn to see spiritually, from the beings, which are already able to what he has to learn. We must have a guru who says to us how to develop our organs who says to us what he did to develop the organs. Who wants to instruct has to acquire a basic quality: absolute veracity, and this is also a main demand, which must be made on the student. Nobody is allowed to be trained as an esoteric, unless he has acquired this basic quality of absolute veracity before.

Concerning the sensuous experiences, one can examine what is said. However, if I tell you anything of the spiritual world, you must have confidence because you are not yet so far that you can check it. Who wants to be a guru must have become so true that it is impossible for him to take such statements slightly with regard to the spiritual world and the spiritual life. The sensuous world immediately corrects the mistakes, which we do concerning this world, however, in the spiritual world, we must have that guideline in ourselves, we must be rigorously trained, so that we are not forced to control by the outside world, but have the control in ourselves. We can only acquire this control, while we appropriate the most rigorous veracity already here in the world. Therefore, the Theosophical Society also had to accept the principle: no law above truth, when it began revealing some elementary teachings of esotericism to the world.

A few understand this principle. Most people are content with it if they can say to themselves, I am aware that it is true, and if it is wrong, they say, I have erred. The esoteric is not allowed to insist on his subjective honesty. There he is on the wrong track. He must always comply with the facts in the outside world and he must regard an experience, which speaks against it as a mistake, as an error. The esoteric is no longer responsible or not. He must absolutely harmonise with the facts of life. He must start feeling responsible in the strictest sense of any statement, which he makes. Then one educates himself to the unconditional assurance that that must have for himself and others who wants to be a spiritual guide.

Thus, you see that I had to indicate—we have to speak about this subject once again to add the higher parts—a number of qualities and procedures. They seem to you too intimate to speak about them with others, every soul has to sort them for itself and they may seem to you inappropriate to attain the great aim, which should be attained, namely the entrance of the supersensible world. That will absolutely arrive at the entrance who walks on the way, which I have characterised.

When? About that, one of the most superior members of the theosophical movement, our long since deceased member Subba Rao (Tallapragada S. R., 1856-1890), appropriately expressed himself. He answered to the question, how long it lasts: seven years, maybe also seven times seven years, maybe also seven incarnations, maybe also only seven hours.—It completely depends on that which the person brings into life along with him. A person may face us, who is apparently quite silly who has brought a higher life along with him, which is concealed now and must only be got out. Today, most human beings are farther advanced in esoteric relation than it seems, and this would become known to many people if our material conditions and our material time did not strike back so much into the inner soul life. A big percentage of modern humanity advanced rather far in earlier times. It depends on different matters whether that which is in the human being comes out. However, one can give some help. Imagine that a human being faces me. In his former incarnation he was a far advanced individuality, however, he has an undeveloped brain now. An undeveloped brain may sometimes conceal great spiritual talents. However, if one teaches him the usual profane abilities, it is possible that also the inner spiritual ones come out. However, it does not depend only on this, but also on the surroundings in which the person lives.

In quite significant way, the human being is a reflection of his surroundings. Assume that a human being is a highly developed personality, but lives in surroundings, which only wake and form certain prejudices in him that work so vigorously that the higher disposition cannot come out. If such a human being does not find anybody who gets out it, then it just remains concealed in him.

I could only give you a few indications about that; however, we speak again about the other and deeper matters after Christmas. The one idea I wanted to wake is that the higher life develops not tumultuously but quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakes and enters the higher life really comes like the thief at night.

The development of the higher life leads the human being into a new world, and after he has entered this new world, he sees the other side of existence, so to speak, then that presents itself to him, which was hidden to him before. Everybody should say that to himself, perhaps, not everybody is able to do this, maybe only a few are able. However, this should not discourage him from entering that way which at least is open to everybody to hear something of the higher worlds. The human being is destined to live in community, and who separates himself cannot get to spiritual life. However, it is a seclusion in the higher sense if I say, I do not believe this, this is not related to me, this may have validity for the other life; this does not apply to the esoteric. The esoteric has the principle to regard the other human beings as a revelation of his own higher self because he knows then that he has to find the others in himself.

A subtle difference exists between both sentences “find the others in yourself” and “find yourself in the others.” That is in the higher sense: you are that. In the highest sense, it means, you recognise yourself in the world and understand the word of the poet, which I quoted some weeks ago in another connection: “Somebody was successful to lift the veil of the goddess of Sais.—But what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—his self!” You do not find true self-knowledge in your selfish inside but unselfishly in the world.

It is a time, in which in quick succession as a result of many deaths the connection of the human being with the spiritual world approaches us. It is the world the human being enters when he goes through the gate of death. Under quite special circumstances these quick successive, almost simultaneous deaths face us. These special circumstances are given because numerous earthly people go through the gate of death that could have lived still for decades on earth under the circumstances that one may assume for earthly people. And whenever the human being goes through the gate of death prematurely as it were, extraordinary conditions come also into being.

We know that the human being going through the gate of death leaves behind, hands over as it were what falls off as his physical body from him to the earth element. We know that then the so-called etheric body is considered as the second that, however, also separates from the individuality. Then the individuality, consisting of astral body and ego, passes the spiritual regions between death and new birth. The etheric body, however, keeps on working, detached from the ego and astral body. This etheric body, which now enters the spiritual world next to us, the etheric world, is different with each human being. You may imagine that an etheric body of somebody who passes the gate of death prematurely looks differently as that of somebody who has lived his life till old age. For the etheric body which has to go with an early deceased human being through the gate of death would have the power to supply the physical body with life under normal conditions still for many years, decades. Now a force does not get lost in the spiritual world just as little as in the physical world. This force which supplies, otherwise, the physical body with life continues to exist. So that we can say: if now thousands go through the gate of death, nevertheless, almost every day, etheric bodies enter into the elemental world which are still capable of surviving, which have other forces in themselves than older etheric bodies have. What happens now with these etheric bodies still capable of surviving?

Yesterday, I spoke of the real folk-soul in the public lecture. This folk-soul is a real being. It needs quite particular forces just in our time. It needs such forces also at other times, of course, but particularly in our time. This folk-soul takes up these etheric bodies still capable of surviving. The human being himself goes other ways with his ego and astral body—those ways which prepare him then for his next life on earth. But these etheric bodies separate from the human individualities, they go over into the being, the substance of the folk-souls. After such a destiny-burdened time as we now experience we go towards a time when the folk-soul contains the etheric bodies in itself—like forces living in it—which have been handed over by those who have gone in the battles through the gate of death. A time comes near when the spiritual scientist can know that that is not lost which was sacrificed on the altar of the big events. A time comes near when effective strength emits from the folk-soul into the individual souls, that simultaneously goes out from that which in the first, second, third decades of youth numerous people have taken up here on earth, which they could still have kept for many decades, which they have handed over, however, to the folk-soul. This is in the forces in future the folk-soul drips into the individual souls; that is not lost.

Let us take that really to heart. Imagine how our consciousness of the connection with the spiritual may be enlivened in our feeling life if we keep in mind that we can speak of the folk-soul in future that the fruits of the sacrificial deaths are in it as effective forces. That is particularly important in the next time. In other times this would be different, for the next time; however, it will be significant because of a quite special reason.

We lived in a bad time of materialism. The souls, who could not approach spiritual science, were immersed in a strong aura of materialism. To fight against this aura is the task of the folk-soul in the next time. Forces will flow towards this folk-soul for the fight of materialism by the fact that the etheric bodies of the early dead linger on in this folk-soul, just linger on as forces. These etheric bodies—sacrificed on the altar of human evolution—will be the strongest fighters against materialism.

So we have to make a distinction between that which moves as a single human being through the regions of the spiritual world and remains united with the human individuality, from that which the etheric body delivers on its detour to the general community; which keeps on working in the spiritual general community in the sense cited here, in the substance of the folk-souls.

That may stamp itself especially deeply in our souls if we put two human types concerning this spiritual difference before our souls: the warrior killed on the battlefield who goes, completely devoted to the task of his people, through the gate of death—who as it were at the moment when he enters the battlefield when he only resolves to enter the battlefield must also resolve to face death. Compare this human type with the ascetic. Just if you consider what the forces of the etheric body signify in human life, you get an idea of the difference of the warrior killed on the battlefield and the ascetic. The ascetic works on himself. He tries to work on himself in such a way that he overcomes the physical in himself completely, that he becomes still free from this physical during his lifetime. Since the ascetic works that way, a significant transformation also takes place in his etheric body. He uses up, so to speak, the forces of this etheric body the strongest to incorporate them in his ego and astral body. What makes the ascetic free from the physical, this is of benefit completely for his individuality, and this serves the transformation of his individuality. So that such a human being who becomes an ascetic can serve humankind only on the detour of that which he makes out of himself. He, however, who frees himself from the physical body in early youth, because he has to surrender to the requests of war, hands over the forces of his etheric body to the general community; he incorporates them to the general work. You have to feel this difference, it is a significant difference. It points us again a little bit to that which prevails as a reality in the human life. It is also significant to look just at the path through the gate of death concerning the etheric body.

