The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] I attempted to show in my last observations how, in the realm of human evolution, the psycho-spiritual existence is transferred to that of the physical senses. Now it depends on the understanding which man can bring to bear on this transference whether he can gain a relationship, in accordance with modern consciousness, to the event of Golgotha and its reference to man's development on earth.

[ 2 ] If one does not realize in one's own physical nature how something psycho-spiritual has so changed itself from a spiritual form of experience as to become manifest in the physical world of the senses, one will also never know how the Christ spirit coming from spirit worlds was made manifest in the man Jesus on earth.

[ 3 ] But it must be once more emphasized that it is not a case of individual knowledge derived from observation, but rather of understanding with one's whole nature and being what observation has brought to light. Only a few men achieve the former, but the latter is possible to all. The man who realizes the worlds through which the human soul has passed in its pre-earthly existence, learns also to look up to Him who before the event of the mystery of Golgotha had lived as Christ only in those worlds, and who through this mystery and since its occurrence had united His life with mortal humanity.

[ 4 ] Our earthly souls have attained the condition in which they now live only through a gradual development. Ordinary consciousness takes the condition of the soul as it is to-day and constructs a ‘history’, in which things are represented as if man in the grey dawn of time had thought and willed and felt practically as he does now. But that is not so. There have been times in which the soul condition was quite different—times when there was no such sharp distinction between sleeping and waking. Dreams now are the only bridge between the two; and their content has something deceptive and questionable about them. Primitive man knew a stage between full wakefulness and unconscious sleep, which was pictorial and remote from the senses, but revealing something really spiritual, just as the sense-observation reveals something of the actually physical.

[ 5 ] In this life of pictures, and not of thoughts, early man had a dream-like experience of his pre-earthly existence. He felt his pre-earthly soul-nature as an echo of what he had gone through. On the other hand he had not that sense of self which present-day man has. He did not find himself in the same degree as to-day as an ‘Ego’. [ 6 ] This feeling has arisen only in the course of human spiritual evolution, and the decisive epoch of this development is that in which occurred also the event of Golgotha.

[ 7 ] At this time in the ordinary consciousness the psychic experience of an echo from pre-earthly existence grew ever fainter. Man's knowledge of himself became more and more limited to what his physical sense-life on earth told him,

[ 8 ] Moreover from, this moment the perception of death took on a new meaning. Previously man knew, as I have described, of the central point of his being. He knew it through the contemplation of this echo in such case that he was convinced this echo could not be affected by death. At the moment of historical time when the view became limited to the physical nature of man, death became a disturbing problem for the soul.

[ 9 ] The further development of purely inner faculties of knowledge did not suffice to solve this problem. It was solved by the events of Golgotha occurring in the evolution of the earth.

[ 10 ] The Christ came down to earthly existence from those worlds in which man had passed his pre-earthly life. By combining the experience of the ordinary awake consciousness with the contemplation of the acts of Christ, man can find, since Golgotha, what he formerly found through a natural function of his consciousness.

[ 11 ] The ‘Initiates’ of the ancient Mysteries spoke to their followers in such a way that they saw in their considerations of pre-earthly life a gift of grace from that spiritual Sun-Being which has its counterpart in the physical sun.

[ 12 ] The Initiates who at the time of the mystery of Golgotha still continued the ancient initiation-methods, told those who had ears to hear how the Being who had before given to man the echo from spiritual worlds of pre-earthly existence that he could carry into the earthly life, had descended as the Christ upon the physical earth and taken flesh in the person of the man Jesus.

[ 13 ] Those who knew the truth about the mystery of Golgotha always, as in the early days of Christianity, spoke of the Christ-Being as one who had descended from spiritual worlds to an earthly one. The teachers of mankind of that time stressed particularly this aspect of the Christ coming from a higher world down to the earth.

[ 14 ] This view was conditioned by the fact that one still knew enough, from the ancient initiation, about the supernatural worlds, to see in Christ a Being of the spiritual world before his descent to earth.

[ 15 ] The remnants of this knowledge lasted into the Fourth Century, and then faded in man's consciousness. The event of Golgotha thus became an event which was known only through the construction of political history.

The principles of initiation of the old world were lost to the outer world, and took root only in almost unknown places. Only now in the last third of the nineteenth Century has a stage in human evolution been reached again in which the new Initiation, as has been described leads to an aspect of Christ's nature within the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] It was necessary for the complete unfolding of the ego-consciousness, which was to come into being in the development of humanity, that initiate knowledge should disappear for a few centuries, and that man should turn his attention to the outer world of the senses in which the ego-consciousness could be freely cultivated.

[ 17 ] Thus it was only possible for the Christian community to direct the attention of believers to the historical tradition concerning the mystery of Golgotha and to clothe what was once known by spiritual knowledge in ‘Dogmas of Belief’ for the Earth. The content of these Dogmas does not concern us here, but only the manner in which they affect the soul, whether through faith, belief or through knowledge.

[ 18 ] It is again possible to-day to have a direct knowledge of the Christ. The figure of Jesus stood for centuries in front of the ordinary consciousness, and the Christ who lived in him, had become an object of faith. But more and more the inclination to dogmatic faith grew less, precisely among the spiritual leaders of mankind; Jesus was seen more and more only as history made him appear to the ordinary consciousness. The sense of Christ was gradually lost; and so there grew up a modern branch of Theology which concerns itself really only with the man Jesus, and which lacks a living sense of the Christ. But a mere Jesus-Faith is really -no longer Christianity.

[ 19 ] In the consciousness which early man had of his pre-earthly existence, he had also an anchorage for a proper relationship to his existence, after death on earth.

In later times his union with the Christ was to give him in another way what had thus been given him in primæval time by nature, through the sense of his own life-experience concerning the problem of death. The Christ was so to permeate him, in the words of St. Paul, ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’, that He might be his guide through the gate of death. Man now had indeed something in the ordinary consciousness which could develop the complete Ego-sense, but nothing which could give the soul the strength to approach the gates of Death with certain knowledge of its living passage through them. For ordinary consciousness is a result of the physical body, and therefore can give the soul only such strength as must be regarded as extinguished in death.

[ 20 ] To those who could learn all this from their old initiation, the human physical organism appeared out of order, for they had to assume that it could not develop the power to give the soul such a comprehensive consciousness as to enable it to live its full life. Christ appeared as the soul-doctor of the world, as the Healer, the Saviour, and as such in His fundamental relationship to humanity He must be recognized.

[ 21 ] The event of death and its relationship to the Christ is to be the subject of my next study.

[ 22 ] Through the taking-up of the Christ-experience a Philosophy has grown out of what the ancient consciousness, deepened by the saying of the Initiates, had given to man as an experience of eternity, and a philosophy which can include the divine Father principle. The Father in Spirit can be regarded again as the all-pervading Being. Cosmology gains its Christian character through the knowledge of the Christ who, as a Being from outside the earth, assumed mortal shape in the person of Jesus. In the events of human evolution the Christ is recognized as the Being to whose lot has fallen a decisive part in this evolution. And through the re-awakening of the half-forgotten knowledge of the ‘Eternal Man’, the human mind is led out of the purely sense-world in which the ego-consciousness develops, to the spirit, which can be experienced with full understanding by the soul in conjunction with God the Father and the Christ in a renewed perceptive knowledge of Religion.

[ 1 ] In his sleeping state Man is given over to the Cosmos. He carried over to the Cosmos in sleep that which is his, as the fruit of previous Earth-lives, when he comes down out of the world of soul and spirit into the earthly world. He withdraws this inner core of his human being from the Cosmos whilst awake.

[ 2 ] In this rhythm of being given over to the Cosmos, and in turn withdrawn from the Cosmos, life rolls on between birth and death.

[ 3 ] The withdrawal from the Cosmos is at the same time an absorption of the man of soul and spirit by the nerves-and-senses organism. To the physical and life-processes which go on in this organism, the spirit-and-soul part of Man is united during waking life; it combines with them in a homogeneous system of working. In this working system are included: Sense-perception, the formation of Memory-pictures, and the life of Fancy. These functions are attached to the physical body. Mental conceptions, the life of Thought, in which Man becomes conscious of what goes on half unconsciously in sense-perception, fancy and memory—these are attached to the Thinking organism.

[ 4 ] This Thinking organism is also, more peculiarly, the region in which Man comes to the consciousness of himself. The Thinking system is a Star-system. Were it to lead its life purely as a star-system from first to last, Man would bear within him not a Self-consciousness, but a God-consciousness. But the Thinking system is a star system taken out of the starry Cosmos and transplanted into the earthly course of events. In realizing the star world in the life of earth, Man becomes a self-conscious being.

[ 5 ] Here then we find that region of inner human life where the divine-spiritual world, to which Man belongs, sets him free in order that he may become Man in the fullest sense.

[ 6 ] But just below the Thinking organism, in the region where sense-perception, fancy, memory-picturing are going on, there the divine spirit-world is living in and with the life of Man. The divine spirit-world may be said to live in Man's waking state in the evolution of memory. For the two other functions, sense-perception and fancy, are only modifications of this forming of inner memory-pictures. In sense-perception we have the formation of the mind's memory-contents in the nascent state; in fancy's contents we have, lighting up in the soul, what lives on of these memory-contents in the soul's inner life.

[ 7 ] The sleeping state carries Man's soul and spirit over into the cosmic existence. Here, with all the functions of his astral body and I he is immersed in the divine-spiritual Cosmos. He is not only outside the physical, he is also outside the world of stars. But he is within those divine spirit-beings from whom his own existence draws its source.

[ 8 ] At the present moment of cosmic evolution, the manner in which these divine spirit-beings work is to imprint the moral World-Content upon the astral body and the I during the sleeping state. All world-procedures in the sleeping man is real moral procedure—nothing that could be said in the least to resemble the results of an action in external Nature.

[ 9 ] This moral world-procedure, in its after-effects, is carried by Man from his sleeping over into his waking state. The after-workings remain in a state of sleep. For Man wakes only in that life which is turned towards the field of Thought. What is really going on within his Willing sphere, remains even in waking life, veiled in the same dull darkness as is the whole of his soul-life during sleep. But in this sleeping life of Will, the divine spirit-world continues to weave on in his waking state. Man is morally as good—or as bad—as he can be, according to how near he can come to the divine-spiritual beings in his sleep. And he comes nearer to or remains further from them, according as his previous earth-lives have been in a moral direction.

[ 10 ] From the depths of the soul's waking being rises the echo of what the soul has been able to receive, implanted into her during sleep in communion with the divine-spiritual world. This voice, ringing up from the depths, is the voice of Conscience.

[ 11 ] Thus the very thing for which a materialist view of the world is most prone to find an explanation solely on the natural side, shows itself, for spiritual knowledge, to lie on the moral side.

[ 12 ] In Memory, divine spiritual Being works in the waking man directly. In Conscience, the same divine spiritual Being works in the waking man indirectly—as an after-effect.

[ 13 ] Memory is formed in the nerves-and-senses organism. Conscience is formed—though as a process purely of the soul and spirit—within the metabolic and limb organism.

[ 14 ] Between the two lies the rhythmic organism. Conscience is formed—though as a process purely of the soul and spirit—within the metabolic and limb organism. This is developed in two directions, so that each side is polar in relation to the other. As Breathing rhythm, it is intimately associated with Sense-Perception and with Thinking. In lung-breathing, the process is at its coarsest. It becomes more delicate, and as refined and sublimated breathing becomes sense-perceiving and thinking. Still quite close to Breathing—only a breathing through the sense-organs, not through the lungs—is Sense-Perception. Beginning then to be more remote from lung-breathing and having for its support the Thinking organism, is the forming of mental conceptions, Thinking as such. And already bordering on the other side upon the rhythm of the blood-circulation—beginning to be an inward breathing that combines with the metabolic and limb organism—is the function which manifests itself in the play of Fancy. [ 15 ] This extends then, as a soul-function, down into the sphere of the Will, even as the circulatory rhythm extends into the metabolic and limb organism.

[ 16 ] In the exercise of Fancy, the Thinking system approaches quite close to the Willing system. It is a dipping-down of the man into his waking sleep-sphere of will. Accordingly, with men whose organization is of this kind, the contents of their soul-world appear like waking dreams. In Goethe there lived a human organization of this kind. That is why he says that Schiller must interpret his poetic dreams for him.

[ 17 ] In Schiller himself the other kind of organization was active. He lived on the strength of what he brought with him from his previous earth-lives. To a strenuous Will, he was obliged to seek the Fancy that should give it content.

[ 18 ] People whose disposition lies more towards the region of Fancy, so that with them all conceptions of sense-reality turn of themselves, so to speak, into pictures of fancy, are the ones on whom the Ahrimanic Powers reckon in their world-plans. They think that with the assistance of people of this kind they will be able completely to cut off the evolution of mankind from its Past and bring it into the direction they are wanting.

[ 19 ] People whose organization tends more towards the region of the Will, but who, out of inner love for an idealistic world-conception, vigorously convert their sense-conceptions into forms of fancy, are the ones on whom the Luciferic Powers reckon. By means of such human beings, the Luciferic Powers hope to maintain Man's evolution altogether within the impulses of the Past. They could then keep Man from going down into the sphere where the Ahrimanic Powers have to be conquered.

[ 20 ] In their earthly life, men are placed between two polar opposites. Overhead, far and wide, spread the Stars. Thence rain the forces which have to do with all that is regular and calculable in Earth-life; regular alternation of day and night, seasons of the year, world-periods of lengthier duration; all this is the earthly reflection of processes originating amid the Stars.

[ 21 ] The opposite pole radiates from the inside of the Earth. The Irregular has here its life. Wind and weather, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, volcanic outbursts, reflect these inner Earth-events.

[ 22 ] Man is an image of this Star-and-Earth life. In his Thinking system lives the Order of the Stars. In his Limb and Will-system lives Earth-Chaos. In the Rhythmic system, Man's own earthly being is realized in the free balance of the two.

Leading Thoughts

[ 23 ] Man has received his spiritual and bodily organization from two sides. Firstly, an organization from the physical and etheric Cosmos. All that is radiating of divine spiritual being into this organization in the human being, lives in him as the power of Sense-Perception, the faculty of Memory and the play of Fancy.

[ 24 ] Secondly, Man received his organization from his preceding Earth-lives. This organization is entirely one of soul and spirit, and lives in Man through the astral body and the I. The life of divine-spiritual beings which here finds its way into Man's being, works on and lights up in Man as the Voice of Conscience and the like.

[ 25 ] In his Rhythmic organization, Man is forever combining the divine-spiritual impulses from both sides. In the inner living realization of this rhythm, the power of Memory is carried into the life of Will, and the force of Conscience into the life of Ideas.

[ 1 ] In sleep man is given up to the Cosmos. He carries out into the Cosmos that which he possesses as a result of former lives on Earth, when he descends from the world of soul-and-spirit into the earthly world. During his waking life he withdraws this content of his human being from the Cosmos.

[ 2 ] In this rhythmic giving-himself-up to the Cosmos and withdrawing from it, man's life between birth and death takes its course.

[ 3 ] While he withdraws it from the Cosmos, the soul-spiritual being of man is at the same time received by the system of nerves and senses. With the physical and life-processes that take place in the nerves-and-senses system, the soul-and-spirit of man combines in waking life, so that they work together unitedly. In this united action, sense-perception, the forming of memory-pictures and the play of fancy are contained. All these activities are bound to the physical body. The conceptions, the thinking experience—in which man becomes conscious of what is taking place half-consciously in perception, fancy and memory—are bound to the thinking system.

[ 4 ] In this thinking Organisation properly speaking, there also lies the region by which man experiences his self-consciousness. The thinking Organisation is an Organisation of the stars. If it lived and expressed itself as such alone, man would bear within him not a consciousness of self but a consciousness of the Gods. The thinking Organisation is, however, lifted out of the Cosmos of the stars and transplanted into the realm of earthly processes. Man becomes a self-conscious being in that he experiences the world of stars within the earthly realm.

[ 5 ] Here, therefore, we have the region of the inner life of man where the Divine-Spiritual world, united with the human being, sets him free in order that he may become Man in the fullest sense.

[ 6 ] But directly beneath the thinking organisation—namely, where sense-perception, the play of fancy and the forming of memory, take place—the Divine-Spiritual world lives on within the life of man. We may say: it is in the unfolding of memory that the Divine-Spiritual lives in the waking state of man. For the other two activities, sense-perception and the play of fancy, are only modifications of the process that goes on in the forming of memory-pictures. In sense-perception we have the forming of a memory-content at the moment of its origin; in the content of fancy there lights up in the soul that of the content of memory which is preserved within the soul's existence.

[ 7 ] Sleep carries over the soul-spiritual being of man into the cosmic world. With the activity of his astral body and his Ego, the sleeping man is steeped in the Divine-Spiritual Cosmos. He is not only outside the physical but outside the world of stars. But he is within the Divine-Spiritual Beings in whom his own existence has its origin.

[ 8 ] In the present moment of cosmic evolution these Divine Spiritual Beings work in such a way as to impress the moral content of the Universe into the astral body and Ego of man during sleep. All the World-processes in sleeping man are really moral processes, and cannot be spoken of as even remotely like the activities of Nature.

[ 9 ] In their after-effects, man carries these processes over from sleeping into waking. But the after-effects remain asleep. For man is awake in that part of his life only which inclines to the sphere of Thought. What actually takes place in his sphere of Will is wrapped in darkness even in the waking state, as the whole life of the soul is wrapped in darkness during sleep. But in this sleeping life of the Will, the Divine-Spiritual works on in the waking life of man. Morally, man is as good or as bad as he can be according to the nearness with which he approaches the Divine-Spiritual Beings when asleep. And he comes nearer to them, or remains farther away from them, according to the moral quality of his former lives on Earth.

[ 10 ] From the depths of the waking being of the soul's existence, that which was able to implant itself in the soul's existence, in community with the Divine-Spiritual world during sleep, sounds forth. This is the voice of conscience.

[ 11 ] We see how the very things which a materialistic view of the world is most inclined to explain merely from the natural side, are found to lie on the moral side of things when seen by spiritual knowledge.

[ 12 ] In Memory the Divine-Spiritual being works directly within the waking man. In Conscience the same Divine-Spiritual being works in the waking man indirectly—as an after-effect.

[ 13 ] The forming of memory takes place in the Organisation of nerves and senses. The forming of conscience takes place—albeit as a pure process of soul and spirit—in the metabolic and limbs-system.

[ 14 ] Between the two there lies the rhythmic Organisation, whose activity is polarised in two directions. In the breathing rhythm it is in intimate relation to sense-perception and to thought. In the breathing of the lung the process is at its coarsest. Thence it grows finer and finer, till, as a highly refined breathing process, it becomes sense-perception and thought.

Sense-perception is still very near to breathing; it is only a breathing through the sense-organs, not through the lungs. Thought, ideation, is farther removed from the lung-breathing, and is upheld by the Thinking system of man. And that which reveals itself in the play of fancy is already very close to the rhythm of blood-circulation. It is a very inward breathing, that comes into connection with the system of metabolism and the limbs. Psychologically, too, the activity of fancy reaches down into the sphere of Will, just as the circulatory system reaches down into the system of metabolism and the limbs.

[ 15 ] In the activity of fancy, the thinking system comes close up to the system of the Will. [ 16 ] The human being dives down into that sphere of his waking life which is asleep—the sphere of Will. Hence, in human beings who are especially developed in this direction, the contents of the soul appear like dreams in the waking state. Such a human Organisation was present in Goethe. Goethe once said that Schiller must interpret to him his own poetic dreams.

[ 17 ] In Schiller himself, a different human system was at work. He lived on the strength of what he brought with him from former lives on Earth. He had a strong life of the Will, and had to seek actively for the corresponding wealth of fancy.

[ 18 ] The Ahrimanic Power, in its world-intentions, counts upon those human beings who are especially developed in the sphere of fancy—whose perception of sense-reality quite naturally transforms into the pictures of fancy. With the help of such human beings, the Ahrimanic Power hopes to be able to cut off the evolution of mankind from the past, and carry it on in the direction of its own, Ahrimanic intentions.

[ 19 ] The Luciferic Power reckons on those human beings who, while naturally more developed in the sphere of Will, are inspired by an inner love for the ideal world-conception to transform their vision of sense-reality actively into pictures of creative fancy. Through such human beings the Luciferic Power would like to keep human evolution entirely within the impulses of the past. It would thus be able to preserve mankind from diving down into the sphere where the Ahrimanic Power must be overcome.

[ 20 ] In this our earthly existence, we stand between two opposite poles. Above us spread the stars. From thence there radiate the forces which are connected with all things calculable and regular in Earth-existence. The regular alternation of day and night, the seasons, the longer cosmic periods, are the earthly reflection of the real process in the stars.

[ 21 ] The other pole radiates out from the interior of the Earth. Irregular activities are at work in it. Wind and weather, thunder and lightning, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, are a reflection of this process of the inner Earth.

[ 22 ] Man himself is an image of this existence of the Stars and Earth. In his Thinking system lives the order of the Stars; in the Willing system of his limbs the chaos of the Earth. In the Rhythmic system he experiences in consciousness his own earthly being, in free balance and interplay between the two.

(March, 1925)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with regard to the foregoing study on Memory and Conscience)

[ 23 ] 174. Man is organised in spirit and in body from two different sides. First, from the physical-etheric Cosmos. Whatever radiates from the Divine-Spiritual Being into this organisation in man's nature, lives in it as the force of sense-perception, of the faculty of memory and of the play of fancy.

[ 24 ] 175. Secondly, man is organised out of his own past lives on Earth. This Organisation is purely of the soul and spirit, and lives in him through the astral body and the Ego. Whatever enters of the life of Divine-Spiritual Beings into this human nature—its influence lights up in a man as the voice of conscience and all that is akin to this.

[ 25 ] 176. In his rhythmic Organisation man has the constant union of the Divine-Spiritual impulses from the two sides. In life and experience of rhythm the force of memory is carried into the Willing life, and the might of conscience into the life in Ideas.

[ 1 ] In selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe. Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.

[ 2 ] Now, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication—one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.

Furthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.

[ 3 ] The very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe—fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.

In gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.

Another fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.

You will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents, as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century, I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. [ 4 ] Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.

If you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life—a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.

All attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness—a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. [ 5 ] Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher—that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory—was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”

What we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.

If you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century—for instance, to those of Burdach—you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.

[ 6 ] When, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body—when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.

[ 7 ] At that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.

[ 8 ] Now, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.

Man had now—and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe—to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.

It is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.

[ 9 ] The whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory—all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature—indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.

[ 10 ] It is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.

Materialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree—in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.

And yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.

In the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce—to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.

[ 11 ] Among those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view—a strange one, coming from him:

“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”

In these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man—a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:

“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.”¹

[ 12 ] Thus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation, and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.

Haeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.

Let us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.

[ 13 ] Now, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.

[ 14 ] The results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.

[ 15 ] At the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:

1. The origin of energy and matter
2. How did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?
3. How did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”
4. How is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?
5. Assuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.
6. How do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?
7. How can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?

[ 16 ] It was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe. His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.

[ 17 ] At the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere—such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows:—

“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”

He considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple”—if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words:—

“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’—‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” [ 18 ] At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.

By the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions—spiritual eyes—are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.

For this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”

The scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.

This also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”

[ 19 ] Theosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible—nay, that it is certain—that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs—spiritual eyes—to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”

This must be taken on faith at first—nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.

The ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.

[ 20 ] There is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there—life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.)

[ 21 ] Now, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.

Then the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.

Tones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust, pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds: “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!” Faust, Part II.

[ 22 ] Here we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel—a structure none can admire more profoundly than I—then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.

[ 23 ] I will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.

The true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.

For all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.

[ 24 ] Just as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.

Natural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.

[ 25 ] From the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.

We will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.

[ 26 ] Materialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”

[ 27 ] Now, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.

It is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.

[ 28 ] We may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”

But we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.

In actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.

The creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.

Externally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.

[ 29 ] Hence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile—after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.

[ 30 ] It depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words: “The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.” The same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase: “Were the eye not sun-like—how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision—could it enrapture us?” and an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.

The fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.

[ 31 ] It is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms!² The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man—God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says: “Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”) —Bayard Taylor's translation.

Thus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves.

• 1. Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso, as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley, published by William Blackwood and Sons:
  
  “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort:
  
  “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”
• 2. The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer.

[ 1 ] In selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe. Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.

[ 2 ] Now, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication—one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.

Furthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.

[ 3 ] The very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe—fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.

In gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.

Another fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.

You will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents, as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century, I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. [ 4 ] Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.

If you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life—a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.

All attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness—a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. [ 5 ] Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher—that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory—was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”

What we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.

If you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century—for instance, to those of Burdach—you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.

[ 6 ] When, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body—when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.

[ 7 ] At that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.

[ 8 ] Now, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.

Man had now—and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe—to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.

It is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.

[ 9 ] The whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory—all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature—indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.

[ 10 ] It is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.

Materialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree—in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.

And yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.

In the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce—to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.

[ 11 ] Among those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view—a strange one, coming from him:

“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”

In these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man—a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:

“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.”¹

[ 12 ] Thus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation, and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.

Haeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.

Let us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.

[ 13 ] Now, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.

[ 14 ] The results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.

[ 15 ] At the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:

1. The origin of energy and matter
2. How did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?
3. How did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”
4. How is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?
5. Assuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.
6. How do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?
7. How can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?

[ 16 ] It was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe. His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.

[ 17 ] At the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere—such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows:—

“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”

He considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple”—if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words:—

“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’—‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” [ 18 ] At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.

By the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions—spiritual eyes—are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.

For this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”

The scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.

This also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”

[ 19 ] Theosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible—nay, that it is certain—that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs—spiritual eyes—to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”

This must be taken on faith at first—nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.

The ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.

[ 20 ] There is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there—life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.)

[ 21 ] Now, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.

Then the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.

Tones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust, pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds: “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!” Faust, Part II.

[ 22 ] Here we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel—a structure none can admire more profoundly than I—then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.

[ 23 ] I will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.

The true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.

For all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.

[ 24 ] Just as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.

Natural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.

[ 25 ] From the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.

We will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.

[ 26 ] Materialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”

[ 27 ] Now, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.

It is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.

[ 28 ] We may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”

But we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.

In actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.

The creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.

Externally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.

[ 29 ] Hence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile—after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.

[ 30 ] It depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words: “The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.” The same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase: “Were the eye not sun-like—how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision—could it enrapture us?” and an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.

The fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.

[ 31 ] It is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms!² The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man—God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says: “Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”) —Bayard Taylor's translation.

Thus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves.

• 1. Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso, as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley, published by William Blackwood and Sons:
  
  “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort:
  
  “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”
• 2. The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer.

As now already since a number of years, I will also try in this winter to hold some talks from the fields of spiritual science. I will also try in this winter to light up different fields of life and knowledge from this spiritual-scientific point of view. Hence, I may ask you today like during the past years again to consider the today's talk not so much as a single one, but to look at the whole cycle of these talks as a more or less unified whole, although I will possibly try to round any single talk, too.

I would like to touch the fields of the spiritual, the moral, and the artistic life in this course of lectures to show how spiritual science can become an enlightening cultural factor for the most different questions that the soul of the present must realise justifiably. It is by no means an approved or popular viewpoint in the present from which I hold these talks. On the contrary, the viewpoint of spiritual science is treated in adversary way and is often misunderstood. Immediately from the start, I may say that about this view of spiritual-science someone is surprised least of all, who stands on this point of view. Since how much is brought forward from the mental pictures and the habitual ways of thinking of the present against this spiritual science—with supposed right—even today; someone understands that best of all who has penetrated just into this spiritual science thoroughly. Contradiction, opposition, and misunderstanding are quite comprehensible to me. One can find misunderstandings in different fields. There on side one believes that this spiritual science establishes on some old, Oriental or other confessions because one believes to recognise a certain resemblance of single points with that what such confessions have represented. The fact that it behaves with such resemblances quite different, one can recognise only in the course of spiritual science. However, I do this indication only.

I want to say as a prologue that spiritual science has nothing to do with any traditions, but that it is based on immediate research results that one can attain without any tradition. From another side one misunderstands spiritual science in as much as one regards it as a kind of new confession, as a kind of sectarian religion. However, it is just as little a confession like any other science of the present. Just as little as one is allowed to say of the chemists that they are a sect of chemistry, one can call spiritual science a sectarian religion. However, the opposition against spiritual science comes from quite different requirements. The different denominations believe that they have to fear any new denomination that it endangers the religious life generally. One will convince himself gradually that the same applies to this spiritual science as it applied to the natural sciences when they began their modern development in the age of Copernicus.

As one believed at that time that the Copernican worldview would endanger the religious life of humanity, as the different confessions exiled Copernicanism for centuries, which may also apply to spiritual science that has a similar task concerning the spirit as Copernicus had a particular task in natural sciences. In the end, one will realise that a similar relation exists between spiritual science and the religious science, like between Copernicanism and religious confessions. One will also realise that one cannot achieve anything against that what culture demands just as little in the fields of the spirit as one was able to do so in the fields of scientific knowledge. I want only to touch these matters at first and then expand on them in the course of the talks.

However, another weighty objection comes from the side that should consider spiritual science as a kind of continuation of its own attempts, which believes to stand on the firm ground of scientific research and thinking. I want today to draw your attention only figuratively to the relation of the modern spiritual science to the current of scientific knowledge. Nobody can acknowledge the high value and great cultural power of the modern scientific way of thinking more than just someone who stands on the ground of spiritual science. Who could let a spiritual current flow in the civilisation that would oppose the scientific thinking? Such a man would not understand how deeply not only in the contents, but also in the whole way of the questions and riddles of knowledge the natural sciences have intervened. I will indeed argue nothing against the entitled demands of science in the course of these talks. Humanity saw this science emerging, saw it entering in our technology, in our traffic, it saw it transforming the outer material world civilisation and conquering the social life of the nations.