At the moment when the human being goes through the gate of death, he is still united with his etheric body. We have often described what happens to this. This connection with the etheric body gives the human being the possibility to live in all ideas that the last life aroused in him to merge completely like in a mighty tableau in everything that the last life has given him. But this is a kind of vision that lasts for a relatively short time; it fades away with the liberation of the etheric body from the ego and astral body. Yes, you can say, it immediately begins to fade away after the moment of death. The impressions become weaker and weaker which are still due to the possession of the etheric body. Then that makes itself felt which is authoritative after the physical death. What is authoritative there is properly imagined only to a lower degree by the people who want to get ideas about the life after death. It is even difficult to coin words for those quite different conditions, compared with the conditions we experience in our physical bodies. One thinks simply that the human being after he has gone through the gate of death has only again to get a consciousness for himself. It is not really that way. The human being experiences no lack of consciousness when he passes the gate of death. On the contrary, his soul experiences a superabundance of consciousness. He lives and weaves completely in consciousness, and as well as the strong sunlight dazes the eyes, he is dazed at first by consciousness, he has too much consciousness. First, this consciousness must be dampened, so that he can orientate himself in the life, into which he has entered after death. This lasts for a longer time; more and more moments happen in which the consciousness makes such an orientation possible. The soul becomes conscious for a more or less short time and then it again enters into a condition similar to sleep as you may call it. Then such moments become gradually longer and longer, the soul comes more and more in such conditions, until it is able to orient itself entirely in the spiritual world.

Also this makes difficulties to get clear ideas of the way how the soul perceives his environment after it went through the gate of death. We buried a dear anthroposophical friend in the last week, and on account of the wish of the dead I had the task to make a funeral celebration for her friends at the place where she died. In the time I spoke and directed my words to the dead person, the dead person was as it were like sleeping. Then the heat had an effect, the flames seized the body, and at this moment a moment of consciousness came over the soul, like a moment of orientation. The dead had the whole image of the funeral celebration and the funeral speech before herself, as somebody has something spatial at the same time before himself. Time becomes there really space. You do not see the past as you see the past running in time during life, but you see the past as something spatial before yourself. So that that which had already run off, which had happened a quarter of an hour before, then stood before the soul of the dead like the first lighting up moment of consciousness. Then a state of daze came again in the flooding light of consciousness to go in this condition towards those other conditions in which the soul gradually learns to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

It is important if we want to really get good ideas about the life after death for ourselves that we understand these quite different conceptions of time, that we see how there time is not something of which one can say, it has passed, and one remembers of the matters that happened in time, but the past stands there. Like the desk stands there and this desk does not go along with me when I go over there and look back at it, in the same way that remains after death which happened, which can be just only reminded, stands there; and the dead looks back at it as one looks back in the body at the spatial objects. This is very important to understand. Furthermore, that is of particular importance to understand that we really remain in connection, that our life on earth remains in connection with that what we experience between death and a new birth; at least it remains in close connection up to the point in time I called midnight hour in my last mystery drama.¹

Nevertheless, I would not like to fail to give our friends ideas of these relations to be difficultly described bit by bit. At that which we as earthly people have experienced between birth and death the soul, which has gone to death, looks back—but not, as if that which one has experienced there only would be there, but some conditions of life of the dead play a part in a peculiar way. The condition of life of the dead is not the same as the condition of life between birth and death of living people. The condition is such a one that the human being feels enclosed by his skin and looks out into the world by means of his senses. As soon as one enters as a dead the spiritual world, he/she has flowed out into the whole spiritual world. The soul feels like fulfilling the whole spiritual world bit by bit. What the human being has experienced during his physical earth existence, he feels like something that remains to him—not as a physical body, of course, but as that which constitutes the form, the forces of the physical body. This remains after death, but the soul has it as somebody has the human eye in the physical body. As you have the eye for seeing, you have then yourself, the life on earth, which you have experienced, as a cosmic sense-organ to perceive the world with it. What our eye is now for our body, this is our life on earth for our spiritual life after death.

Our life on earth is implanted to us as it were as an eye, as a sense-organ. You will understand gradually only after longer meditation what significant, actually, is pronounced that our life on earth becomes a sense-organ for our life between death and a new birth. That resembles to the process when the human being falls asleep and leaves the physical and etheric bodies with his ego and astral body. When initiation comes into being and the human being starts beholding in the spiritual world outside his physical and etheric bodies, then he knows: in the spiritual world you perceive like by means of a sense with the spiritual part of your physical body, and you think in the spiritual world with your etheric body. Your etheric body is real like your brain in the spiritual world and your former physical body is a sense-organ. However, you yourself are poured out with all your vital forces over the spiritual worlds. You have spread, you do not feel crowded together to one place because of your skin, and you feel poured out, extended over the spiritual world.

This is a quite different existence. With it is connected that somebody who himself enters the spiritual world, either by death, or by initiation, lives united with the other beings of the spiritual world, with beings of higher hierarchies or with human souls, which live between death and a new birth. However, he lives united with them in such a way that he does not experience them as you meet earthly men outside where you are separated spatially from them. But he experiences them as being contained in a common spiritual space, penetrating each other. What another soul experiences one does not experience by the fact that it says something, like with earthly people, but that one settles in the other soul and witnesses its thoughts. Hence, it is also that you can only be certain to experience that in yourself really what, for example, a dead experiences if you know: you are as it were in the dead, you do not only report something that you hear after the model of something which you experience on earth, but you hear: the dead himself speaks through your being.

I would also like to explain that to you by an example².

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of the eternal life;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted meditation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst Life's battles and cares
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring for work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
to fulfil my human duty;

May I live then in anticipation,
Oriented toward my soul's star
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

I would like to put this before your souls as a clear example of the mysterious course which the human soul takes just through the point in time which separates the life between birth and death from the life between death and a new birth, where everything that was still external experience to us in the life on earth becomes internal wealth of the soul and lives in us that way. Here one takes on spiritual science still as something external. Immediately after death, however, it appears how it lives in the soul, yes, we say, as well as muscular strength now lives in our physical bodies. You have to feel that once if you want to grasp the internal sense, the internal meaning of that which spiritual science can be for the human soul. Then bit by bit you get a conception—you must have patience—of the quite different relations in the spiritual world. If we form words and concepts of the relations in the sensory world, we can give symbols at most of that what is in the spiritual world. You must work in patience towards concepts and sensations and feelings which express that fairly correctly and truly what the relations of the spiritual world are.

The logic of the life on earth—yes, there is only one logic of the life on earth—is already sometimes rather fragile for the life on earth. I have already stated how one can pass the real facts using the logic of the life on earth. I have often stated the example: assuming a person is walking along a brook. We see him falling into the brook. We rush over and find out that he is already dead. We see a stone where the person has fallen into the brook, and can now form a quite logical, but superficial judgment. We can say: the person has tripped over the stone, has fallen into the brook and drowned. He has died the death of drowning.—But this can be quite wrong. If one examines the matter purely anatomically, it can become apparent that the person had experienced a heart failure; thereby he fell in the water. The heart failure is the cause of his death. With the everyday correct logic we conclude wrongly. Such conclusions—this would be noted, only by the way—are made perpetually in human life and in particular in science. Science is full of such conclusions where cause and effect are mistaken.

But the matter becomes important when questions of human destiny are considered. We have experienced such a stroke of fate in Dornach in autumn, which is instructive in the most important sense. One evening the little, seven-year-old son of our member, Theo Faiss, who was an exceptionally dear, bright child, was reported missing. It was just during an evening lecture. The mother searched for the child, it was not to be found. When the lecture was over, one heard, actually, only that the mother misses her boy, and one could imagine nothing else that the death of the boy were in connection with a removal van, which had toppled over. A member of our society had let send his pieces of furniture in a removal van, and this removal van had toppled over in the evening where the boy stood. It was ten a quarter clock in the evening and we applied everything to lift the carriage. The mobilised military met us to help, to lift this removal van. The removal van was lifted, and one found the boy crushed under the carriage. Now think, in this area a removal van did never go generally before; nor thereafter. The boy was here, one could state this later by all possible things one calls incidents and chances, just in the time—it has concerned only minutes, around a moment—where the removal van toppled over. However, it was strange that first of all those who were here where the carriage had toppled over were only concerned to bring the horses to safety. One had no idea that the removal van had fallen on the little boy.