However, just because the modern spiritual science understands that, it draws the knowledge from that which natural sciences can perform. If natural sciences are grasped vividly, not abstractly, not theoretically or dogmatically, something can result from natural sciences and their habitual ways of thinking that informs the human soul not only about the outer laws of the sensory world but also about the soul life. This encloses the questions of death and immortality and the whole extent of spiritual life. Since I want to emphasise this from the start that spiritual science (German: Geisteswissenschaft) is meant here not as a summary of various cultural sciences for which today one also often uses the name “Geisteswissenschaften” (humanities)—for history, sociology, art history, legal history and the like. However, that spiritual science is meant as knowledge of a real spiritual life which is as truthful as the physical life round us, and to which the human being belongs with his mind and soul.

However, with it one stands straight away on a field where many spirits of the modern time cannot yet go along because for them the whole way how this spiritual science approaches the spirit and the riddles of life is something quite fantastic and dreamy as basically also the Copernican world view was fantastic and dreamy to the contemporaries. Nevertheless, natural sciences and spiritual science relate to each other possibly in the following way: if a farmer harvests his fruits in the autumn, the biggest part of these fruits is used as human food.

However, a part of these fruits must be sowed again if life should go on. Thus, the biggest part of that what natural sciences have performed as great achievements is determined to go over to the technical, the social, and the traffic life, it is determined to fertilise the material civilisation and to develop the progress of humanity. But in it something is also included that can be handed over again to the human soul without going over to the material life that can be processed in this human soul in the way as I suggest it immediately later, and that appears then in the soul like the seminal grain that has been put in the earth. What the human soul can take up that way is transformed in it and becomes that clairvoyant force—far from any superstition—which can glance at the spiritual world. Since this distinguishes spiritual science from other branches of knowledge: the fact that it requires a development of the human soul beyond the viewpoint which counts, otherwise, in the modern scientificity. In this scientificity one takes the human being in such a way as he observes the world around us and the principles of nature—equipped with his power of cognition, with the sensory observation and his intellectuality—and forms science that way. One takes, I say, the human being as he is, and the human being takes himself, as he is to penetrate into this scientificity.

This does not apply to spiritual science. The spiritual world is for the human being a concealed world at first, it does not exist for the senses and the usual reason. It lies behind the world of the senses, although that what the human being is in his deepest nature belongs to this supersensible world. The human being with his power of cognition if he understands himself in such a way, as he is, belongs to this sensory world and this world of reason. In the deeper sense, he belongs to the spiritual world; but he must develop this deeper sense first. To put it another way: as true it is that the human being takes himself for the usual science as he is, it is also true that he only must transform himself for spiritual science, for the knowledge of the spirit, so that he can penetrate into the spiritual world. One has to develop the cognitive forces for the spiritual world only; the human being must transform himself only, so that the slumbering cognitive faculties awake in him. However, these slumbering cognitive faculties are in him, and he can wake them. However, this is a viewpoint which is rather comfortable, but is incomprehensible in many a respect for the present. Since this present is inclined so much if it concerns questions of higher life to put the question first: what can the human being recognise?—And then some people who live in the habitual ways of thinking of the present rightly say: the human cognitive faculties are limited and he cannot penetrate into a spiritual world. On one side, there are many people saying that there may be such a spiritual world, but the human cognitive faculties are not able to penetrate into it. Others are more radical and say that a spiritual world appears to nobody, consequently, there is none. This is the view of materialism or as one calls it nobler today, of monism.

One cannot argue about that at all that the human being, as well as he is, cannot penetrate into the spiritual world if he wants to grasp it scientifically if he does not only want to believe in it. However, such a mere belief is no longer sufficient for humanity today—and will be less and less adequate for it, because the scientific education has taken place during the last centuries. However, one has to develop the conditions by which the human being can penetrate into the spiritual world.

One normally imagines if one assumes that such a thing is possible that particularly abnormal forces are necessary. These must be forces that are caused by abnormal conditions. This is a misunderstanding, too. What it concerns is that the knowledge, those soul forces by which the human being penetrates into the spiritual world exist in the human soul that they control the soul in our usual life. However, they are subconscious in our everyday life, they control subordinated fields of life, or if they control more important fields, they control them in such a way that one does not notice these forces and their influence. What always exists in the soul what is absent in no soul what exists, however, in the everyday life only to a minor degree must give—developed to a certain height and strength—cognitive forces for spiritual science. I want to draw your attention to a soul quality—because I want to talk not abstractly, but immediately concretely—to a quality that everybody knows that plays a role that gives, however, a basic strength for spiritual science, brought only from its low level to a certain intensity. Every human being knows what one calls directing the attention of the soul to something.

We must turn our attention, our interest to the most various objects; since we need to make mental pictures of these most various objects that remain in our memory and influence our soul perpetually. Which role attention or interest play in the human life, someone will notice who has already reflected once about the good or bad memory. He knows that a good memory is a result of the possibility in many a respect to turn his attention to the things, to pursue them with interest. Something that we are intensively attentive to, something that we were involved with our full interest imprints itself in our soul; this you keep in your soul life. Who passes the things briefly has to complain of a bad memory. Still in other respect attention, interest is important in this human life. Since the inner integrity of our soul life depends on the fact that we keep the things as mental pictures with which we were once connected. Everybody knows that it is necessary for the healthy soul life that the human being keeps the coherence between the present and the experiences. Someone who would not know in a great measure how his self-consciousness, his ego has behaved during the past years, so that he, looking back, would not recognise that he has experienced it, for someone to whom the ego would always be a new experience would have no healthy soul life. In the end, our healthy soul life goes back to the fact that we are able to turn our attention to the things of life. This basic soul force plays a role in life that is always there.

Somebody could say now: hence, you tell to us reporting about spiritual science somethingevery day and you assert that this attention must be further developed. Nevertheless, it is in such a way! This attention may be weak in life, may be weak compared with the intensity that it assumes with the spiritual researcher. Since the increase of attention is something that the spiritual researcher must practice over and over again that he must bring to such an intensity compared with which the level of attention is low in the usual life. One could say that it could be apparently easy to reach the ground of the spiritual-scientific research because it only concerns the development of something that always exists in the usual life. However, the words in Goethe's Faust(verse 4928) also apply: “it's easy, to be sure, but easy tasks take effort.” Many years' exercises spent in perseverance of the soul are necessary to develop the soul strength, and we call this increased life in attention concentration of the spiritual life in spiritual science. We call it concentration of the spiritual life because the human mind or the human soul, as well as they are, spread out their forces in the everyday life about a wide area, about an area that embraces everything that the outer sensory world offers and that the reason forms in this outer sensory perception. In the usual life, the soul forces spread about everything that the human being wants; briefly, the soul life is diffuse at first.

What the spiritual researcher has to form as the spiritual-scientific apparatus he must prepare to himself in the spiritual area as the chemist prepares his apparatuses in the laboratory. It is necessary to collect these soul forces, otherwise dispersed, in one point as it were, to turn the attention to one point. To which point? To a self-chosen point in the inner experience of the soul. That means that: the spiritual researcher has to form any mental picture, any soul impulse, and to put it in the centre of his soul life. A mental picture that has to do nothing with any outside world at first is the best: an image, a symbol.

I take a simple example: if we take a sentence, which has no outer truth at first, but it does not depend on that: I imagine light—light of a star, light of the sun—touching me. This light is wisdom flowing through the world. A symbol. Now I concentrate my complete attention to this symbol. Not that is the point that something true is in it, but that all soul forces are concentrated in this one point. Hence, it is necessary that you choose that as preparation what you can read in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? where the different methods are given. Here I want only to point to the principle. It is necessary for it that you develop the strong will to concentrate your whole soul life onto this one point. That means, however, that you are able to cause artificially what happens, otherwise, in sleep naturally. In sleep our senses grow tired; the world stops being sense-perceptible for us. Colours, tones, and smells stop making impressions on us. However, besides, at the same time our consciousness dwindles there. With the spiritual researcher, it must be just the consciousness that quietens all outer impressions arbitrarily, and, nevertheless, you have to keep it completely at the same time.

In the same way, one has to stop what immediately stops after falling asleep: all intentions must become completely quiet. Everything that, otherwise, the human being spends to stand vigorously in the world must become completely quiet for the spiritual researcher. He must divert his consciousness from everything that it is otherwise directed to, and concentrate the whole soul only upon one point that he has chosen himself. Then just those soul forces gain strength that remain hidden, otherwise, in the everyday life, and now something happens gradually that I would like to compare with that what takes place in the area of the outer material life if the chemist investigates, for example, the composition of water. The spiritual researcher stands before the human being in the world, as the chemist stands before the water. The human being is for the spiritual researcher an intimate compound of mind and soul with the bodily as for the chemist the water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. Just as little the chemist could get the idea what the water is if he investigated the hydrogen only, just as little one can get an idea what the human being is in his mind or soul if one looks at the physical human life only. In this field the spiritual researcher must be frightened just as little to be considered as a dualist as the chemist may be frightened in his field, if he separates water in hydrogen and oxygen. One is not more right to call the spiritual researcher a dualist because he practices “spiritual chemistry” in his field than the chemist, because he does not accept that the water is a unity but consists of hydrogen and oxygen, and that he must separate the hydrogen from the oxygen to get to know the nature of water.

The spiritual researcher works with the same means, only in his fields. What I have just indicated: the concentration, the increased attention wakes the forces slumbering in the human soul during the everyday life, but by which soul and spirit, which are, otherwise, in unseparated connection with the physical-bodily, are separated from this bodily as the material hydrogen is separated from the water with the chemical experiment. The spiritual researcher experiences this if he exercises this increase of attention vigorously, often for many years. It is fact for him that the mental-spiritual that one can easily doubt, otherwise, becomes an immediate experience. Therefore, he can say because of immediate experience, I experience myself independent of my body in the spiritual-mental; now I know only what the spiritual-mental is because I experience myself in the spiritual-mental!—It does not concern so much that the spiritual researcher would have to add knowledge of the same kind, as the scientific ones. However,, although his way of research is completely in accordance with the scientific spirit, his research method is, nevertheless, quite different; and just because it wants to remain loyal to the scientific laws, it must take on a form different from the scientific methods which are immediately directed to the material field.

Thus, the spiritual researcher attains a consciousness of the following. In our present one will ask with a certain right: have natural sciences delivered even if not proofs, but the hypothetical authorisation of the view at least that the human thinking is a function or a result of the brain? Here in this point everything starts mostly that opponents of natural sciences or followers of spiritual science bring forward in a not quite modern sense, namely not in the sense that is meant here as the modern one. Many people say who would like to acknowledge the spirit and, hence, oppose such statements from the start: the human thinking is bound to the central nervous system; it is an outflow of the central nervous system. One polemicizesa lot against that what natural sciences have not proved, indeed, but have put up as a hypothesis that the human thinking is a function of the brain.

Many people immediately consider spiritual science as threatened if one admits that the human thinking is bound to the brain that one cannot think without the central nervous system. In this point spiritual science has not even to contradict the justified requirements of natural sciences; since it is true that thinking, as we develop it in the usual life, is bound to the central nervous system and to the remaining nervous system. However, true spiritual science teaches us to recognise that that form of the brain, of the central nervous system that is necessary for thinking in the everyday life has flowed out of the spirit that the spirit builds up our body only in such a way that this body can become the tool of thinking. Spiritual science does not descend only in the thinking, it does not assert that thinking, as it appears in the everyday life, is everlasting and immortal, but it teaches us to recognise that our spirit and soul build up our mental apparatus, that what is behind our mental apparatus what generally lives behind our physical nature. The spiritual-scientific methods, as I have suggested them, lead to these active, creative forces that stand behind all material.

Thus, the spiritual-scientific method advances, because it must be in the inside at the same time what it separates from the body, to another way of experience and to a soul condition different from the way of the experience and the mental condition of the usual life and the usual science. I would like to emphasise one thing from the start because I want to speak about concrete facts. What expresses itself, otherwise, in our thinking and imagining, and what is bound to the brain in the everyday life really separates from the bodily by concentration as I have indicated. The spiritual researcher experiences that he is strengthened that he is beyond his central nervous system and that he faces the own corporeality in this mental-spiritual experience. In other words, as you experience yourself in the usual life within your body, you experience yourself beyond your body if you apply the spiritual-scientific methods to yourself. You experience yourself beyond your brain if you apply these methods of concentration. You know only then how the cerebral tools are. Since I tell no fairy tales but something that the spiritual researcher experiences. He feels like in the vicinity of his brain. He knows what it means to think not in such a way as one thinks in the usual life, but to think only in the spiritual-mental element and to feel the brain beyond this element—nay, to feel it even like something that offers resistance against which one stumbles as one stumbles against an outer object. I have described this increase of such experiences to a more ample experience already here once; I have also described it in my little writing A Way to Human Self-knowledge.

If the spiritual researcher continues his exercises and has the devotion to concentrate his whole soul life not upon one picture, but upon hundreds and hundreds of pictures, so that the forces increase more and more, then that experience takes place that I have called a stupefying event in the just mentioned writing. It takes place for the one in one form, for the other in another form; however, it has always something typical. It will appear to everybody as I describe it. The human being can advance so far, even in the middle of the everyday life if he has done exercises for a long time that he says to himself: what wants to reveal itself to you from the everyday imagination?—It is something that wants to penetrate you like something that ascends, otherwise, only from your own soul. However, it can also penetrate as for example a dream if you awake from sleep what is, however, again endlessly more than a dream about which you say to yourself: what happens now?—Something happens that appears possibly like a lightning striking in the space that you feel penetrating yourself. You can say to yourself, it is, as if your body drops from you and is destroyed. Now you know: you can be in yourself inside without being in your body!

Then you know if you experience for the first time what the spiritual researchers have meant who said: someone who experiences the everlasting in the human being, the mental-spiritual must approach the gate of death. You experience the death in yourself pictorially. You experience in the real, not imagined Imagination what it means: the mental-spiritual separates from the body and continues existing if it separates when the human being goes through the gate of death. We still speak about that; today I want to indicate like in a preface only the nature of the spiritual life and the spiritual science connected with it.

A sum of inner experiences appears that bring to mind at first what it means to do “spiritual chemistry,” to “separate the mental-spiritual from the bodily,” to investigate the destinies of the mental-spiritual and to know that there is a real separation of the spiritual from the bodily and an independent life of the spirit compared with the body.

This is the fruit of the increased attention, the increased concentration. You already notice this on relatively elementary stages, this standing beyond the body, in particular concerning the central nervous system. If you feel thinking and imagining attracted by the spiritual world beyond your brain, beyond your body, you are urged repeatedly because you stand as an earthly human being in the usual life to return to the usual imagination and to think as you just think in the normal life. However, you experience the moment when you must say to yourself: now you were beyond your body. You must return in your body and you have to form what you have experienced beyond the body in such a way that you let your brain be grasped by the fact that the thoughts that you have had beyond the body become cerebral thoughts!

This experience of entering the brain is connected with something that must be well prepared that can be well prepared if you have gone through the exercises which are described in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. Then you know, while you immerse yourself with your thinking in the brain that the brain offers resistance, and that, indeed, the process of thinking in the usual life is a destruction of the central nervous system that sleep, however, repairs. However, if you advance in spiritual practising, you experience yourself immersing in a process of disintegration; and this expresses itself—if you have not developed the right feelings during the preparation—in the fact that you are frightened to submerge again in the organism. The human being stands now beyond his earthly body. He feels submerged in an abyss. Hence, you must do such exercises that give you serenity for that which may appear, otherwise, as fear. A certain soul condition expresses itself in that power of cognition, in those research methods for the higher worlds.

One has to add something else if real revelation shall come from the spiritual worlds into the human soul. You have to increase another quality up to the highest intensity: devotion, love of that what meets you. You need this devotion up to a certain degree in the usual life. However, you have to increase this devotion so far that the human being learns to renounce completely down to his deepest organism, to suppress any activity. Practice gradually increased suppresses the voluntary movements that come from the egoity of the human being and causes that you are completely given away to the current of existence, so to speak. Not only this has to occur, but you have also to feel involuntary movements as something external up to a certain degree. Up to the vascular organs, the human being learns to feel himself with these exercises. Then he can say about the spiritual world: you experience it beyond your body; you experience it as a structured world in which beings appear as in nature physical beings appear. By concentration and meditation, that is by an increased devotion, the human being finds the way into the spiritual world as he finds the way into nature if he looks at it with the outer eyes and with his reason. However, if the human being has separated the mental-spiritual from the bodily by a process of spiritual chemistry, he grasps himself also in his infinity; then he grasps himself in the existence that lies beyond birth or conception and death.

Then he recognises himself in this everlasting being in such a way that he grasps that idea of development about which I still speak in these talks. This idea corresponds in the area of the human spiritual life to that theory of evolution to which natural sciences owe so much in their fields. Then the human being grasps the idea of the repeated lives on earth, the fact that the complete human life consists of repeated earth-lives between which lives are in wholly spiritual worlds. The idea of reincarnation distinguishes the life in the body between birth and death and the life between death and new birth in a wholly spiritual existence.

Those who believe to stand firmly in the scientific habitual ways of thinking very easily regard all these matters as daydreams and fantasies. One shows by the researches about dream, hypnosis, suggestion, autosuggestion and so on how from the depths of the subconscious soul life a number of things can appear that can cause a deceptive consciousness in the human being. You experience something that has significance beyond your bodily life. All these things are theoretical objections. Someone who penetrates deeper into spiritual science will no longer do them. Since we will make many objections in the course of these talks and will show how spiritual science has to position itself to them. I would like to draw your attention to something fundamental only.

One can easily say the following. If the spiritual researcher has experienced his spiritual-mental in its independence and believes then to look back as in an enlarged memory at former lives on earth or at his last life on earth. This is nothing else than his transformed wishes that exist in the subconscious and shine from below into the day consciousness whereby he abandons himself to delusions, hallucinations and so on.

It is comprehensible that the uneducated thinking speaks in such a case about self-formed wishes, illusions, and hallucinations and so on; but one does not know what it concerns. Someone who has separated his spiritual-mental life from the bodily by spiritual chemistry notices if he really experiences such a retrospect into a former life on earth that it is not a transformed wish or something that can appear from his sub-consciousness. Since one may say, what one experiences in the spiritual is usually very different from that what one would have dreamt. You can find a lot of nonsense in the field of spiritual science. In no other field charlatanism is so widespread as in the field of spiritual science; and one can hear someone speaking who has looked at spiritual science who has absorbed some of its teachings and is convinced that these teachings are true: this or that human being has experienced this or that in a former life. Now, one can experience a lot of nonsense in this field. Normally one can notice that the statements that are done in this field correspond to certain human wishes. Since what the people want to have been, this takes on mysterious shapes sometimes. Mostly these incarnations are rather famous, excellent persons whom one can get to know not by spiritual-scientific research but by history! However, to someone who penetrates into the spiritual worlds really the things are represented quite different. Hence, the following example: somebody casts a glance, after he has applied the spiritual-scientific methods to his soul, at a former life on earth, as it is possible and even natural if the spiritual-scientific methods have become effective up to a certain degree; then the picture of experiences of a former life on earth appear.

However, one will notice that these experiences are in such a way that one has no use for them at the present moment when one sees them in the enlarged retrospect; except that they enrich the knowledge one has no use for them in the usual life. One realises that one had certain skills, certain knowledge and so on in a former life. Now they appear pictorially. However, one is too old in the present life to attain these skills and knowledge again. As a rule this will happen what one would not have dreamt what no imagination can invent; as a rule the real life is completely different from the fantastic picture which one imagines about a former life on earth. It can also be that one notices: in the past life, you had a relationship to this or that person. However, if one wants to draw the conclusions in the age when one discovers this for the present life, the living conditions do not permit it, and then one is urged to this what one calls the spiritual principle of causality. One recognises,—but one cannot apply the knowledge to the present life. You must also develop a devoted soul life and say to yourself, what you have developed once as relation to persons will enjoy life; but you must wait, until the spiritual connections bring the causes of former lives on earth to effect in the present one. What one wants to dream in spiritual field does not happen if the knowledge is a real one.

If you look at that existence which passes between death and a new birth where you are in a wholly spiritual life, any conceptual thinking does not help to get mental pictures of your life in that time. What you have to consider as the next form of your life-tasks, of your interests at first of which kind your surroundings are in which you have grown up in the outer material world what you have developed as wishes, desires, and emotions which character your mindscape has, all this is mostly completely contrary to that what you have experienced in the spiritual world before you have descended to the present embodiment. What you have desired there does not correspond to the wishes in the earthly life.

We take an example. In the earth-life, you can be affected very easily by a stroke of fate painfully. Then you may easily believe if you feel anything as painful and if this painful feeling does not correspond to any wish, not even in the sub-consciousness, that in the spiritual world where you were before your whole life of desires, your position to the spiritual world was similar as now your position is towards life. However, this is not the case. The feeling in the spiritual world before your embodiment is drastically different.

Hence, you have to imagine that you yourself caused everything to experience this pain. What you do not want in the life on earth you get to know that you have wished it before your life on earth. Since you can attain perfection of your soul life experiencing and overcoming this pain. Since the fateful question becomes a question of perfection by the spiritual-scientific knowledge.

If we imagine the spiritual life this way, indeed, a spiritual environment appears to the increased inner life as the natural environment appears to the senses and the reason. The spiritual researcher has to overcome many things to put as science what he can observe. Since you can imagine that the experiences which the spiritual researcher must have must be attained first. They are attained in such a way that they appear weak that the weakest memory pictures of the usual life are strong compared to these manifestations of the spiritual world, and that these pale recollections of the spiritual must be strengthened. They are strengthened only gradually while one settles down more and more in the spiritual conditions. This strengthening of the soul life is the basic condition of the spiritual research. Then, however, something else must be added.

We see in the course of the talks that it is unfounded to say, what is attained by concentration and meditation this way does not differ at all from the illusions and hallucinations of a morbid soul life. One may say if one considers the matters externally that the experiences of the spiritual researcher do not differ from them. One may even say, if the spiritual researcher describes these matters, it is real in such a way, as if a dreamer describes his dreams. In the dreams, memories of the outer world express themselves. Hence, one can say in a certain sense, what the spiritual researcher separates as his mental-spiritual from the bodily and puts as beings of an imagery before his soul is taken from the qualities of the pictures of the beings of the outer world.

Someone who reads my Occult Science. An Outline may say if he absolutely wants to do so: the matters which you describe and which are to be attained only in the supersensible worlds for spiritual science are matters that one also finds in the outer world, even if not arranged that way. One may say this in certain way, although the objections that are raised today from some side against what spiritual science says are somewhat naive. Somebody says, for example, what one can read in such a writing as Occult Science is arranged like by a kind of pressed inner experience, and it is such a representation, actually, speculative fiction and no reality. That just shows what kind of logic it is. Since if one dwells on it, one notices that it is the same logic, as if a child that has only seen a wooden lion up to now says if it sees a real lion: this is no real lion, because the real one is wooden. The opponents of spiritual science often do so. Because they know the matters not properly, they accuse the spiritual scientist that the matters are not in such a way, as they know them from the usual life. Nevertheless, one can object that the portrayals of the spiritual researcher's memories are from the usual life. However, this objection is as valuable as for example the objection of that child.

What one attains and beholds so directly must not go over from the observation of the spiritual world to the sensory world; but it is necessary that you learn to read in that what you behold. Since that what you have beheld you have to read correctly. However, you learn this reading with the exercises at the same time by which you familiarise yourself with the spiritual world. If anybody regards the portrayals of spiritual science only as memories of the usual world and says: these are only concepts if there is spoken about former lives on earth, which are also found, otherwise, in life only not arranged that way, then such a human being resembles someone who looks at a letter and says to another: do you want to experience anything new from it? I already know everything that you can read in it; because there are only letters in it which I already know, there is nothing new at all! The same applies if one says: what the spiritual researcher describes, nevertheless, is only memories of the sensory world! But that is the point with these portrayals what is behind as something essential that reveals itself there.

Hence,spiritual science is the result of the spiritual researcher's experience. It is hard that spiritual science complies so little with the life goals of today that the spiritual researcher must always be involved with that what becomes experience, observation for him that he does not put his body on the market, as it were, but his soul if he speaks about the conditions in the spiritual world. While the usual world separates the human being if he should recognise something “objective,” the spiritual-scientific researcher must submerge in that which his science refers to, must become one with it. However, one regards that as “subjective” experience only. One does not notice that the indicated methods make the mental-spiritual independent of everything that we experience subjectively. Since if we experience it ever so much, and if it is called “mysticism” ever so much: what we experience subjectively is experienced in the body. However, what the spiritual researcher experiences is experienced beyond the body, but can be understood in the body with the usual reason.

Since also that objection is not justified that someone who wants to get knowledge of the spiritual worlds must be himself a spiritual researcher. In order to find and investigate the spiritual facts and beings one must be a spiritual researcher but not to understand the spiritual-scientific communications. It is sufficient that one absorbs them with common sense as one absorbs what the chemists or physicists find with their methods.

If one considers spiritual research this way, it appears as that which natural sciences must lead into as it were. As natural sciences have shown material goals to humanity, spiritual science will transform the mental-spiritual experience of humanity in such a way, as it is commensurate to the goals of the present and of the future of humanity. About these goals, one may say what a man of the present said, namely what Wilson (Woodrow W., 1856-1924, The New Freedom (1912)), the president of the United States of America, said concerning something external that applies, however, to the goals of spiritual science generally. Wilson speaks in the book that recently appeared about the reforms that he has experienced. He says that the outer material life has changed completely that instead of the old patriarchal relation of employers and employees quite different relations have taken place. Trade unions of employees face the employers, and the former conditions have changed completely.

The fact that it has happened that way is a result of modern life; this is, above all, for someone who realises the matter properly a result of the knowledge of nature of the present humanity. Now Wilson says, what one has as forms of the legitimate living together still often corresponds to that what one considered as right in former times when the single worker faced his employer in a patriarchal relation. Wilson now demands that one creates harmony between the legitimate living together of modern human beings and that what civilisation has created. Many things culminate in the exceptionally interesting literature of the American president. What he says about external conditions one can say about the complete mental human experience today. One would like to mention thinkers—if one considers such a thing in connection with the spiritual goals—who belonged to quite different times of human development: Archimedes, the founder of mechanics, and Plato, the great Greek philosopher. They were of the opinion that the application of science to the technology of life weakens the human mind. One can understand that excellent spirits of other times had this opinion; but according to such opinions, the course of the world complies just as little as with that what one believes today, indeed, less what, however, people believed when the first railway should be built in Germany. At that time, the Bavarian Medical Board had to deliver an expertise whether one should build railways or not. This board meant that one should not build railways, because if one built them, the nervous systems of persons who would drive in them would be injured very much. However, if railways were still built, one should build high wooden walls on the left and on the right at least, so that the persons living nearby would not be injured by the sight or noise of the trains.

One may smile at this medical board. However, even if one smiles at it, one can find it still reasonable. Since one can oppose or stand up for it even if the Bavarian Medical Board very much exaggerated the issue, nevertheless, it has become true for someone who knows history not only externally, but internally what it had assumed. One can say that this board had a good view. However, one does not need to oppose it. Why not? Because history stands up for it! It is indifferent what the single human beings may think about the fact that the course of the global development goes on, and that the human being has to adapt himself to the course of development. This is also the demand that Wilson puts up: the course of development has brought certain cultural processes, and the human being has to adapt himself to them.

If one extends this to the soul conditions, one can say that in that what the souls have received in the course of time, the goals came about which are infinitely more complex than those of the past times have been. For the outside world, one can imagine this reversal easily; but also that life has changed concerning the needs of the soul daily. Someone who would believe that one could do this with the soul forces in the same way even today that directed the human being into the spiritual worlds once does not regard what takes place in the world development. He does not regard that we have not only four centuries of natural sciences behind ourselves, but what is more important that we have four centuries of scientific education behind ourselves, and that it has become necessary today to bring the results of spiritual science to the hearts and souls. Even if it may also correspond to the details that the course of world history does not always permit this, nevertheless, one must say:

If today anybody opposed anything against that what spiritual science wants to be, then it could be that he would resemble the Bavarian Medical Board that wanted to erect wooden walls beside the railways, so that people living nearby would not be injured: the course of worlddevelopment passes over him. However, the human being is must not position himself to the goals of the global development in such a way that he leaves it to its own devices, but he got the strength to contribute to the conditions. However, that what approaches the human soul as demands in the outer life and from the outer life what appears as outer goals demands inner goals of the soul. The inner goals of the soul are the goals of spiritual science; natural sciences have changed the outer worldview, the body of civilisation. However, civilisation needs a soul. This soul should be the creation of spiritual science. It is the goal of spiritual science to penetrate the body of civilisation with soul and spirit. Then one can easily realise that the spiritual researcher can calmly consider everything that spiritual science experiences as contradiction and misunderstanding. The living conditions demand such a kind of knowledge of the spiritual world in which the soul feels so strong that it attracts forces for its being not only from the sensory world but from that what a knowledge of the spiritual world can give. More and more one will recognise that the soul needs forces for the modern life that flow not only from the knowledge of the sensory existence, but also from the knowledge of the spiritual existence. With these strong forces, the soul will penetrate itself like with an elixir of life, will feel the sense of its being exceeding birth and death, experiences that quality in itself that one calls “immortality,” and will cope with the tasks that the present and future of human history must set to it.

I wanted to outline the present and future of the human soul with some words only. I give all other explanations in the following talks. In this preface, I wanted to cause a feeling of that only what the spiritual researcher bears in himself. To speak from the spiritual-scientific point of view in such a way, as I like to do it in these talks, can happen only on two conditions. What the spiritual researcher has to inform of the real spiritual research differs at first from that what one often thinks and considers as correct, so that someone who asserts this spiritual-scientific is a charlatan, a blatherer or a frivolous human being—or that he can know in himself that truth is what he has to say. There may be the most different nuances of these two extremes; but intermediate stages do almost not exist. With the consciousness that one can be considered as the one or the other, one speaks anyway as a spiritual researcher. Someone who stands in this spiritual science can develop the consciousness and the strength to speak about this spiritual research only because he also knows how to estimate its power of cognition and its strength of truth and that he can withstand the misunderstandings and consciously wrong accusations because of this consciousness of truth and knowledge on one side. However, on the other side spiritual science also leads into the immediate spiritual life, as well as into the spiritual life of our time and teaches the spiritual researcher that the representation of spiritual science is a necessity now.