The child was dead. The materialist view may say: well, the removal van toppled over by chance there at this hour; the child got under it and was crushed. The materialist view will say that, of course. Before the spiritual view this is completely nonsense. For that what is there is the karma of the child, and this karma of the child steered all single circumstances. It has also steered the removal van there just at the hour when the child needed the death because the karma of the child wanted it. The karma of the child had expired. We deal here with the necessity to reverse cause and effect.

By such relations and the view of them one is able to ascend bit by bit to the real view of life which persuades us to reverse that what the external appearance presents to the senses. We must often turn around this. But the matter becomes quite significant when one experiences after that what comes into being by such a fact. The soul of a human being goes through the gate of death. This soul was embodied for seven years in a physical body. Why could the little Theo not have become also seventy, eighty, ninety years, externally considered if the karma had not made it impossible? An etheric body is there which could have supplied life still for decades; an etheric body which was really filled by forces of the eternal, of the good. It was an excellent boy.

You know that then the real individuality, the ego and astral body, go on their way. But the etheric body frees itself, this etheric body, in which all tender, nice forces are woven which have developed in the childhood, in which, however, all forces also live which come from the former incarnations. Now imagine what you have before you facing such an etheric body. The individuality comes from the former incarnations. It embodies itself anew in this incarnation; it implies what comes from previous incarnations. The life of this incarnation is as it were the fruit, realising that what was cause in a life in previous incarnations. Through the whole life these fruits could have enjoyed life to the full. Then everything would have gone into this etheric body what comes from the fruits of the former incarnations. This has not happened. In return everything is in this etheric body what still has causes in the former incarnations. And now the strangest thing is: somebody who tries to explore the aura of our Dornach construction finds this etheric body of the little Theo in the aura of the Dornach construction. There he is, there he hovers over, lives around the Dornach construction. He who has to deal with the Dornach construction or will still deal after that late autumn afternoon in which the little Theo went through the gate of death knows what has been changed in the spiritual aura of the Dornach construction by the fact that that etheric body was incorporated into this aura. This etheric body contains the forces which would else have been used for decades for the supply of a physical human body, and this etheric body is just poured out in this aura of the construction.

So mysterious are the ways that wisdom flooding through the world has to experience with its creatures. There are only correct ideas of the kind how the whole human life runs—to which in the most remarkable sense the life between death and a new birth belongs—if one goes into details of these matters. Because our anthroposophical movement should really be not anything abstract, but something in which we are with our whole being, in which also those are who just belong to us, we are also allowed to speak of such matters. We unite not only like other societies with a certain program, but we want to be with our whole souls in our spiritual-scientific movement. We want to conceive this spiritual-scientific movement as a concrete stream to which everybody belongs who really bears witness to it in a feeling way. We can say: there we speak as somebody just speaks in an enlarged family about the relatives there or there. For that what touches us, so to speak, in an informally familiar way gives us the highest, the most significant, the most important explanations of the spiritual world at the same time.

From such an attitude I would like to mention the death of one of our friends who are just often affected by deaths in the last time. Our infinitely dear friend Fritz Mitscher has recently gone through the gate of death. The necessity arose to me to subsume in words what the own soul felt, while it leant to the soul, which has just gone through the gate of death. Notice the difference between the preceding words which I have read out to you, and the words which I want to read out to you now. The words that I have read out just here are out of the soul of the dead. The words which I will read out to you now are stimulated in my own soul at the sight of the dead Fritz Mitscher, who was still combined with his etheric body. It is the impression which the dead made that is reported now in these words. Perhaps, you know that Fritz Mitscher was already as a young teacher at the most different place, especially in Berlin, active for our Anthroposophical Society. And many of us also know that he was just inclined in such a nice way to combine everything that he could acquire of earthly science and learning with the noblest, nicest anthroposophical consciousness. This also expresses itself after his death when in his whole being was combined what he was, and what shines now again after his death from the soul relieved of the body which still had its etheric body. And it seems to me that this had to be expressed what Fritz Mitscher was after death with the words, which I had to send on to him at the cremation.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to your life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our soul's entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Unlost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

These are the words which were sent to the dead out of the being of the dead. And then some time passed after these words were spoken at the cremation, and out of the being of the dead, not yet out of the well-organised consciousness, but like from the being sounding, there the following words sounded now from the dead in the night after the cremation.

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within myself
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

The words sounded back that way. Only after that I myself found out that two stanzas which are in the middle can be converted immediately from “you” to “I” and from “to you” to “to me.” I did not know that before. Since I heard the stanzas as I read them to you first. And now they came back from the being of the dead, spoken by him:

That shows that as well as in the time in which the consciousness does not yet have the shape which the soul has then again after this time through the whole realm between death and new birth, it shows as even in lively transformation, in meaningful transformation the words come from the dead. You have only to feel the spiritual-scientific world view becoming really alive creating the connection between the physical and the spiritual worlds. For it may run like a shiver through our souls when we feel at such an example how the words are called to the dead—and he returns them changed to us. Like we feel on one side that they went to the dead because they resound from him, not only like an echo, but meaningfully changed by him.

These are matters that give us the certainty, the confidence also for our present that the souls living here in earthly bodies are connected with the spiritual powers weaving and prevailing in the world. In this stream of prevailing and weaving spiritual powers the deceased are woven, are in it, because in it they experience their further postmortal destinies.

If we allow the connection of the physical and spiritual worlds to have an effect on our souls, we can contemplate various things. I pointed already once also here to the fact that with this cooperation of the physical and spiritual worlds proceeding in the concrete sense also the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha comes near to us. We know that now we only start contemplating the sense and meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ Being by spiritual science completely. Up to now the human beings did that by means of reason. And what did result from this reason? If the effectiveness of Christ had depended in the human earth-life on that what the human beings have understood of it, the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse on earth could had been not very strong. The human beings have understood theological squabbling, all kinds of disputes in their reason, that was they understood of Christianity. But Christ has had an effect out of lively power.

I have probably stated also here the example of the battle which Constantine fought against Maxentius, by which the fate of Europe was decided at that time. Thus Christianity was only accepted, actually, and became then the ruling power in Europe. This battle was not won through the art of strategy nor by the armies of Constantine. Maxentius had to defend Rome. By looking up in the Sibylline Books and by a dream, which he had, it was put in his head that he should lead his army out of Rome. Then he would destroy the enemies of Rome. His army was five times stronger than that of Constantine, who approached Rome. Now he really led his army out of Rome, strategically the most inept what he could do. Since according to strategy everything spoke well of letting his army in Rome and letting the hostile armies approach. However, he led his army out of Rome. Also on the side of Constantine who led his armies against Rome these were not warlike-scientific reasons which gave him the strength, but he also had a dream. The dream said to him: if you allow bearing the monogram of Christ in front of your army, you will defeat Rome.—At that time and still for later the whole map of Europe was transformed through the victory of Constantine with his weaker army. Also the spiritual life of Europe has thereby become different. That what people could understand in those days would not have been sufficient to accomplish these achievements. The Christ Impulse had an effect in the subconsciousness of the human beings, in that what lived in the depths of the souls what people only could dream of, what came up to them at most in dream pictures.

We have a later, quite important example of the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse with the Maid of Orleans.³ Who studies history really, not as one often studies history today, but that one tries to recognise the real connections, he can know that again the fate of Europe was absolutely determined for the next centuries through that what the Maid of Orleans did. Neither strategy, nor the wisdom of the politicians, but that what the shepherd girl of Orleans did was vital for the destiny of Europe, especially also for the destiny of France. Now, however, the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans, through its Michaelic representative. It worked into the soul of the Maid of Orleans. Her soul was completely infiltrated, inspired by the Christ Impulse. Exactly in the same way as in those days when the battle was decided between Constantine and Maxentius the Christ Impulse worked, without people knowing about it in their upper consciousness. The Christ Impulse also worked there, when the Maid of Orleans sent the French armies against the English armies. The whole continent would have changed, also England if at that time France had not won. Also England would not be that what she has become if she had not been defeated. However, the subconscious forces which came up in dream pictures caused the victory. The abilities of the Maid of Orleans were inspired by them. So that you can say: what the Maid of Orleans did was influenced through a more or less unaware initiation. It is of course an unaware, you may also say, an atavistic initiation. A clean psychic vessel had to be seized just unconsciously, as it was the Maid of Orleans through whom the Christ Impulse could work, by his Michaelic representative—a clean vessel.