Even if the contemporaries do not clearly express this necessity of spiritual knowledge, it exists as a dark need of spiritual knowledge. In the depths of the souls, one perceives the cry for spiritual knowledge, even if this cry itself is not often audible to the conscious thinking of our fellow men. Since our time needs the knowledge of the spirit. All other science that is commensurate with our time would lower this spirit, would extinguish it from the souls as it also works from other currents of the spiritual life if spiritual science does not stir up it. The spiritual researcher knows that the human soul needs the spirit, and, hence, he hopes that it will belong to the goals of human development in the future to maintain this spirit.

We have realised that the human soul must transform itself if it wants to attain the spirit. From that, it is evident that it is more comfortable to leave the spirit where it is and not to care for it, than to enterprise in the soul what leads to the spirit. It is more comfortable, however, also with that what arises to common sense and to a healthy feeling of truth to realise the material connections of nature simply, than to develop a sharper reason and to use it to realise what spiritual science says. One lives more comfortable without spirit. Nevertheless, the spirit has the quality that it brings damage if one wants to live without it as it brings benefit if one wants to live with it. If one wants to live with it, it animates the soul; it penetrates it with all skills that we want for life. If one denies it, it withdraws and kills the soul life to the same degree, as this does not want to know anything of it. If one denies it, it takes much optimism gradually and gives desperation and timidity.

Indeed, one can deny the spirit; however, one cannot destroy it. If one denies it, it appears in its counter-image inside the soul—and asks in the human soul for itself. The spiritual researcher who speaks of spiritual science as a goal of the present feels this. Therefore, he relies on it: it will settle down because humanity can close the eyes before the spirit, but it cannot prevent it. However, in the end this impact changes into the demand to look at this spirit. I would like to express that in the following way. One can deny the spirit, because it is more comfortable to understand the world and to live in it without spirit than with spirit. However, one cannot resist the demands of spirit denying it. Hence, that what spiritual science wants to incorporate as an elixir of life in the civilisation it incorporated by its own strength. Since the human soul often denies the spirit; however, it will demand it always out of its innermost nature, out of its deepest goals!

In connection with some spiritual-scientific considerations, I have often said that it concerns within our spiritual-scientific movement and its efforts of taking up those concepts and ideas not only in theory which one can learn by spiritual science, but that the spiritual-scientific results have to penetrate the innermost movements, the innermost impulses of our soul life. Indeed, we have to start from the results of the spiritual-scientific knowledge, and we can gain such knowledge if we just study it if we occupy ourselves with it. But spiritual science is not to be taken up like another science, so that one knows only afterwards that one has heard this or that, that this or that is true concerning one or another matter in the world. Spiritual science has to work on our souls so that the souls become different in this or that field of feeling that they become different taking up what can flow out of spiritual science. The concepts, ideas and mental pictures which we take up by means of spiritual science have to rouse our souls in the core, have to unite with our feelings, so that we learn through spiritual science to look at the world not only differently, but also to feel differently than without it. The spiritual scientist, actually, has to familiarise himself with certain circumstances quite differently than this is possible without spiritual science. If he is able to do this, he has basically only arrived at what has to flow to us from spiritual science.

We live in a grievous time today, in which to us one of the most important questions of spiritual science, the question of death, appears in so countless cases before our eyes, before our souls, before our hearts, closer to one, closest to the other. The spiritual scientist has also to be able to prove spiritual science in his feelings in this grievous time. He should be able to have a different attitude to the events of time than the others, even if these events touch him so near. Indeed, the one needs consolation, the other needs encouragement; but both should find this also in spiritual science. If this can be the case, we have only correctly understood the intentions of spiritual science.

We have thereby to experience a certain shock in our souls through the ideas of spiritual science already that we learn to feel quite differently about some matters than we can feel without spiritual science about anything in the world. If you summarise all that which has already been said about the mystery of death within our spiritual science, you can understand what I would also like to explain today not only repeating, but something adding to former considerations. We must learn to think about death not only differently, but we must learn to feel about death differently. Since, indeed, the mystery of death is connected with the deepest world mysteries. We should be quite clear to ourselves that we take off all that through which we get perception and knowledge in the physical world, through which we experience something of the external world when we go through the gate of death. We get impressions about the world in the physical world by means of our senses. We take off these senses when we enter the spiritual world. Then we do not have the senses any more. This must already be a proof to us that we must try if we think about the supersensible world to think differently than we have learnt to think by means of our senses.

Indeed, we have a clue of sorts, while also in the everyday life, which we spend between birth and death, something analogous, something similar of the experiences in the spiritual world projects. These are the dream experiences projecting into the everyday life. The dream experience does not come into being to us through our senses; our senses have really nothing to do with the dream experience. Nevertheless, it is in the pictures that sometimes remind of the sensory life. We have in these dream pictures, even if a weak reflection, just a reflection of that type, as the spiritual existence faces us as an Imaginative world between death and a new birth. We have Imaginative perception, however, after death; the experience appears in pictures. Only if you see, for example, a red colour in the sensory world and must have the thought: what is behind this red colour?—Then you will say to yourselves: there is something that fulfils the space, something material is behind it.—The red colour also appears to you in the spiritual world, but there is nothing material behind it, nothing that would exercise a material impression in the usual sense. Behind the red is a psycho-spiritual being; behind the red is the same which you feel as your world in your soul. One would like to say: from the sense-impression of the colour we descend externally in the physical down to the material world, from the Imaginations we ascend to spiritual regions of the spiritual world.

Now we must be aware—this has been emphasised strongly in the new edition of my Theosophy—that also these Imaginations do not appear to us like the sensory impressions of the physical world. They are there indeed, these Imaginations, but they appear as experiences: the red, the blue colours are there experiences. One can rightly call these Imaginations red or blue, but they are something different than the sensory impressions of the physical world. They are more intimate; we unite more intimately with them. Without the red colour of the rose you are yourself; within the red colour of the spiritual world you feel to be therein, you are united with the red colour. While you perceive a red colour in the spiritual world, a will, a very effective will of a spiritual being develops. This will shines, and that which it shines is red. But you feel to be in the will, and you call this experience red, of course. I would like to say that a physical colour is like the frozen spiritual experience. Thus we must get the possibility in many fields to think something different, to give our ideas other values and meanings if we really want to rise to an understanding of the spiritual world.

Then we have to realise that above in the spiritual world the Imaginations do not have the same relationship to the spiritual beings—whose expression, for example, the colours are—as a colour has to a sensory being. The rose is red; this is a quality of the rose. But if a spirit comes to the nearness and we must have the consciousness according to that which I have now said: the spirit shines red, and then the red does not mean a quality of the spirit like the red of the rose is a quality. This red colour is more something like a revelation of the inside of the spiritual being; it is more a character which the spiritual being puts in the spiritual world. You have only to behold through the Imaginations. The activity which you develop there is to be compared in the physical world only with its ahrimanic image, namely with reading. We look at the red colour of the rose and know: it is a quality of the rose. We do not only look at the red colour in the spiritual world, but we interpret it, but not fantasising—I must warn about it always again. However, our soul itself already finds that something is given like a sound, a letter, like something that should be deciphered, should be read, so that it recognises the meaning.

The spiritual being means something if he manifests himself as a C sharp or G sharp or as red or blue or green colours. The spiritual being means something with it; one starts speaking with him, one starts reading his writing. The external culture is based on it that such matters which have their deep wisdom in the spiritual world are transplanted then also to the external world. We speak rightly of an occult reading, because somebody who attains the clairvoyant consciousness, who enters the spiritual world, who is able to see out over the Imaginations and reads in them, looks through them at the bottom of the souls living in the spiritual world, not only through colours, but also through other impressions, such impressions which remind of sensory impressions, and those which are added in the spiritual worlds.

This activity which is a purely psycho-spiritual activity is subordinate, as it were, to the government of the really progressive spiritual beings. Here in the physical world, Ahriman creates a reflection just of that which I have characterised now. The external reading of characters in the physical world is an ahrimanic reflection of this occult reading. Since reading in the physical world by signs which were developed artificially is an ahrimanic activity. Not without good reason, the invention of the art of printing was felt as an ahrimanic art, as a “black art,” as one called it. You are just not allowed to believe that you could escape the claws of Lucifer and Ahriman using any performances. Lucifer and Ahriman must be in the external culture. It is only that you find the balance, the way if life turns perpetually to the luciferic or the ahrimanic side. If anybody did not want to be touched at all by Ahriman, never would he have to learn reading. But this is why it concerns not that we flee Ahriman and Lucifer, but that we get the right relationship to them, that we position ourselves correctly to them, although they are as forces round us. If we know that we follow what we have described so often as the Christ Impulse which lives in us, and if we get the spiritual sensations which impose the intention to follow Christ to us at every moment of our life, then we are also able to read. Then we can get to know—and we already shall do it if it is right according to our karma—that Ahriman also established reading, and we see this ahrimanic art in the right light. If we do not experience this, we declaim something about the ahrimanic culture, about the progress and the splendour of the ahrimanic culture, for example, about reading.

But all these matters also impose duties, and this is why it concerns that such duties are also kept. Just in our present time, a lot can be stated to defend or accuse this or that. Really, we have what we can call a flood of war literature. Every day produces not only brochures, but also books et cetera. There you can often read: this country has so and so many illiterates, in this country so and so many people can read and write, and the like. Adopting this easily would not be according to what somebody who is well-versed in spiritual science has to say out of his responsibility. If I wanted to indicate, for example, that which I have to state with regard to our time, all the especially bad of a nation and say that in this nation are so and so many people who cannot read and write, I would not correctly speak spiritual-scientifically. There only matters must be stated for which one can take responsibility to the occult duties.

You see—I wanted to give only an example—that spiritual science must go over into life and imposes duties in this deeper sense. If the spiritual scientist says such things which the others also say, you are always able to notice that they are said in a different context, and it depends on this. Hence, something appears rather strange to somebody who does not know spiritual science, if it is said in spiritual science, because he is accustomed to have other ideas and must say to himself sometimes: this spiritual science calls the black white, and the white black.—This is necessary sometimes, because if one ascends to the spiritual world with the usual ideas and concepts which one learns in the physical world, some ideas and concepts must be changed thoroughly.

From this point of view let us take one of the most important, most enigmatic concepts which we have to acquire out of the impressions of the physical world, the concept of death. In the physical world, the human being sees death always only from one side, from the side that he sees developing the human life up to the point where the human being dies. That is where the physical body is separated at first from the higher members of the human nature and is dissolved then within the physical world. One can really say what the human being sees as death within the physical world: looking at death from one side. However, looking at death from the other side means to look at it in an opposite light, to see it as something totally different.

When we enter the physical life by birth, we experience something at first in such a way that the peak of our physical consciousness is not yet reached. You know that we do not remember the first years of our experience with the usual physical consciousness. Nobody can remember his birth with the usual physical consciousness. At least no one will appear in the world who states that he can remember with his usual consciousness how he was born. We can say: this is a characteristic of the physical consciousness that the birth of the human being must be forgotten. It is forgotten; also the first years are forgotten. If we look back at our life between birth and death, we remember up to a certain point. Then memory ends. The point where it stops is not our physical birth, but an experience precedes. Nobody can know from experience that he is born. He can only conclude it. We conclude that we are born—and only from that—that after us human beings are born whose birth we perceive. If the naturalist states that he only admits what can be seen, nobody could claim his birth after this principle if he wants to be logical, because it is impossible to perceive his own birth without being clairvoyant; one can only conclude it.

Now exactly the opposite takes place with regard to death. The whole life through between death and new birth the moment of death which he experienced stands before the soul eye of the dead as the liveliest, as the brightest impression. However, do not believe that you are allowed to possibly conclude from it that this would be a painful impression. Then you would believe that the dead looks back at what you see in the physical world of death, of decay, of decline. He sees death, however, from the other side; he sees something in death what one must call the most beautiful also in the spiritual world. Since the human being can experience nothing more beautiful than the sight of death in the spiritual world first of all. Seeing this victory of the spirit over the material, this lighting up of the spiritual light of the soul from the deep darkness of the material is the greatest, the most significant that can be beheld on the other side of life which the human being goes through between death and a new birth.

If the human being takes off the etheric body between death and new birth and has fully developed his consciousness what happens not very long time after death, then he has not the same relationship to himself as here in the physical world. If the human being sleeps here in the physical world, he is unaware, and if he is awake, he realises that he knows now: I have a self, an ego in myself. After death in the spiritual world, this is something different—there is his self-consciousness on a higher level,—then it is not just the same. I will immediately speak about that. But there is also something like a self-contemplation. Exactly the same way as one must call to mind the self in the morning while waking up it is in the spiritual world. But this self-contemplation is a looking back at the moment of death. Always it is in such a way, as if we say to ourselves to perceive our ego between death and a new birth: you have really died, so you are a self, you are an ego.

This is the most important thing: one looks back at the victory of the spirit over the body, one looks back at the moment of death which is the most beautiful of the spiritual world that can be experienced. In this looking back one notices his self in the spiritual world. This is always, one cannot say like waking up—one would stamp the concepts one-sidedly,—it is the self-contemplation to look back at his death. That is why it is so important that the human being has the possibility to look really back at the moment of death with full postmortal consciousness—with a consciousness which enters after death. So he dreams not only in any way what he beholds there but can completely understand what he beholds; this is extremely important. We can already prepare ourselves during life while we try to practice self-knowledge. In particular, this is necessary for humankind from now on to practice self-knowledge. Basically all spiritual science is there to give that self-knowledge to the human being which is necessary to him. For spiritual science is an introduction to the enlarged self of the human being, that self by which one belongs to the whole world. I said that the consciousness after death is something different than here in the physical world. If I might to plot the consciousness after death diagrammatically to you, I could do it in the following way.

(sehendes Auge = seeing eye, sinnlicher Körper = material object, geistige Wesenheit = spiritual being)

Imagine we would have an eye here, and here we would have an object. How do we attain the consciousness that there is an object outside us? Because the object makes an impression on our eye. The object makes an impression on our eye, and we learn to know something about the object. The object is outside in the world, it makes an impression on our senses, and we take up the mental picture, which we can form of the object, in ourselves, in our souls. The object is outside us. Then it has delivered the mental picture which we form then. It is different now in the spiritual world. Because I cannot draw it graphically differently, I would want what I always call soul eye to draw as a soul eye, although it is wrong strictly considered. Now this soul eye which the human being has after death has the disposition that after death the human being sees, for example, an angel or another human soul who is also in the spiritual world not as he sees a flower in the physical world, but this soul eye has the disposition—we disregard a human soul at first, we look only at a being of the higher hierarchy—that it does not have as an eye the consciousness if here an angel, an archangel is: I see this angelic being outside myself,—but: I am seen by the angelic being, he sees me.—It is just the opposite of the physical world. We familiarise in the spiritual world so that we get the consciousness of the beings of the higher hierarchies that we are known by them that they think us. We feel embedded in them, we feel that we are conceived by the angels, archangels, spirits of personality like the realms of minerals, plants, and animals feel to be conceived by us.

Only concerning human souls we have the feeling that they see us as we also have the feeling that our view goes into them. We see them and the human souls see us. As to all the other beings of the higher hierarchies, we have the feeling that we are perceived by them, are thought, imagined by them; and while we are perceived by them, are thought, are imagined by them, we are in the spiritual world. Now imagine that we walk around as souls in the spiritual world, like we walk around in the physical world. We then have the feeling everywhere to get a relationship to the beings of the higher hierarchies, like we have the feeling here in the physical world to get a relationship to the mineral, plant, and animal realms. Only we need the meditation repeatedly that we have a self. Then we look at our death and say to us: this is you.—This is a continual consciousness, continual contents of our conscioussnes.

What I have said today is to be added to the various ideas which you can take up from talks and books. It is spoken more emotionally than that which is spoken, for example, in the book Theosophy more from an external point of view. But only while you look at such a matter emotionally, you can feel as if you are in the sensations which one must have towards these matters and generally towards the spiritual world.

Hence, self-knowledge is that which supports us which makes us strong for the life between death and a new birth. That could face me recently again with particular liveliness when I had the task to speak several times at the cremation, after some of our friends had deceased. There it was necessary to speak about something that is connected intimately with the character, with the self of that who had gone through the gate of death. Why did this Inspirative or Intuitive come into being to speak something to the dead that is connected with their beings? This appears in the life of the persons concerned after death. It comes to their assistance what invigorates the forces of their self-knowledge. While speaking about these qualities, which they feel in themselves, immediately after death when their consciousness had not yet awoken, one let flow, as it were, something of the strength towards them that they need to gradually develop the ability to look at the moment of death. Their whole being seems to be concentrated there, as it has developed between birth and death. One helps the dead if one lets flow something towards them just after death that reminds them of their qualities, of their experiences et cetera. One thereby fosters the strength of self-knowledge. If anybody has the possibility as clairvoyant to familiarise himself with the soul of such a dead person, then he feels the desire in his soul to hear something just in this time about the kind, as he was, about this and that which he has gone through or which his main qualities are. You can understand that here on earth the life of a human being does not resemble the life of the other, but that all human beings have lives which are different from each other. It is the same with those who have gone through the gate of death. Not one soul-life resembles the other between death and new birth. I would like to say: every soul-life which one can observe there is a new revelation, and one can always emphasise individual particular qualities only. I would like to speak about such matters today and then also in Cologne the day after tomorrow. I would like to speak of a concrete case as an example.

In Dornach before some time, we saw a member leaving the physical plane who was rather old-aged (Lina Grosheintz-Rohrer). A member who had spent her life, in any case, in industrious work, caring work, but during the last years, since longer time already, she was connected in the deepest soul with our spiritual-scientific world view and had completely developed it in her heart, in her soul. So that one may say: this personality had come so far that in the last times of her physical existence she was completely one in her feeling with our world view. Now you know that the human being if he/she goes through the gate of death takes off his physical body first, carries the etheric body in himself still for a while and then takes off the etheric body, too. There comes a time when the human being must only gain the consciousness gradually which he has to possess between death and a new birth. Immediately after death, the human being is in his etheric body. There he experiences, we know this, a complete review of his life as a big life tableau. In this time, particularly the powerful impulses also appear in his soul, I would like to say, all at once, so that something that is important just in this regard can appear after death that is completely different than during life.

During life the human being is often tied up by the restrictions which his physical body places on him. Immediately after death, the human being has overcome what burdens, presses, solidifies him, and also the physical that weakens the clearness of some soul impulses. One has not yet lost the etheric body and, hence, the memory of life. It is an Imaginative world which contains the pictures of the past life, and also contains the especially strong impulses. If now a soul has taken up the impulses of spiritual science during life so intensely, if this soul has brought these impulses up to the innermost feeling in herself, she can develop these impressions after death also in another way, because she has the elastic, malleable etheric body at her disposal, then she is no longer tied up to that which the physical body allows.

One could see this with that personality in particular about which I have just spoken who shortly after death let flow out of her soul what had lived from the spiritual-scientific impulses in her, after I had just succeeded in transporting myself completely into this soul. Of course, it would not have stamped this in such words during her physical life. Because the etheric body was still there, she could dress it in physical words. It was not yet out of her elastic etheric body, when she developed what she had taken up from spiritual science, so that it became the expression of her soul. Then I had the necessity at the cremation of the concerning personality a few days later that I had to speak these words, which sounded from her being, which belonged to her, not to me:

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 eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, 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 to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfill my human duty;

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

I would like to say that these are the words expressing the sensation after death what the soul has become through spiritual science. Then came the time which everybody has to go through after death more or less which one improperly calls the time of sleeping. Because if you have taken off the etheric body, you are actually in the spiritual world, only the fullness of the spiritual world is dazzling you. You cannot have an overview of everything, you have only to adapt your strength which you have brought into the spiritual world; you have to belittle yourself. You see too much after death; the consciousness is there, you have to reduce it to the level of the forces which you have acquired. Then you can orientate yourself and live really in the spiritual world. It is spoken not quite properly if anybody says that one becomes conscious after some time, but one has to say that somebody has too much consciousness and has to reduce it to the levels which he can endure. This means waking up. That is why the soul of which I have just spoken to you reached this condition—when the etheric body is taken off—that she was unable to endure the spirit light. But she had a lot of strength in herself. You notice that in the words which I have read, and that this strength had been completely filled bit by bit with that which spiritual science can make of the human feeling and willing. That is why this being, this soul got a consciousness which was tolerable to her some time after death. Of course, one would have to describe a lot of the time which begins then for a soul when one wanted to describe everything that such a soul experiences there. One only describes parts always; and while we are within our movement, it belongs, of course, to the most significant matters you can observe in the souls what connects these souls with our movement. You can learn what generally human souls connects with the whole world after death; but you can observe best of all in such souls what is the life of the soul after death, particularly when it has approached you like this soul of whom I speak now. Therefore I could observe just with this soul how she got the orientating consciousness while taking part in our meetings, really taking part in our meetings. And she completely took part in a Dornach Easter festival of this year, in that Easter festival when I tried to explain the particular depth of the Easter thought to our dear friends there in Dornach. This soul was present there. She took part as she had taken part once with intimate warmth; she took part now as a soul. She wanted to express herself like somebody has the need in the physical body to express himself afterwards about that which he has taken up. She wanted to express herself, and the peculiar is that she stamped such words, because thereby the possibility exists to communicate, that she formed such words describing her present life and its experience of this Easter lecture. The soul added something like a supplement of that which had come from her at that time after death. This supplement which came out of the consciousness is the following:

I will steer in human souls
Spirit feeling, so that willingly
It wakes in hearts the word of sacrifice;

I will think with human spirits
Soul warmth, so that powerfully
It can feel the Risen One;

I had taken care just in those Easter talks and in some other talks, which I held at that time, to draw attention—as I did it repeatedly—to the significance of spiritual science not only here for the life on earth, but for the whole world. Somebody who goes through the gate of death can also experience and get to know what is done here in spiritual science. That is why I advise so many people if they have dear dead to read out to them or to tell about the spiritual-scientific teachings, because what is stamped in spiritual-scientific words has not only significance for the souls living in physical bodies, but it has full significance also for the souls who are disembodied. It is to them like spiritual air of life, like spiritual water of life, or one could also say, they perceive light by us here below. This light is for us symbolic at first, one would like to say, because we hear words and take up them as thoughts in our souls; the dead see it, however, really as a spiritual light.

Now it is very significant that just this soul who has often heard this wanted to say really: I have understood this, and it is real that way.—Since her words in this regard are:

The earthly flame of spiritual knowledge
Brightly illuminates death's appearance;

This is the fact for the soul. She wants to say: what you speak there below shines like a flame.—She expressed this, while she said “earthly flame:” it “brightly illuminates death's appearance ...” Why does she say “death's appearance?” If you meditate, you find out it. She said it, because she had always heard that we call the world maya: on earth she is in the appearance of the senses; now she is also in an appearance by which she only has to behold the being:

The earthly flame of spiritual knowledge

Brightly illuminates death's appearance;—

And something that she also confirms now:

The Self becomes cosmic eye and ear.

She means cosmic ear. She means that now the whole self becomes a powerful sense-organ, becomes the perception organ for the whole universe. It is a nice way by which the dead shows how she becomes conscious that that becomes true which spiritual science says. For this soul it is typical that she wants to express herself straight away after death and wants to say: yes, now I am so far that that which I have learnt on earth appears to me as the right thing.

These words were to me of a certain importance, because they came after some time, maybe a few weeks later, from the spiritual world from that soul of which I have spoken, after shortly before, a few weeks before, another event satisfying me took place.

Friends of our movement lost a rather young son in the current war who had volunteered for the army. The young man fell. He had half approached spiritual science; one would like to say, in his last earth time which he went through. He was only seventeen, eighteen years old. Now he had gone, he had fallen. After some time I could behold the soul of this young man really approaching his parents. With many souls who have now gone through the gate of death during the war this is the case that they become conscious rather rapidly. It was thus—I could really hear it,—as if he said to them: now I would like to make it comprehensible to you that that which I have often heard of spiritual science, of spiritual light and spiritual beings in your home can become clear to me that it is true that it helps me what I heard there.

I do not mention this, because it is something special, but because it just shows how the relationship is between the earthly life and the spiritual life. Nevertheless, I want to mention something strange besides. At that time after a lecture which I held in one of our branches—I had written down the words which had come through to me, I went to the parents of the young man and told this to them and also gave the night in which the young man approached his parents and spoke as it were to their souls. There said the father: this is quite strange, I dream very seldom. However, I dreamt this night, this same night of my son that he appeared to me and that he wanted to say something to me; however, I have not understood it.

It touches those people strangely even today who are outside our spiritual movement if these matters are explained to them. Hence, we keep them among us. But it must be important to us to deal specifically also with these matters, because our knowledge is composed of these single stones of the experiences of the spiritual world. We only get a concrete picture if we do not want to limit ourselves only to hear nice theories of the spiritual world but if we can enliven spiritual science in our souls, so that we endure that which one speaks of the spiritual world really, like reasonable human beings just speak of that which they experience in the sensory world. Spiritual science thereby becomes life in the right sense in us, and it should become life in us, that we gain a life by it—not only a teaching, a knowledge. It should bridge the abyss which results from materialism which extends outside spiritual science and must become bigger and bigger. It bridges this abyss between the physical-sensory realm, which we go through between birth and death, and the spiritual realm in which we live between death and a new birth, so that we gradually learn to become citizens also of the spiritual world. What matters is that we learn to feel: somebody who has gone through the gate of death has only taken on another condition of life and has an attitude towards our feeling after death like somebody who just had to move because of the events of life to a distant country in which we can follow him only later. So we have to endure nothing but a time of separation. But this must be felt vividly by means of spiritual science. If you risk forming an idea about single concrete facts, you will already see that these facts also correspond to it and support each other for somebody who does not look into the spiritual world. That is why the confidence, which one has, before one beholds in the spiritual world, is actually no blind confidence, no trust in authority, but a confidence which is supported by the feeling which is deeper than critical knowledge, by the original feeling of truth indigenous to the human soul.

We live in a time in which the external destiny-burdened events make it clear that the human life has to be deepened. It would be much better if the human beings looked at these military events as a warning to deepen the souls more than the predominating majority of the human beings do. They discuss instead who has the war guilt, who does this or that. I said, while I discussed the most important matters before you: concerning some matters we must learn by spiritual science to change our ideas, our concepts. We can count the concept of war to these concepts—today this may be still added to our consideration about such a significant object like death.

One will be right, also from the spiritual-scientific point of view, to consider the war as an illness of development. Indeed, it is an illness, but you remember only once that you also do not do justice to an illness if you condemn it. What matters in illness is often that which has preceded the illness in the human body: the disorder, the disharmony has preceded. Then the illness comes into being which often is there to work just against the disorder in the body. Even if the human being goes through an illness before death, it is this way. He carries disharmonies in himself which make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world. Perhaps, the spiritual world would be obscured to him too long, or other obstacles would be there, because disharmonies are in him which cannot just be brought into the spiritual world. This is why an illness infects him before death. It frees his soul from disharmony so far that he can enter the spiritual world.

If it is an illness which leads to recovery, then this illness is there to compensate that which has preceded the illness which was caused by the karma of previous lives, maybe of thousands of years. One would not do well to say at all: the child has the measles; had it not got these measles.—One cannot know what would have come about the child if it had not got the measles. Because that came out which sat deeply always in the child and looked for its compensation.

It is also good to consider the war, and to see the evil not so much in that which must be experienced now in blood and iron but also to look at that which happened since long, long times in the cultural currents. The human beings must learn to look deeper at the connections. After this war, a time will come when the human beings start thinking about this war. There they will get on how many hollow words were talked if one said: this one has the guilt, that one has the guilt.—Something will just happen, even if it takes place only long after the war. Then the people will say something different than today. There will be people who say: if one studies history the way as one studied it up to now, indeed, one finds in these acts of the diplomats this, in those acts of diplomats that; here and there or this and that was written.

But if one proceeds that way as history treated all that up to now, and wants “to objectively judge” everything, as one says, then one never finds out why this war came into being. Then one will discover that it is necessary to look at the deeper reasons beyond the external causes which then spiritual science has to explain. Unfortunately, I can make only remarks about these matters. One will find that at various places just at the outbreak of this war this or that happened where not the consciousness played the most significant role, but something unconscious, something under the threshold of the external events was a contributory factor; so that those matters are not exhausted at all which the historian is accustomed to consider as something decisive for the causality. Just with this example one learns: history, as we are accustomed to it up to now, explains nothing at all to us. It is an admonition to go into deeper reasons.

As I had to admonish our souls at the end of almost each talk which I held in the last time, I would like to do it also again today.

A certain responsibility arises for you simply from the fact that you have approached the spiritual-scientific world view. You must become able to have the thoughts by the spiritual-scientific world view at least that those superficial judgments which are delivered everywhere today, because materialism controls the world, should also not become judgments of ours who we are supporters of spiritual science. What plays a role in the world today is a superficial hatred from nation to nation. I have often spoken about that in our branch talks. It must not penetrate us to the same degree, but we also must not become unfair. For we can learn from the old Theosophical Society to become rather unfair. They have impressed on their supporters with regard to the religions: all religions are equal.

This is approximately the same, as if one liked to impress on the human beings: on the table are pepper, salt, sugar, paprika; now, they all can be used as spices, one should not prefer anything. So, here I have a cup of coffee, I put some pepper into it, because everything is the same. The identical logic is in it if one speaks of the fact that the same core of truth forms the basis of all religions. This logic saves one from studying the great miraculous world development in its details, because one gets by with the sentence: a core of truth forms the basis of everything. But we have freed ourselves from the most superficial judgments since long. Thus that cannot prevent us from recognising rightly to go into any national characteristic with affectionate understanding, where we have to stand with our hearts out of knowledge. It is not possible that all friends agree in this regard. That does not matter, but that our souls try to get over the point of view of the external world and to deal with the characteristics of the different folk-souls.—Then we will already see that the belief in our spiritual-scientific world view imposes a certain responsibility to us in many respects, the responsibility to deal with the matters as thoroughly as possible and to pay more attention on them on the basis of spiritual science.