Let us look at the matter more exactly. If anybody today goes consciously through an initiation—there are rules for that. The ABC is in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” There are rules by which one is able to develop gradually. One cannot speak of such a conscious initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. But a spirit which is otherwise not united with the human soul had to take its place in this human soul, to permeate this human soul. Especially favourable circumstances had to come into being. A spirit of higher spheres cannot always intervene in the souls who are enabled for it. Especially favourable circumstances must occur, so that a single human being comes in connection with higher worlds without initiation, without conscious work on himself. Especially favourable circumstances exist in the time when as it were the spirit of the earth is particularly awake: in the time from the 25th December to the 6th January. When in summer the sun stands highest, when the physical heat radiates mostly to the earth, then the conditions of initiation are the worst because then the spirit of the earth is sleeping. The spirit of the earth is the most awake in the winter darkness, at the winter solstice.

Hence, it is not only a legend, but corresponds to a truth when it is told in old legends that during the thirteen nights which precede the 6th January certain particularly suitable souls were initiated, so that they could go into the spiritual world, that they could experience there what we call Kamaloka and devachan. We here in Hanover probably remember that the legend of Olaf Åsteson⁴ was once reported who—sleeping for these thirteen nights—went through the whole way which can be the way through Kamaloka and devachan. Olaf Åsteson tells then what he experienced during these thirteen days.

If the external physical darkness of the earth is the strongest, the conditions are the most favourable to lead a soul into in the spiritual world. It would have been the most favourable for souls like the Maid of Orleans, who are initiated for the whole humankind for such an action not by directly conscious exercising but by especially favourable circumstances, if she could have slept during the thirteen nights. Thus she could have been brought into connection with the spiritual world; if she could have accomplished that in a sleeping state. The Maid of Orleans went really through such a sleeping state. For the Maid of Orleans spent these thirteen days up to the 6th January in the body of her mother in a condition in which the human being still sleeps. Since the human being only wakes up for the physical life when he is born and does the first gasp. With the Maid of Orleans the last sleeping nights of the embryo fall in the time of the thirteen nights, because she was born on the 6th January. There you have a deeply significant internally historical connection. There you have the basis of the mission of the Maid of Orleans, who was chosen to receive the initiation as this clean soul before her first gasp during the last thirteen nights of the pregnancy of her mother, in this sleeping state, just under the especially favourable circumstances of the earth-life. The calendar shows it simply to you. Open the calendar: on the 6th January you find the birthday of the Maid of Orleans. The calendar shows you how here a deeply intimate connection exists between the physical world and the processes in the spiritual world. Of course, it was necessary that the soul of the Maid of Orleans was prepared by her preceding incarnations. During the thirteen nights this soul and that what could come from this soul made it possible just at this point of the human development that the spiritual world was able to influence the physical world.

The spiritual world with its ingredients is always there. The spiritual world is always among us. The ways of working in the physical world are manifold, which the spiritual world selects. And our consciousness of the connection with the spiritual world becomes stronger and stronger, the more we express the connections between the physical and spiritual worlds especially deeply in such details, while such connections stand vividly in front of our souls.

On the other side, one must say: also that what happens here in the physical world may prepare a kind of connection with the spiritual world and our physical world. And if anybody who has taken up that as intensely as Fritz Mitscher what flows through our spiritual science, and then went across in the spiritual world in the thirtieth year of his life—on the 26th February his thirtieth birthday would be—and has infiltrated his soul with that what can penetrate as a strength into the soul by our spiritual science, then we have a powerful individuality who will further stay together with us in the spiritual world who is an assistant of the most immense kind. And if you imagine how difficult the striving for spiritual science is just in our time, in this time which is, nevertheless, completely impregnated with materialism. Then one may also say that he who is connected with all the fibers of his life with the spiritual world has the biggest hopes for those who can become spiritual assistants who become spiritual assistants after they have laid down their physical bodies. One does not need to say, of course, that the passage through the gate of death is never allowed to be a personal decision, but that it must be caused only by karma. These spiritual assistants are those who give us consolation and hope if we see how difficult it is, just in the present, to provide for our spiritual-scientific movement because of the manifold inhibitions. However, we know how higher spiritual forces have an effect on earth, so that the current of the spiritual worlds flows into the purposes of the physical earth. Thus the unused forces of the human souls come up to the spiritual worlds to work there just with their forces, combined with other forces. Hence, I said the words to our Fritz Mitscher in my obituary really from the bottom of my heart:

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

When we try to advance our spiritual movement to its purpose honestly, then we are aware that in the forces which we apply here on earth also those forces are working which our friends already brought through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

We summarise now all that also for the understanding of the general situation of the world. On one side, the human souls who go now due to the destiny-burdened events through the gate of death carry their etheric bodies to the folk-souls. On the other side, they carry everything that they have summoned up in sacrificial devotion, while they have gone just by these events through the gate of death with their individualities. And all that will be poured out as effectiveness into the coming age. It is the matter of the human beings who then experience peace to produce the connection with that what will be there in the spiritual world. Those who today experience as mothers and fathers, as brothers and sisters or other relatives the death on the battlefield of a human being dear to them can take up the fact in their consciousness that with the etheric body something extremely significant passes over into the general effectiveness of the earthly humankind for the future. Not only that they can know that the individualities go invigorated by death to a later stronger life on earth, but they can also know: that what the warrior after death has handed over to the folk-soul weaves and lives really. Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers have those who have gone young through the gate of death twice, one must say, now in the folk-soul and also as individuality. This idea will only be of great value when it has completely become feeling, so that one does not only speak of immortality, but that one knows in the feeling: the dead are there, are among us. If this bond is such a strong one that also for our feeling death will be, actually, an untruth. Since the dead can appear even more real than often in the physical embodiment if he can take together everything of his being and if he does no longer have his physical body as an obstacle. Immense currents of consolation, currents of internal strength of self-consolation go out from that what spiritual science can give to the souls in lively consciousness and lively sensations. When this is felt that way, then in particular those who bear witness to spiritual science can look full of consolation into the future. They can feel something like twilight in the turn of an era during these present, destiny-burdened events after which a time of sunny peace will also follow. But important will be in the spiritual effectiveness of this time of sunny peace that what is won through the sacrificial deaths of so many people.

That can be made fruitful here on earth particularly creating a bridge, a connection between the living human beings who are incarnated in physical bodies here on earth and the souls who are above and want to radiate down that which they have taken with them. Here it is where the real understanding of spiritual science knocks on our hearts and asks us to do that what we can do from the consciousness we have gained by spiritual science what we can do feeling, so that the great, destiny-exciting, painful events of the present time, as far as we are concerned, contribute to the fertility and welfare of humankind. Those who know something about spiritual science can know feeling and feel knowing by which means the bridge is built up into the spiritual world: because the souls, who remained on earth, send the thoughts and sensations which can be enkindled by spiritual science. The horizon for that will be a horizon of peace. Above, the souls will be who send down spiritual beams of light. Below, human beings must be who have learnt to send such thoughts and feelings out of their souls from below which are stimulated by spiritual science. If there are really souls who turn their senses conscious of spirit to the spirit land, then the bridge will be built, then the time will have come when just through such painful, destiny-burdened events, as they happen in our time, an intimate bond must be woven between the physical and spiritual worlds, for which we strive by our spiritual science.

So we summarise what should be our knowledge and our task and what should arouse confidence in the words:

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

• 1. The Soul's Awakening in Four Mystery Dramas, volume 14 of Steiner's Collected Works
• 2. Lina Grosheintz-Rohrer
• 3. Maid of Orleans (1412-1431)
• 4. Cosmic New Year. The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson. Lecture (Hanover, 1st January 1912) in The Connection Between the Human Being and the Elemental World … volume 158 of Steiner's Collected Works

In the study of Anthroposophy, a justifiable objection at first can be that the anthroposophical investigation of facts concerning the spiritual worlds depends upon calling up, through the training I have described, deep-lying forces in the human being, before these facts can be reached. Hence it might be said: All those who have not gone through such a development, and have therefore not yet reached the point of perceiving super-sensible facts for themselves, and actually experiencing super-sensible beings, have no means of proving the truth of what is said by the investigator of those worlds. Often, when the spiritual world is spoken of in public and information about it is given, the protest is heard: How should such ideas concern those who cannot yet see into this super-sensible world?

This objection rests on an entirely erroneous idea—the idea that anyone who speaks about the super-sensible worlds is talking of things quite unknown to his listeners. That is not so at all. But there is an important distinction, with regard to this kind of Initiation-knowledge, between what is right today and what was once right in the old days of which I was speaking yesterday.

You will remember how I described the path into the spiritual worlds. I spoke of how it leads us first to a great life-tableau, in which we see the experiences that have become part of our personality during this life on Earth. I went on to speak of how, having progressed from Imaginative-knowledge to that of Inspiration, a man is able, with empty consciousness and in absolute stillness and peace, to survey his pre-earthly life. He is thus led into that world of spiritual deeds which he has passed through between his last death and his recent descent to Earth.

Consider how, before making this descent, every human being has gone through such experiences; there is no-one who has not experienced in its full reality what the spiritual investigator has to tell. And when the investigator clothes in words facts at first unrecognised, he is not appealing to something quite unknown to his hearers but to what everyone has experienced before earthly life. The investigator of the spiritual world is simply evoking people's cosmic memories; and all that he says about the spiritual world is living in the souls of everyone, though in the transition from pre-earthly to earthly life it has been forgotten. In fact, as an investigator of the spiritual world, one is simply recalling to people's memories something they have forgotten.

Now imagine that during life on Earth a man comes across another human being with whom he remembers experiencing something, twenty years before, which the other man has completely forgotten. By talking with him, however, about the incident that he himself remembers clearly, he can bring the other man to recall it also. It is just the same process, though on a higher level, when I speak to you about spiritual worlds, the only difference being that pre-earthly experiences are more completely forgotten than those of earthly life. It is only because people are disinclined to ask themselves seriously whether they find anything in their souls in tune with what is said by the spiritual investigator—it is only because of this feeling of antipathy that they do not probe into their souls deeply enough when hearing or reading what the investigator relates. Hence this is thought to be something of which he alone has knowledge, something incapable of proof. But it can quite well be proved by those who throw off the prejudice arising from the antipathy referred to. For the spiritual investigator is only recalling what has been experienced by each one of us in pre-earthly existence.

Now someone might say: Why should anyone be asked, during his life on Earth, to take on this extra task of concerning himself with matters which, in accordance with cosmic ordering, or one might say with divine decree, he experiences during life beyond the Earth? There are those, too, who ask: Why should I go to this trouble before death to gain knowledge about the super-sensible worlds? I can very well wait till I am dead. Then, if all these things really exist, I shall come face to face with them.

All this, however, arises from a misunderstanding of earthly life. The facts of which the spiritual investigator speaks are experienced by human beings in pre-earthly existence, but they are not then the subject of thought, and only during life on Earth can thoughts about them be experienced. And only those thoughts about the super-sensible world that have been worked upon during earthly life can be carried with us through the gate of death, and only then can we understand the facts we experience between death and rebirth.

One might say—if one wished to give an uncompromising picture—that at this present stage of evolution a man's life after death is extraordinarily hard if, during life on Earth, he gives no thought to the spiritual world. For, having passed through the gate of death, he can no longer acquire any real knowledge of his surroundings. He is in the midst of what is incomprehensible for him. An understanding of what is experienced after death has to be striven for during life on Earth. You will learn from further descriptions that it was different for men of earlier ages. But, at the present moment of human evolution, men will be increasingly constrained to strive for an understanding of what they are to experience in the super-sensible world between death and rebirth. So one can say that speaking publicly of Spiritual Science is fully justified, for it can be proved by everyone. When it is established deeply enough in a man's soul, he will gradually come to say to himself: “What has been said through this spiritual investigator lights things up for me. It is just as if I had already experienced it all, and was now being given the thoughts in which to clothe the experience.” For this reason, when speaking of Spiritual Science, of spiritual knowledge, it is very necessary to choose terms of expression different from those used in ordinary life. The point is that a student of Spiritual Science, through the very words used, should have the impression: “I am learning something which does not hold good for the sense-world, something which in the sense-world is sheer nonsense.”

Then, you see, our opponents come and say: “What is said there about spiritual knowledge is all nonsense—pure fancy.” As long as these people know of nothing outside the world of the senses, and do not want to know of anything else, such a statement is justified, for the super-sensible world looks different from that of the senses. But if someone forgoes the one-sided witness of his senses and delves more deeply into his own soul, then he will say: “What the spiritual investigator says should simply give me the impulse to draw up from my own soul what is already there.”

Naturally there is much to hinder our making such a confession. Yet, where understanding of the super-sensible worlds is concerned, it is the most necessary confession of all. And it will be found that even the most difficult things become comprehensible when we are willing to penetrate in this way into our own depths.

There is no doubt that mathematical truths are among the most difficult things. They are held to be irrefutable. But the curious fact is that on entering the spiritual world we find that our mathematics and geometry are no longer correct. A very simple example will make this clear. From early youth we have learnt to look upon the old truths of Euclid as axiomatic, self-evident. For instance, it is stated as obvious that, given two points, A and B, the shortest distance between them is a straight line, and that any curved path between them is longer.

On a recognition of this fact—obvious for the physical world—rests the greater part of our geometry. But in the spiritual world it is the other way round. The straight line there from A to B is the longest way, and any other way is shorter because it can be taken in freedom. If at the point A one thinks of going to B, this very idea suggests an indirect way; and to hold to a straight course, and so at each single point to keep in the same direction, is hardest and causes most delay. Hence, in determining the most direct way in the two-dimensional or one-dimensional space of the spiritual world, we look for the longest way.

Now anyone who reflects about attentiveness, and delves deeply into his soul to discover what attentiveness really means, will find that in this connection, also, what is said by the spiritual investigator is true. For he will say to himself: “When I go around just as I choose, I get there easily, and I don't have to worry about traversing a particular stretch; I need do only what I do every day.” And most people are bustling around from morning to night. They are in such a hurry that they hardly notice how much of all they do is done from sheer habit—what they have done the day before, what other people say they should do, and so forth. Then it all goes smoothly. Just think what it would be like if you had to pay careful attention to every detail of what you do during the day. Try it! You will soon see how this slows you down.

Now in the spiritual world nothing is done without attentiveness, for there is no such thing as habit. Moreover, there is no such word as the impersonal pronoun “one”—at a certain hour one must have lunch, or one must have dinner at some other time. This “one”—for this occasion one ought to dress in a certain way, and so on—all that under the aegis of this little word plays such a great part in the physical world, particularly in our present civilisation, has no place in the spiritual world. There, we have to follow with individual attention every smallest step, and even less than a step. This is expressed in the words: In the spiritual world the straight way between two points is the longest way. So we have this contrast: In the physical world the direct way between two points is the shortest, whereas the direct way between two points is the longest in the spiritual world.

If we go down far enough into our soul, we find we can draw up from its depths a real understanding of this curious circumstance; and it becomes easier and easier to admit: “What the spiritual investigator says is actually wisdom I myself possess—I have only to be reminded of it.”

Then, side by side with this—since the steps to be taken for acquiring super-sensible cognition can to-day be found in books such as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—everyone, in so far as his destiny, his karma, make it possible, can, as we shall see, follow this path and thus acquire his own perception of the spiritual worlds. In this way he comes to knowledge of the facts. Understanding for the ideas of the spiritual world has to be won by his coming to know in his own being all that was forgotten on entering earthly life.

Now it may be said that anyone is capable of grasping knowledge of the spiritual world when it is communicated in ideas. Thus, for understanding what the spiritual investigator offers, all that a man needs is his own sound, unprejudiced reason, provided it searches deeply enough into the soul. The investigator of spiritual facts, entering into the spiritual world, and speaking of its facts from first-hand knowledge—all this naturally requires a person to have pursued the path of knowledge on his own account. Hence it is justifiable for anyone who has acquired knowledge of the spiritual worlds to speak of them quite publicly to-day; for what people now absorb in life, if only at school, is an intellectual capacity, a power of discrimination, which equips them to understand what Spiritual Science brings forward. Here, too, things were different in earlier times, and the teachers in the Mysteries, the teachers of art and religion, went about it in a different way. Anyone to-day who speaks about spiritual knowledge to his contemporaries must so order his ideas that memories are aroused of their pre-earthly life. What he says to his audience, what he writes for his readers, must be so arranged that memories of the life before birth are evoked.

Whenever one speaks about Spiritual Science it is as if this appeal were made to the audience: Listen to what is said, and if you look deeply enough into your souls you will find it all there. Moreover, it will dawn on you that you cannot have learnt it during your life on Earth; no flower, no cloud, no spring, nothing earthly can have told you, not even science—for that is founded on the senses and the intellect. Gradually you will realise that you have brought this knowledge with you into earthly life, and that before this life you took part in things which have lingered on in your soul as a cosmic memory. All this has ben stirred up in you by the spiritual investigator. What he says, therefore, is indeed a call to the very depths of the human soul, not a demand that you should accept anything unknown. It is simply an appeal to men to call up in memory the greatest treasures of their own souls.