One experiences painful things sometimes. Not any human being does remember the big admonition of our destiny-burdened events, so that he feels obliged to turn his heart really deeper, more thoroughly to the events instead of judging superficially in the way of the external materialism we just want to overcome. In this regard, one would like to wish and long for that the human beings who are within our movement form a host, as it were, which deals thoroughly with the deeply moving questions of today. Thoroughness is necessary concerning a lot of matters. You do not imagine at all what is possible in our time.

Oh, I could tell a lot about that which can make the heart bloody to somebody who pursues the time really with the goodness of his heart. Today a lot of views and thoughts are spread, sometimes with the best intention, from an unhealthy, ahrimanic world view. But looking at the flood of war literature we have just to deeper meditate about the tasks of the cultural development. I attempt this now in my talks showing the real position of the single human beings. Because it is often a matter of defending thoroughness against superficiality. You could experience something very strange, for example, during the last weeks. Because of comprehensible reasons I would not like to mention the title of a book which has appeared abroad, even in German, and some people state that a German would have written it. Expressly I would like to stress that you can bring yourselves to understand any point of view. Perhaps, you can understand the most anti-German standpoint if the one or the other shows it. You may try to understand it, you need not share it, but perhaps you are able to understand it.

But the concerning book has characteristics to which it does not depend on the fact that it takes a thoroughly anti-German standpoint, that it reviles Germanness and the German nature on every line. One may understand that it is written viciously. But nobody is allowed to come and say: if a German speaks about the book that way, we can understand this, because he talks disparagingly about Germanness.—However, it depends on something different. The book is written, so that somebody who has a little feeling for internal professionalism and internal thoroughness, who is educated a little, must find: it is the most terrible simulation of the cheapest literature.—Completely apart from its standpoint, its literary level is so low that somebody who finds something in the book shows that he accepts the most trivial literature as something that one can take seriously, a book cobbled together with ignorance, I would like to say, with the most obvious ignorance.

So the standpoint does not matter; but you see from the way, as it is written like anybody who learnt thinking would not write, that one deals with a quite inferior sort of book. Nevertheless, I also had to hear judgments that this book whose title I do not mention because of particular reasons is taken seriously. If such matters appear, it is just to us not to shrink from forming a judgment on the basis of certain versatility. If anybody agrees to certain sentences which are expressed in that book as regards content, he does not need to take such a book seriously, already because the book is a terrible concoction, and because one does not take a terrible concoction seriously, because one cannot wish that even the truth is expressed terribly in the worst affect and in an uneducated way. I wanted to characterise such an example, because I would like to draw your attention to the fact that it depends on various things if the spiritual scientist tries to form a judgment about the world.

If it were possible to take a book for good, even if it is stylistically a horror book, then somebody would admit that he has not enough enlivened the spiritual-scientific feeling in his heart, in his soul. Not to express anything differently but to draw attention to the fact that spiritual science has to penetrate our feeling and thinking vividly in the most profound sense, concrete examples are also given in this field. It is very necessary that such concrete impulses are searched for in our souls. I have to admit what satisfied me particularly up to now, travelling through Germany, that I could not notice terrifying cheering after great victories. One noticed that pain about the enormous losses was in every soul at the same time. I believe that it is that way. Futile joy of victory must not be there. Since these destiny-burdened days demand not only enormous sacrifices, but they open up enormous wounds, also spiritual wounds if one considers the behaviour of many human beings. That is why it is very necessary that we remember now and again, just if we look at important matters in the field of spiritual science which responsibility is imposed on our souls and that we must long for times in which the effects of the young, unused etheric bodies and the souls can really meet who still are below in the bodies of the human beings and can send their sensations and abilities up to them.

A time will come after this war when the unused etheric bodies of those work who went through the gate of death and developed forces out of the sacrifices they made and which they could send down now for the spiritualisation of humankind. But below there must be souls who are able to receive this, who look up in lively confidence at that which went up in the spiritual world from the early deceased to shine down the forces of the spiritualisation of humankind.

There I would want that it appears to our eyes in the sense of the words which I would like to speak at the end of this consideration again:

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.

Notes

The earthly flame of spiritual knowledge
Brightly illuminates death's appearance;
The Self becomes cosmic eye and ear.

The translation of these verses in Our Dead contains some mistakes; perhaps, they occurred because Steiner used a script consisting of normal Latin but also of old German letters (Sütterlin script):

Es leuchtet hell dem Todesscheine
Des Geisteswissens (not: Geisteswillens) Erdenflamme;
Das Selbst wird Welten (not: Wellen)-Aug und Ohr.

a book which has appeared abroad: Richard Grelling J'accuse. By a German. Third edition, Lausanne, 1915

My dear friends! Most certainly the truths which a person can learn from the Guardian of the Threshold are what we are confronting in these present considerations. And contained within the incessant admonitions, most certainly, is that a person becomes aware, just how he progresses soulfully in spiritual life, as he himself brings to awareness his true relationship to the world.

To bring one’s true relationship to the world to awareness, first you let yourself become acquainted with the world, which is around about yourself in the kingdoms of nature, the kingdoms of nature lying external to your own existence. Focus on your relationship with the animal, the plant, and the mineral kingdoms. Through this relationship you will be afforded the opportunity at first to become acquainted with plants, animals, and minerals. Then you may go on as well to marvel at them, and then to bending them to the unfolding of your will-impulses, and so forth. A person becomes acquainted with this entire world as his external world, and in customary awareness will be but little aware of how he most certainly has grown up and come out of this entire world, and of how there is a deep kinship between himself and this entire world.

Alone, when one allows one’s gaze to sweep around and about over this external world, alone a person simply cannot feel this kinship with the realms of the world. One must stride forward to becoming acquainted with the feeling of oneself being out there in the world. And then absolutely, one may not, when one becomes acquainted with the feeling of oneself being out there in the world, then absolutely a person may not, my friends, come to a stop there, seeing things in this manner, as they present themselves to an external viewpoint, then a person must return to exactly that which reveals itself between things.

Since the onset of the recent phase of the development of mankind, a person gazes only minimally at what is revealed in the relationship between things. One gazes externally at the entities of the three kingdoms of nature, but my friends, it is well known that at the outset one has to see behind the kingdoms of nature, into what one calls the world of the elementals.

We may say that our feet are planted firmly on the fixed earth. [The word was written on the blackboard.]

earth

And whatever fixed as earth holds our feet up, most certainly also sends forth its substance into animals, plants, minerals, and into our physical human bodies. And when we lift our view up from the floor underneath our feet, observing what affects us at our own level, certainly right at hand is something with the quality not merely of air, but of airy substance permeated with the watery element. Indeed, people's manner of life on the earth has evolved, so that now this watery element is found finely dispersed within the air perceived around about oneself. This must first be concentrated, consolidated for the purposes of one's own organism, although one can also say that a person also lives within this watery element. [Above earth was written the second word.]

water

And also, a person lives in the air-formative element, in which he has to carry out his breathing. [Above earth was written the third word.]

air

In the moment, as we look upon these elements, we may not say, as we must say in regard to the entities of the kingdoms of nature, that we see them before us in sharp contour. We do see the individual, fixed, and sharply contoured bodies, although from the fixed as such, from the earthly, we may not say, that we live within it. We are in relationship with the earth, nevertheless we have become particularly disconnected from it. Whatever belongs to our own selves, we certainly do not separate from anything else. A dish or a stool, standing external to ourselves, we distinguish from ourselves, but whatever is in us, we don't look upon as existing in discrete bordering regions. We don't look upon our lungs or our heart as being self-contained beyond our borders. Only when we approach the matter by way of transforming it into objects, as in anatomy, do we look upon ourselves in this way. In reality, just as we normally are in relationship to our own bodies, this is how we are related in an immensely comprehensive way with what and whatever the elements are. We live in earth, we live in water, we live in air, and we live in warmth. They belong to us. They are too close to us to be understood as sharply contoured objects of the world.

Let us attend once more to what is around about us as the elemental world, and, at the same time, is also within us. We must regard it so, as both the substance of the world and as our own substance. In this sense we have been focusing on substances that we designate as earth, that we designate as water, that we designate as air, that we designate as warmth.[Over the word air, the next word was written.]

warmth

When we go out further, out, out into the thick substances of the etheric beyond warmth, which is also most certainly etheric, in this manner we come to light, [Over the word warmth, the next word was written.]

light

and into the arena that we have always named by the dry, abstract phrase the chemical ether and its processes. We will call it this today, for in this way the orderliness of the world will be called forth, the configuration of the world will be called forth, and we will designate at the same time the great chemism of the cosmos, world configuration, or world forming. It is difficult, concerning this, to find an appropriate designation. [Over the word light, the next word was written.]

world chemism

world life

Now although we have already received the impression here in the previous Class lessons, my friends, that a person, as he actually lives on the earth, certainly does not stand in inner relationship to all of these elements in the same manner, it must be pointed to specifically that a person lives inwardly fully in relationship only with the element of warmth. [The word warmth on the blackboard was cross-marked with red chalk.] It is essential for striding ahead in the spirit to be fully versed in this matter.

So, think for a moment, how without any intermediary agent, how without mediation, but rather how directly one feels and is affected by warmth and cold. You certainly take note of the starkly contrasting natures of warmth and cold. But with what passes before you in the encircling air, for example, you don't make such an immediate, direct connection. Initially the air being good or bad is only noticed through its intermediate effects on one's organism. And just so, it is just so with the effects of light. In this way a person stands not immediate, but very close to air and light. [The words air and light were cross-marked with gold.] He stands extraordinarily close to them.

But already we notice that among the denser elements, a person characteristically is more distant from the watery element, in spite of being related. Yet, the watery element is still quite deeply related with human life. [The word water was cross-marked with blue.] In looking back over an extremely animated but troubling dream, my dear friends, let us attempt to see how such a troubling dream represents one's perspiration, the secretions of one's watery element. Take note of the watery element's important role in sleep, in which the secretions of the watery element play such a remarkable part. A person lives in the watery element. Whatever exists in his vicinity as dispersed fluid is quite significant for him, but has none of the immediate quality of warmth. Whether it is warm or cold, a person feels it as his own person. He might be cold, or he might be hot. What occurs for instance, if we are enveloped in fog, is that the fogbank is just as significant for us, but the effect on our inner human nature is indirect, and is not so starkly evident for normal awareness. For just then, as we are enveloped in fog, then in a certain way our own watery element is enmeshed with the watery element in the external world. And we feel in this very gentle transition of our watery element into the watery element of the external world, which is not felt in the transition of our watery element into dry external air, we feel in this transition that we are somehow one with the entire cosmos. Dry air allows us to remain more inward in feeling our human nature, but air heavy with water allows us to feel our unity with the cosmos. In this day and age, we have no schooling in such things. I have dealt with this in detail previously in the Hague, and it was published (this intimate unity of a person with the elements). It is really there, and it belongs to the esoteric path of life, this becoming aware in practicality of such intimate unity.

Still deeper, may I say, in the subconscious, lies a person's relationship with the earthly element. [The word earth was cross-marked with blue.] What does a person know with certainty of his relationship with the earthly element? He knows that salt is acrid, and that sugar is sweet. This is part of the earthly element. Although what salt and sugar accomplish in his organism in significant metamorphosis, how he is positioned in a unity with the cosmos in the dissolution of sugar, or withdrawn into his organism with salt, how certain forces entering in from the cosmos affect the organism when the sweetness of sugar rolls through our body, is really noticed by a person only in the minimally-connected reflex of salt and sugar on the tongue. There are processes of a deeper nature at work. In a manner of speaking the whole world has opened its doors to certain forces when sugar dissolves on a person's tongue and flows through his organism.

And always, just as the thicker elements affect a person indirectly, the thinner etheric elements world-chemical-ether and world living also have an indirect effect on a person, a concealed effect. [The words world-chemism and world living were cross-marked with blue.]

The most obvious effect on a person comes from the most centrally located element, warmth. Next at hand for customary awareness are the effects of light and air. In the subconscious, however, lie the effects on the one side of water and earth, and on the other side of life and chemical gestalt of the world, chemical gestalt in the cosmos. This being so, then during one's life on earth a person should be aware that he most certainly lives in his human state in these middle elements [air, warmth, light were indicated on the board], and that his awareness draws on his relationship with water and earth, and with world chemism and world living.

Since this was always so, back when the old instinctive awareness had dominion, in which always a bit of clairvoyance was mixed, in the mysteries back then, the students at the proper stage of their development received the following injunction: trust in fire, trust in air, trust also in light, yet become mindful of the underworld of water and earth, become mindful of the over-world of the gestalt of world chemism and world life. For even as relations, as they are so firmly emplaced down in the unconscious, that just so in world living and world chemism the allurement of Lucifer may present itself, and out of earth and water the seduction of Ahriman. [The words Lucifer and Ahriman were written down, and so the schematic was complete.]

And esoteric guidance in the mysteries has always maintained that a person should find the proper relationship with these elements, that in the proper way he should feel his relationship with the elements. When a person ascends to imaginative living, then he feels this relationship with the elements immediately. In customary awareness we look about and get to know as external to us the presentation of animals, plants, and minerals. If we get to know the elements in their relationship with us we really may no longer just look about at the world, but must also feel inwardly, live inwardly in the very things that are in us and in the world at the same time.

For as we ascend to imaginative living, we can feel our kinship with the elements. And so, if we have developed this feeling properly, we formulate for ourselves a strong inner stance. And contained within the self-development of this stance is most certainly progressive, effective, and genuine human self-awareness. One becomes aware at the beginning only that he is human, when after a fashion he is let out into the world with which he is so inwardly interconnected, into this world in which he stands alone, in which the plants, animals, and minerals stand apart from us as strangers. But were one through an imaginative experience to become aware of his kinship with the earth, then one would feel himself no longer to be in his humanity, but he would feel himself in his animality, he would then feel his inner human kinship with the multiplicity of beings of animal nature, of animality.

And if a person feels himself united with the water-existence on earth, then he becomes aware: yes, you are actually related, are akin to plant-nature. It is something in you, something likewise sleeping, likewise dreaming in the world, just as it is in plant-nature.

And if a person were to become aware of his kinship with the air, then he would feel the mineral existence in himself. He would feel as he does when some sort of mineral preparation on his whole skin fills him totally within.

A person feels, as soon as he with his imagination enters the world of the elements, that he is related, is akin to animal, plant, and crystal. And a person feels quite different in regard to these realms of nature, for he feels a self-other unity, a belonging together. He feels the inner kinship which he has with these realms, somewhat in the following manner.

One looks about on the animal realm. One observes the beasts of burden, as they slowly place one foot in front of the other. One observes the vibrant animals, such as the flittering birds. One observes everything in the nature of animals that is in motion, pervading the world with movement out of its own being. Then a person says to himself, that all that rules in the innermost being of the animal nature is evidently the same, manifestly the same, as his own will. And he feels the kinship of his own will with the nature of animals.