It was not so for mankind in the distant past. The wise men of the Mysteries, the priests, had to proceed in another way, for people then had a spontaneous memory of their pre-earthly existence. A few thousand years ago, even the most primitive man would never have questioned the presence in his soul of something brought down with him from the super-sensible into the life of the senses; it was an everyday experience in his dreamlike imaginations. In his soul he had something of which he said: “I do not owe this to my eyes that see the trees; I do not hear it with my ears that listen to the nightingale's song; nor have I received it through any other sense. I cannot have absorbed it during life on Earth; it was there as I made my descent; and when as an embryo I was given my earthly, physical body by another human body, there was already within me that which lights up now in my dreamlike imaginations. I have clothed it in my physical human body.”

Hence in those olden days a man would not have been shown the way to further development by his attention being called to what must be emphasised to-day: that we have a memory, at first unconscious but capable of being made conscious, of pre-earthly existence. In the old Mysteries, attention had to be drawn to something quite different.

A man in those days had a feeling of intense sadness when looking at all that was most lovely in the sense-world. He looked at the flowers, springing out of the earth in their wonderful beauty, and watched the blossoms unfold. And he saw also how beneficent the flowers were for him. He saw the loveliness of the springs bubbling forth in shady places, and his senses spoke to him of their refreshing powers. But then, he said to himself: “It seems as though all this has fallen—fallen through sin from the world I bear within me and which I have brought down into physical existence out of spiritual worlds.” So the teachers in the Mysteries then had the task of explaining how in the flowers, in the rippling waters, in the woodland murmurings and the song of the nightingale—everywhere spirit is working and weaving, everywhere spiritual beings are to be found. They had to impart to men the great truth: What is living in you lives also outside in nature. For a man looked upon the external world with sorrow, with pain, at the very time when his senses were freshest and most responsive—a time when least of all the intellect spoke to him of natural laws, and he looked upon the outer world with primitive senses. The beauty of its sprouting and budding forced itself upon his sight, his hearing and other senses; but all he felt was sorrow; for he was unable to reconcile it with the content of his pre-natal existence, which still lived on in his soul. Thus it was incumbent upon the wise men of the Mysteries to point out how the divine-spiritual dwells in all things, even in those of the senses. It was the spirituality of nature that these teachers had to make clear.

This, however, could be done only by taking a different path from that of to-day. Just as now it is necessary above all to guide men to a remembrance of their life before birth, for teachers in the ancient Mysteries it was necessary to call up in those around them a different memory.

Now a man passes his life rhythmically between two states, or really three: waking, dreaming, sleeping. Sleep takes its course in unconsciousness. The human beings of older epochs had indeed this state of unconsciousness in sleep, although it differed in certain respects from that of people to-day. They did sleep, however; they did sink down into the state of experiencing nothing in their souls, in their consciousness. But during sleep we are of course still living; we do not die and are born again when we wake. As soul and spirit we have a life during sleep, but the experience of it is completely wiped out for ordinary, everyday consciousness. People remember their waking experiences and at the most those during their dreams, but in ordinary consciousness they have no memory of anything they experience during dreamless sleep. The Mystery teachers of old treated their pupils—and through the ideas these spread abroad, all who came to them—in such a way that they were awakened to what was experienced in sleep.

Modern Initiation-knowledge has to recall what has lived in men's souls before earthly existence, whereas the old Initiation-knowledge had to evoke a memory of experiences during sleep. Thus all the knowledge that the Mystery teachers clothed in ideas was so designed that their students, or anyone else who heard it, could say: “We are being told of something we always go through in sleep. We press it down out of mind. The priests of the Mysteries have simply been enabled by their Initiation to perceive in sleep many things that are hidden from ordinary consciousness, but are all the same experienced.”

Just as in the old Initiation-wisdom there was a recalling to memory of what a man had lived through in sleep, to-day there is a recalling to memory of pre-earthly life. One of the signs distinguishing the old Initiation from the new is that in the old Initiation a man was reminded of what he normally slept through, which means that he had no recollection of it in waking life. The wise men of those Mysteries drew the experiences of the night up into waking consciousness of day, and to the people they said: “During the night you dwell with your soul in the spiritual world, and the spiritual world lives in every spring, in every nightingale and every flower. Every night you enter into the midst of all that you merely perceive with your senses during the day.”

And then a man could be convinced that the Gods he experienced in his waking dreams were also there outside in nature. Thus, by showing his pupil what happened in sleep, the wise teacher of the Mysteries made clear to him that divine-spiritual Beings were active out there in the realms of nature all the time. In the same way the spiritual investigator now has the task of showing that a man, before descending to Earth, was living as a spiritual being among spiritual beings in a world of spirit; and that what he experienced there he can recall on Earth in terms of concepts, of ideas.

In the Initiation-science of to-day, the real facts that distinguish sleep from waking come to be known when we advance from Imagination to Inspiration. What a man himself is as soul, as spirit, from falling asleep until he wakes, becomes clear only to Inspired knowledge, whereas the advance to Imaginative knowledge gives a man the tableau of his life. When this life-tableau unfolds for him in his waking state and with empty consciousness he is wrapped in cosmic stillness—as I have described—there enters his soul from the Cosmos, as Inspiration, the life before birth. And then his own true being appears to him in the form he lives in as a being of soul and spirit between going to sleep and waking.

Through Inspiration we become conscious of that which remains unconscious during sleep. We learn to perceive what we do as soul and spirit while asleep, and we become aware that on falling asleep the soul and spirit leave the physical body and the etheric body. The physical body is left in bed and also the etheric body—or body of formative forces, as it is seen to be in Imagination, and as I have described it. The higher members of man's nature, the astral body and the Ego-organisation, leave the physical and etheric bodies, returning to them when the time of waking comes. This cleavage of our being, which comes about in the rhythmical alternation of sleeping waking, can be seen in its real nature only through Inspiration. We then perceive that everything absorbed in ordinary waking life through our thinking, through our world of thought, is left behind. The thoughts we work upon, the thoughts we struggle with at school, whatever we have done to sharpen our earthly intelligence—all this has to be left behind with our physical body and etheric body every time we sleep. Out of these two bodies we take into the spiritual world, where as Ego and astral body we pass the time of sleeping, something quite different from anything we experience in our waking state. When we pass from waking to sleeping we experience what is not normally brought into consciousness. Hence, in speaking to you of these experiences, I have to clothe them in pictorial concepts, so that they can be reflected on with healthy human understanding. These pictorial concepts, which are mere shadows of really living thoughts, we leave behind when we fall asleep; and we then come to live in a world where thinking is not as it is here on Earth, but where everything is inwardly experienced. During sleep, in fact, we experience light unconsciously. In waking life we think about the effects of light—how it makes shadows and colours appear in relation to objects. All these thoughts, as I have said, we leave behind. In sleep we enter into the weaving, living light; we pour ourselves out into the light. And as in day time here on Earth we carry our body with us, and also our soul and spirit, and go about on the surface of the Earth through the air, so there, as sleeping man, we enter the weaving, waving light, becoming ourself a being, a substance, of the living light. We become light within the light.

When a man comes to Inspired knowledge of what he actually is each night, when this rises up into his waking consciousness, he at once realises that during sleep he lives like a cloud of light in cosmic light. This does not mean, however, living simply as the substance of light, but living in the forces which in waking life become thoughts, are grasped as thoughts. The light then experienced is everywhere permeated by creative forces, the forces which work inwardly in the plants, in the animals, besides existing independently as spiritual worlds. Light is not experienced in the same way as in the physical world but—if we may express it figuratively—the weaving, living light is the body of spiritual weaving, as it is also the body of each spiritual being.

Here, as men of the physical world, we are enclosed in our skins, and we see our fellow-men so enclosed. But in our sleeping state we are light within the light, and other beings are also light within the light. We do not, however, perceive it as light in the way it is perceived in the physical world, but—again figuratively—the clouds of light that we ourselves are, perceive other clouds of light. These clouds of light are either another man, or some kind of being giving new life to the plant world, or a being who, never incarnating in a physical body, dwells always in the spiritual world.

Light, accordingly, is not experienced there as it is in earthly life, but as living, creative spirituality. Now you know how, as physical men here on Earth, we live in something besides light—in the warmth our senses perceive. We feel and experience heat and cold.

If, now, on going to sleep we pass out of our physical body and etheric body, we live as substance of the warmth in the cosmic substance of warmth, just as we live as light in the light. Thus we are not only what I have called a cloud of light, but a cloud of light permeated by weaving waves of warmth; and what we perceive also bears warmth within it. Just as when we are asleep, and as beings of soul and spirit, we experience light not as light but as living spirit, and when through Inspiration we realise ourselves and other beings also to be living spirit—so it is in the case of warmth. It is impossible to make any headway in the spiritual world, even with Inspiration, if we cling to ideas acquired here on Earth. We have already found it necessary to get used to a different conception concerning the distance between two points, and we must do likewise for everything else. And just as when experiencing ourselves as light within light we actually experience ourselves as spirit in the spiritual world, so when experiencing ourselves as warmth, within the cosmic warmth, we do not experience this as warmth in the usual way of the sense-world, but as weaving, strength-giving love. As the beings of love which we are in the super-sensible, we experience ourselves among beings who can do no other than draw love out of their own essence; who can have no other existence than that of beings of love in the midst of a cosmic existence of love. Thus do we experience ourselves, to begin with, between going to sleep and waking, in a spiritual existence imbued through and through with love.

Therefore, if we wish really to enter the world in which we are every time we go to sleep until we wake, we must enhance our capacity for loving; otherwise this world is bound to remain an unknown world. Here in our earthly world it is not spiritualised love that holds sway, but a love in which the impulse of the senses prevails. In the spiritual world, however, it is spiritualised love—as I have been picturing it. Hence, whoever aspires to enter consciously the world he experiences every night has to develop his capacity for loving in the way described yesterday.

Now a man cannot find his true self without this capacity for love; for all that he really is during sleep—during a third part of his life on Earth—remains a closed book for him unless he can find his way into it through the training and enhancement of love. All that is experienced during sleep would have to remain an unsolved riddle for earthly being if they had no wish to enhance their capacity for love, so as to be able to gain some degree of knowledge about their own existence, their own being, in the changed condition between going to sleep and waking. But the form of activity developed in our thinking when we have our physical body and etheric body within us—that is, in our waking state—we leave behind in bed, and during sleep this becomes united in movement with the whole Cosmos. Anyone who wishes to understand clearly what goes on in the physical and etheric bodies during the night would have to be able to perceive from outside, while living as a being of warmth and light, how the etheric body goes on thinking all through the night.

We still have the power to think even when with our souls we are not there at all, for what we leave behind in the bed carries the waves of thinking on and on. And when we wake in the morning, we sink down into what has thus continued to think while lying there in bed. We meet our own thoughts again. They were not without life between our going to sleep and waking, although we were not present. To-morrow I shall be describing how, when thus absent, we can be much cleverer, far more intelligent, than during the day, when with our soul we are actually within our thoughts.

To-day I wished to indicate how thinking is continuous in the etheric and physical bodies, and how on waking in the morning, when we are aware of having had a dream, the dream tells us, as it were: When your soul wakes, and dives down again into the etheric body and physical body, it loses something of its power. On the one hand you have the physical body and etheric body; and on the other hand you have the astral organisation and Ego-organisation which in the morning re-enter the physical and etheric bodies. When they re-enter, it is as if a dense wave were flowing into one less dense—there is a blockage, experienced as a morning dream. The Ego and the astral body, which have been weaving all night in light and warmth, dive back into the thoughts, but by not at once understanding them, get them confused, and this blockage is experienced as a morning dream.

What more there is to say about dreams, how they are a puzzling element in human life, and the further relation between sleeping and waking—all this we will consider tomorrow.

Response to questions

Written questions were submitted, but the wording has not been preserved

On the first question about the nature of sleep:

My dear audience!

Perhaps it is appropriate to say a few words about the questions that have been asked here. First of all, one of the questioners is surprised at how little specialist medicine cares about what happens during sleep. - Yes, one need not really be surprised at this, for the present science of nature has only attained its greatness by refraining from all that is spiritual, by confining itself to all that is not spiritual; but one really cannot study the state of sleep and all that is connected with it without finding the passage from the physical world into the spiritual world. That is why it is very understandable that today, in specialized medicine, at most the borderline states of waking and sleeping are spoken of, but not actually that which extends from the sleeping state into the waking state and vice versa. I will be talking about these images in my lecture tomorrow. It is always better if these questions are discussed in context.

Now it is said that there are people who do not remember anything at all that they experienced during the sleep state, but that there are people who remember all kinds of things. Yes, I would at least like to ask the question first: How do we know whether what a person tells us when he wakes up from his sleep, whether what he remembers is really everything he experienced in his sleep? How do you know when the things he says are true? Of course, if things are to be externally verifiable, then you have to check the degree of his sleep. It may well be that at first some things from waking are heard in sleep. But these things cannot be taken lightly, but must be examined exactly; so that the general opinion that some people tell all sorts of things about their sleep cannot have any meaning from the outset. Everything has to be examined carefully, and I will have a lot to say in the lectures about what people experience in their sleep. And so you will see that what is probably meant by the question at hand here covers extraordinarily little of what man really experiences every night between falling asleep and waking up, when he passes over into a completely different world and when he also experiences in a completely different way. That is what must be taken into account. That's why it's a good idea to wait for the next lectures on this question; some things will change of their own accord. So it is not that I do not want to respond to these questions, that is not the case at all, but some things can only be answered in the lectures, and then they will be answered more completely and more appropriately than they can be answered outside of time. So it is not unfriendliness if something is postponed, but it is really quite appropriate.

On the question about the effects of alcohol and similar substances:

Now I want to come back for a moment to something that is wanted: Physical substances have certain spiritual powers in them. The fact that something is a physical substance is really only an outward appearance; physical substances already have spiritual powers within them. Now you see, I said this morning: In ordinary sleep, I and the astral body are separated from the etheric body and the physical body, which lie in bed, and I said that man sometimes thinks more cleverly when he is not present with his soul life than when he is present.

Now some physical substances have the peculiarity that they loosen the ego and the astral body without putting the person to sleep. Even ordinary alcohol has this effect under certain circumstances. If then a somewhat irregular connection between the etheric body and the organ of speech or the organ of thought is still present, then under certain circumstances the human being can speak or write in such a way that he is loosened with his ego or astral body, and then that which resonates in the etheric body writes, and this can certainly be something much more significant than what the human being speaks or writes when he is present with ego and astral body. One must not, of course, carry these things to practical measures; one must not, of course, claim that someone can become a good poet by indulging in opium in this or that way, but on the other hand these things are quite in accordance with reality. In this way one enters into quite dangerous chapters of human life. And for very many phenomena in the world it is necessary, really necessary, to know these connections. You cannot understand the achievements of some people if you do not know under what influence of a substantial kind - purely external material - they have created something. It is possible, for example, with Nietzsche, as well as with Coleridge, in some of their works at least, to really interpret each individual manner of expression as the progress of the etheric body in an independent way.

So we must admit to ourselves: this etheric body within us is a very, very clever entity. And it is actually prevented by what we can do in the astral body and in the ego in the waking state from always expressing its cleverness. It is actually impossible to imagine what a sum of intelligence is present when a number of people are gathered somewhere! Only the egos and the astral bodies are always the obstacles to this cleverness coming to the surface. That is what I have always expressed in my lectures: the ego is actually the baby in the human being, it is the most undeveloped.

On the question relating to olfactory perceptions:

With regard to the individual sensory perceptions that one is accustomed to having in the physical world, it must be said that in the way these sensory perceptions are present in the physical world, they must not be sought directly in the spiritual world. It is precisely for this reason that I tried to express myself very precisely when I spoke about colors. I said that the experience in the spiritual world consists in the fact that one experiences the same thing with a spiritual impression as one experiences with a certain perception of color. And I said that when one perceives red in the physical world, one has a certain inner experience, the feeling that something attacking is coming towards one, whereas with blue, for example, one has the feeling that one must humbly surrender oneself to what is revealed in the color. If one makes these experiences clear to oneself, all the attacking qualities of the red, the humbling qualities of the blue or blue-violet color, then one can speak of having the same inner experience of perceptions in the spiritual world as one has of the red or blue in the physical world, that one has in the spiritual world what corresponds to the red or blue. At that moment - and indeed precisely when one passes over to imaginative cognition - one becomes one with the object, and the whole experience is different from that in the physical world, so that one has precisely this being inside the color in relation to color perceptions of the spiritual world; thereby the whole experience acquires a different character. But it is nevertheless fully justified to speak of color perceptions in the spiritual world - fully justified that one really experiences a red, a blue, a green and so on when spiritual beings or entities appear. This is justified for the reason that even when the colors appear in the physical world, the colors are not at all what they are regarded as today in physics, for example, but the colors are always, where they appear, physical projections, shadings out of the spiritual, out of the astral world. So that if you have somewhere - let us say the red - you have the shadow given in the physical, the physical shadow of a process in the spiritual, in the astral world, which, if you experience it directly, makes an attacking impression on your own self.

The following can now be said: If thinking becomes so inwardly alive as I have described it in these days, then it resembles a tactile sensation in a spiritual way. So that actually perception in the etheric world begins with a kind of spiritual tactile perception. And then one gradually penetrates further and further, one differentiates these tactile perceptions and comes to be able to speak of colors, also of sounds and so on.

Now we need to talk about olfactory perceptions. It must be said that the olfactory perceptions here in the physical world are relatively the most influenced by the spiritual, strange as that may seem. The perception of smell, when it occurs directly in the physical world, is actually always caused by a spiritual-astral element coming as close as possible to the material. And one can therefore say that scents are the physical revelations of the spiritual. Therefore one will find that for all other sensory perceptions one finds corresponding things in the spiritual world, and one can speak of a spiritual perception of touch, of a spiritual perception of sight, of a spiritual perception of sound and so on, but it is very difficult to speak of a spiritual perception of smell, because the perception of smell actually already lives itself out completely in the physical world. When the spirit - if I may express myself figuratively - descends deepest into the physical world, that is when the perception of smell arises.

The mind descends a little less deeply when it perceives taste. Therefore, the perception of taste is already such that one can speak of a spiritual correlate. One can speak of something correlative in the perception of taste, but less so in the perception of smell. You see, one could now continue the chapter I began yesterday on language, but I only want to emphasize one thing: In language, when it is experienced, in every language there is actually a real spiritual being, and one does not speak of the genius of language only in a figurative sense - or at least one should not speak of it only in a figurative sense. There really is a spiritual being there! And there is more to language than the individual often understands. The way in which sounds, i.e. tones, letters and words, syllables are combined in language has a spirituality of its own, is animated in itself, and we grow into this spirituality, into this animation. And so there really are expressions, terms in language that actually point to deeper inner connections. And that's why we don't talk about taste in aesthetics for nothing. There you can already see, I would like to say, for the ordinary consciousness, the sensation of taste translated into the spiritual. But one cannot speak in the same way of an ensouling of the olfactory sensation; it is actually more or less finished in the physical world.

At most, our excellent, serious and humorous German poet Christian Morgenstern, who died in 1914 and who had previously been a member of the Anthroposophical Society for a long time, used smell in a humorous and fantastic way to draw it up into the spiritual world. And just as he expressed many other things that do not correspond to reality, but are therefore no less humorous, very amusing, just as he expressed many other things in this way in his humorous poems, he also wrote a humorous poem about an organ that you cannot hear, that does not make itself known through sounds, expresses itself in harmonies and so on, but that lets different fragrances flow out of itself through different holes, which smell in different ways; When the various keys are struck, certain fragrances always flow out of the holes, which then create a context: Fragrance harmonies, fragrance melodies and so on. This is Christian Morgenstern's famous “olfactory organ”, which he talks about in a humorous way in this poem.

But this thing is quite amusing, and it must be said that smell is actually something closed to the physical world. The spirit has descended furthest there, makes itself known in the physical world, and the olfactory, the fragrant, cannot be raised in the same way as, for example, taste, but especially as that which appears in the higher senses. It is therefore quite right, and it is quite in keeping with reality, that in literature the evil spirits, who are so fond of entering the physical world and doing all sorts of things to people there, should be made to smell. You will find allusions everywhere in literature to the fact that the evil spirits are somewhat intrusive precisely with regard to the sense of smell. This is quite true in the sense that smell is actually something separate from the physical world. It is somewhat the case that it can also be spoken of in the higher worlds, but not very far up. But, as I said, smell is something that is only there because the spiritual descends into the material, atomized into the smallest parts, so that matter is already most spiritual in smell. And that is why in earlier times, when this was felt even more, fragrance was perceived as a spiritual manifestation. That is what we can say about this subject in a few words.

On the question concerning “being wise in sleep”:

I don't want to talk about the healing method mentioned here, because that leads onto a subject I don't like to talk about. Such judgment of contemporaries in this or that field is not really in my habit, but I would like to suggest in a few words what may be of interest in the question, quite apart from this particular healing method.

If we take the etheric body of the human being, it is actually the carrier of thoughts. It is true that the etheric body is the carrier of the immediately present thoughts in general, and also the cause that thoughts can pass over into memories and be retrieved from the memories again; it is only necessary for the earthly human being that this etheric body is, as it were, stuck inside the physical body. This is necessary for the reason that man as an earthly being needs a kind of resistance for that which takes place in the etheric body. Just as we as earth beings cannot walk in the air, but need a ground on which we walk, but the ground does nothing at all to make us walk, it only gives us the resistance - so it is with what goes on in the etheric body of man. The whole play of thought, the whole course of thought takes place in the etheric body; but the thought would not come alive in the waking man if there were not a resistance, if every movement of living thought did not come up against the physical body. It does nothing, but it gives resistance. This makes the person in waking consciousness aware of the thoughts that take place in the etheric body.

Now it is really the case that when a person is asleep, that is, when the physical and etheric bodies are lying in bed and the person is closed off in his astral body and I from the physical and etheric bodies, then the etheric body continues to think. Now the etheric body is in fact dependent on rhythm and repetition for its thinking, that is, for the processes that take place in it, and it best preserves that which is given to it through rhythm and repetition. Therefore, it is basically quite wrong if we interpret oriental writings, which contain many repetitions, according to our occidental habits in such a way that we omit the repetitions and only give the content once. For the authors of these Oriental writings it was not merely the content that mattered, which the Occidental writer regards as the main thing, for the Westerner is a European man, and when he has thought something once, he has thought it and does not want to think it again; at most he prays the same Lord's Prayer every day, but on the whole he is a “European” man in regard to content, he does not experience his activity by rhythmizing; thus the Western man sins every day against what the etheric body actually demands of him. The etheric body wants to repeat, and in those times of the ancient East, where these habits were well known, these repetitions were therefore always cultivated with full consciousness, because one knew what one was doing. I don't know whether this sin is also committed in England, but we have translations in German which actually reproduce things in the most incredible way. If the Buddha discourses have many repetitions, then the German translator only translates once. But that's not what matters - the mere content of the Buddha discourses - but what matters is that you absorb these Buddha discourses and actually let every repetition run its course - again and again and again every repetition runs its course. And no matter how many repetitions there are, the number of these repetitions is also significant. These secrets were known in those times. And those who translate Buddha discourses into prose in this way already show that they do not understand the slightest thing about the whole of Oriental civilization and the whole of Oriental spiritual life.

Now the etheric body is at the same time that which is actually the healing principle in man. And when we prepare remedies, if we do it wisely, we are really aiming for this. Today, medicine does everything empirically, as it says; you try out how this or that works: If it works in such-and-such a percentage, it is declared to be a cure; if the percentage is low, it is declared not to be a cure, and so on - the correlations are not taken into account. Now it has been requested that I also give a lecture on anthroposophy in medicine during this summer course. Such things will then be discussed. But as I said, the actual healing is not only in these remedies. When we prepare remedies with full awareness, we always have in mind to bring the etheric body to particular effectiveness at the body part in question where the healing is to intervene. Let us say someone has a liver disease; if we could bring the etheric body of the liver to special effectiveness through a corresponding remedy, this would mean healing. So, it is precisely on this principle of bringing the etheric body to effectiveness that the stasis methods often used today are rightly based. If you have an injury somewhere, on some phalanx and so on, and you dam up above the injured area, so that for external physical observation a so-called “asleep” limb is created, then in the simplest way the etheric body becomes more effective than it would otherwise be, because it is switched out of the physical, and through the simple, mechanical constriction the etheric body asserts itself in the simplest way. But one can also say that if a person, especially an occidental person who is not used to using it in any other way in life, is allowed to repeat things in the right way that relate to his recovery, the etheric body enters into a certain rhythm, but it then also switches itself out of the physical habit, and healing powers can awaken. This can certainly be the case. But one must be clear about the fact that these things can work well with occidental man because he is not used to living in rhythm. The oriental man, who uses rhythm more for his spiritual life, as I have indicated, becomes immune to these things and must then seek other healing methods. What you want to use as a remedy must be something that is unfamiliar to you, that you rarely or never use. Therefore it is also good - not if it is an acute illness, but if it is a chronic illness - that if you have a very effective remedy in certain substances, you do not let the patient concerned enjoy this substance for some time, i.e. you wean him off it; then you can use it later, after he has not enjoyed it for a while, as a healing substance. These things are all connected.

Here you can see best how the material is connected with the spiritual, in that a mere repetition of the same thing, which relates to recovery, awakens healing powers in the etheric body.

Of course, one must be aware of how much dilettantism is being practiced in this field today. And it is precisely for this reason that I do not want to talk about individual healing methods that occur here and there, but would only like to point out how a real realization of the penetration of the whole human being in the physical, etheric, astral body and in the ego only gives a complete possibility to speak therapeutically about the human being.