At the same time, however, one feels something further. A person becomes afraid of himself. And what would be preferable, soon after entering the esoteric life when a person feels this fear of himself, would be not to immediately be held back by it, but by means of it to acquire a higher craft of soul. But even before, when someone becomes aware that actually this human structure is in this manner in us, even as we stand alone with nature’s realm external to us, even as we are able to observe it externally, then one feels that the earth, in its elemental reality, simply does not yet turn us into human beings, but into animals. There we are animal. By virtue of earth, we are animal. And as the earthen is always there, so ever at hand is the danger that we may sink down into animal nature. If and when one considers this, not just with abstract theoretical knowledge, as the person of today is used to, but rather feels it, then one comes to fear that at any moment he may fall down and under into animal nature. But at the same time this fear bolsters, encourages one henceforth, to wish to raise oneself above this animality, to strike out from a life in the elements, and in spite of the alien world all around, nevertheless to strike out at once into a life of humanity. Recognizing your relation to the world, recognizing it with feeling, that is just the thing that leads into real esotericism.

And furthermore, when a person feels his kinship with the water-world, the water-element, then he becomes aware that on the ways of water we would not be as humans are, for we would be like plants. And our feelings, that have a certain dreamy quality, as I have often delineated to you in other venues, my friends, our feelings forthwith would have the tendency to be of the quality of plants. Now try most intimately to delve into your most gentle feelings, and you will be able to experience the plant-quality of the life of feelings. And then the feeling will come to you, that threatening you is not only the danger of sinking down and under into animality, but also the danger of living in the weakened awareness of a plant, of sleeping, of dreaming. But this feeling of weakness, albeit sitting in the depths of awareness, must be transformed in your feelings, in order for you to awaken into human existence. Fear of animality must be transformed with courage, in order to lift oneself up to the human. The feeling of weakness in plant existence must be transformed with an inner call to awaken, to bring oneself with inner force into the world of the awakened human.

And were someone to become aware of living in the ways of air, then, if he becomes aware of it, then he observes that in effect all thinking, unknown to humanity, that in effect all thinking is none other than rarefied breathing. Thinking is rarefied breathing. The thoughts within which we live are through and through processes of rarefied breathing. Inflowing breathing, mid-breath pausing, and out-breathing are working, I might say, on the one side by groping about in our circulation of blood, although on the other side by the rarefied vibrations of the brain-organ. And as breathing continues on in the brain-organ it becomes thinking in the physical world. Sublimated breathing, breathing becoming sublime, is what thinking is.

Whoever strides ahead into imagination certainly no longer trusts merely to this sort of abstract reasoning, which with much else weak and flimsy lives in the brain. Whoever strides ahead into imagination perceives in-breathing as the broadening out of breath into the brain. He feels how the breath broadens itself out. When the breath spreads itself out, so that in a certain sense it is consummated, then cohesive ideas develop, cohesive conceptions. When the breath is otherwise consummated and wells up within, inwardly-moving conceptualizations arise. It is merely a refined breathing process, moving through us and welling up; we characterize it as conceptualization, as thinking.

At once, however, as one is feeling, "I am breathing in, I draw the breath from around about into the brain, and I let the breath impinge upon my ear," so would he feel, "it presents itself to me as thoughts, these things that I perceive as tones, bells, and whistles. And as I let the breath beat upon my eyes, it presents itself in what I see as color. It is really the inner speech of the breath that takes its effect as concepts. When the breath, totally refined, beats on the organs of sensation, it produces concepts. But if one were to be aware of this, to be aware of himself at once as thinker and as breather, then one would feel this process of thinking, this refined breathing, as an organized mineral substance, as an organized stone or crystal, filling one up.

You know that oxygen transforms itself in humans into carbonic acid. The connection with carbon in the finely-diffused multiply-branched arborization of the breath in human heads really displays itself there as an entrapment of carbonic acid. That is a process of mineralization. And the longer one lingers there, inwardly immersing oneself in carbon's entrapment of oxygen, in such measure may one grasp the mineralization process. One may grasp carbonic substance itself, the element carbon, the carbonic. And the carbonic is the Philosopher's Stone. Manifesting inwardly in human beings the carbonic is the Philosopher's Stone.

You may glean much from the old instinctive clairvoyants, in how they described the Philosopher's Stone. You will find that all over the world they described the Philosopher's Stone, not known by the common man, yet everywhere to be found. One can discover it everywhere. A person can find it where it lies, waiting to be discovered. It is to be found on the earth. It is very exactly described, how one discovers the carbon substance by burning wood. It can be discovered everywhere, this Philosopher's Stone. Carbonized material is what it is. It is contained in the veins of coal in coal-mining operations. It is also contained in the rarified breathing process. In a person, however, it is a process of nature, this incinerating process of coal, of coal that is living, but still a process of mineralization. … [Here the rapid tempo of speech made stenography somewhat less than reliable.]] A person feels inwardly turned to stone …crystalized, mineralized in his mineral nature through this process in the life of the wafting air, as one feels implanted in his plant-nature through the life of the ways of water, and as one feels animated in his animal nature through this process in the life of the earth.

This is what the Guardian gives to the human being in admonition, that a person should become aware of his relationship with the realms of nature. We have these admonitions from the Guardian of the Threshold for this reason, given to human beings as spoken meditative verse. If and when a person with deep emotion, with earnest sensitivity allows them to work on his heart and mind, then he will become somewhat aware of his kinship with the element of earth, which is related to his will, with the element of water, which is related to his feelings, and with the element of air, which in this manner, as I have just depicted for you, is related to his thinking, to his conceptualization. [Two lines were written on the blackboard.]

You stride into earth being’s helm¹
With deployment of your force of will;

That remains totally unknown for customary awareness. Every time we exercise our will to do something, we actually clamber down into the element of earth. But customary awareness knows nothing of this. The moment this clambering down becomes known, the person is changed from humanity into animality, and appears to himself as some sort of animal, at least in the etheric gestalt, into which he is looking, he appears changed into some sort of animal. One certainly does not feel right away exactly like an elephant or exactly like an ox, but it will be so, to such an extent, for in the element of will, one can bring to expression the world of the ox, the world of the elephant, or the world of the eagle. [Three more lines were written.]

Enter as thinker the earth domain,
And thought-power will show you yourself
As your intrinsic animality;

But such an admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, my friends, is not there for the purpose of being taken up as an idea, as a theory. It is there in order to become experienced by all human beings. If a person looks into what is within the will, he will become aware of his own animality, then he will become consumed with self-fear, but all of this must metamorphose, in courage, in courage of soul. Then one comes a step further. Then he comes into the spiritual world. [The verse was continued on the blackboard.]

The fear of yourself
Must change you in courage of soul. ²

There we have the first clambering down and under, into that realm where the Ahrimanic powers work so strongly and effectively. Our proper attitude is shown to us at once by the appropriate declamation, the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You stride into earth being’s helm
With deployment of your force of will;
Enter as thinker the earth domain,
And thought-power will show you yourself
As your intrinsic animality;
The fear of yourself
Must change you in courage of soul.

As a general rule, to attain what is best for our spiritual progression, is to undergo something that takes us down and under. When we encounter something that takes us down and under, as this fear of one's own animality appears, when we overcome this, when we metamorphose it by an inner action, in courage of the soul, then it will become the impetus to a higher human state of being. We need this fear in order to move up and on in the spirit.

The other clambering down, in the ways of water, we meet in the following admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, for the words which I impart to you are the words of the Guardian of the Threshold, whom we meet in the following admonition.

You live with water being
Only through feeling’s dream-weaving;
Surge awakening into water existence,
And the soul will reveal itself in you
As plant existence dank and dull;
Then lameness of yourself
Must lead you on to wakefulness.

The metamorphosis conversely of this sleepy dreamy way of feeling, when we clamber down and under in full awareness, will be for us to emerge as one awake. [The second stanza was now written on the board.]

You live with water being
Only through feeling’s dream-weaving;
Surge awakening into water existence,
And the soul will reveal itself in you
As plant existence dank and dull;
Then lameness of yourself
Must lead you on to wakefulness.

And when a person feels his kinship with the airy being, even in customary awareness, then he feels his kinship truly. He does not have to clamber down so deeply into the unconscious. Nevertheless, there still is the scent of Ahrimanic allurement in this descent. And yes, when we are living in our memories, living in our thoughts of the past, we are inwardly communing with breathing. When we have rarefied customary breathing in thinking about what is in our surroundings, then admittedly there is no danger at hand. When memories arise, however, the breath working from inward out, then once again a danger is at hand, exactly when this danger is most easy to observe. And for this descent through thinking into reflection, into musing, in which we deal primarily with thinking of notions of the past, for this the Guardian of the Threshold gives us the following admonition. [The beginning of the third stanza was written on the board.]

You muse in wafting ways of air
Only in memory's picture-forming;
Enfold willingly airy being,

One can do this, my friends, if with the same degree of inner activity, with energy, one arrays one thought upon another, much as a person does concerning external affairs. A person is used to exerting himself in moving a chair from one place to another. A person is not used to packing off a thought from one spot to another. He wants to think only along normal channels concerning external appearances, as things are given to him. He wants a book to display a succession of thoughts, he wants a newspaper to display a succession of thoughts, and he is satisfied when that is the case. It is just as if you were waiting expectantly, and rather than exerting your own will externally, deploying the force of your will, you were waiting to somehow be activated by an objective power, for example whenever you might want to move your arm to place it on a chair. It would be as if some sort of spirit were standing there and continually placing one of your legs in front of the other, so that you could walk. In one's train of thinking a person is just so, as it were, as if he were counting on one leg being placed in front of the other, in order to walk. [The next lines of the third stanza were written on the board and spoken.]

And your intrinsic soul will threaten you
As cold observing stone;

This is to become mineral-like, and whoever is not familiar with imagination, just does not know how mineral-hard customary thinking is. Customary thinking is hard as stone. One really feels the crusty abrasiveness of this thinking, once one has achieved entry into the spiritual world. Thinking is actually painful when it veers off into abstract forms. Whoever has spiritual life, can in any case still live with whatever emerges in thinking out of human feelings, with whatever emerges in thinking out of human impulses. He can live with himself, when animosities and scornful outbursts emerge externally out of human nature in thoughts, but he feels inwardly wounded by crusty abrasiveness, when the abstract thoughts of present-day civilization penetrate into his organization. What can be inflicted on present-day thoughts is such that even the sentence, "And intrinsic soul will threaten you as cold observing stone," does not make it clear. But when a person knowingly descends into the realm of memories, into the realm of the airy ways, when one’s breath is taken away, in and by the grasp of conceptualization, then it will be as I have depicted. But this inner death in thinking, this icy death, must in turn inflame us to a contrary force, even in thoughts it must call forth spirited vitality by means of inner force. [The stanza was completed on the board.]

Yet your selfhood’s frigid death
Must weaken and yield ³ to spirit fire.

These are the three admonitions concerning the underworld, the world of the lower elements, addressed by the Guardian of the Threshold to whomever comes to the Threshold. Here he portrays the human being’s need to become aware, if he would become a knower, of his inner kinship with the three realms of nature, how he must become aware through his kinship with the earth-beings of his animality and thereby of the nature of the animals in his vicinity, how he must become aware through his kinship with water-beings of his own plant-like nature, and thereby the nature of the plants in his vicinity, how he must become aware through his kinship with the air-beings of his own innate mineral-crystal-realm, his innate mineral-being, his innate stone-nature, and thereby the essential nature of the mineral realm in his vicinity.

Fear, lassitude, and death, as the negative attributes, must thereby not just develop, but must metamorphose into the positives, into spirituality, leading into attributes of soul courage, awakening, and flaming exhilaration.

This is indeed what the Guardian of the Threshold calls out step by step, first the inner feeling of fear in descending into animality, then the inner feeling of powerlessness in the lassitude of plant-existence, and then finally the yearning in the face of the chilling freezing consciousness of stone-existence, the yearning to develop exhilarating fire.

So sounds forth the three-part admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You stride into earth being’s helm
With deployment of your force of will;
Enter as thinker the earth domain,
And thought-power will show you yourself
As your intrinsic animality;
The fear of yourself
Must change you in courage of soul.

You live with water being
Only through feeling’s dream-weaving;
Surge awakening into water existence,
And the soul will reveal itself in you
As plant existence dank and dull;
Then lameness of yourself
Must lead you on to wakefulness.

You muse in wafting ways of air
Only in memory's picture-forming;
Enfold willingly airy being,
And your intrinsic soul will threaten you
As cold observing stone;
Yet your selfhood’s frigid death
Must weaken and yield to spirit fire.

And as we come there [The lower part of the schematic was indicated.] into Ahriman's realm, and by means of the Guardian of the Threshold are admonished and rescued from the seductive art of Ahriman, so we press on to the other side, [The upper part of the schematic was indicated.] in which from where we stand in life on earth we will forge ahead into the esoteric, into light, world chemism, and world living.

We absorb, we gather up the light. Usually, we do not immediately know that the light, when it flows in through the eyes, actually unites with the breath. Warmth of course lies in between. The breath of air unites with the light [The middle part of the schematic was indicated.] The conception evolves from the perception. We live in the light, in that we build thoughts for ourselves, and just so, in accordance with the other side, in accordance with the lower realms, we live in the air, in the breath. We hold thoughts in retention by means of the light. We don't realize it, but thoughts can live in us only if they are illuminated by light, if the breath is illuminated by light.

For those who ascend through imagination, thinking is a gentle inspiration of breath, that, as the light is inwardly taken hold of, is fully illuminated, resplendent, vibrant.

There go the thinned-out waves of breathing. [Waves were drawn.] They start to glow in the light [yellow], for the light in spiritual science bestows significance on all that works primarily through the senses. Not only that which works effectively through the eyes, but also what works effectively in sound is light, and also what works effectively in the sense of taste, insofar as we have taken note of it and so it has come to light. All that we have taken note of through the senses has come to light, is light. But if and when we become aware of how this thinking, this having thoughts, is just rarefied breath, upon which light beats and interweaves, then it is most certainly so, as when a person wishes to observe the surface of the ocean, and on the surface of the ocean sees not just sunlight dancing off the waves [red on the yellow light reflection], but dwells there, catching the scent, feeling the weaving of the waves with the sheen of reflections, it is just so that all this may be taken to heart and mind, insofar as one experiences it inwardly.

And here enters the allurement of Lucifer, for to some extent it is immensely beautiful, and to some extent induces an immense desire and an immense complacency. True inner lustful desire creeps over a person. He easily falls prey to the allurement, the seduction of Lucifer, who wishes to draw a person away from this world, into a world of beauty over which Lucifer himself has dominion. This allurement would wrestle a person away from the earthly elements and heave him up into the angelic, into the spiritual realm, so that after every sleep he would no longer descend into the physical body. In this manner enters the seduction of Lucifer, ever-so-much in contradistinction to the thicker elements, into which the Ahrimanic seduction enters.

But it has been so arranged, that just here we hear the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, and are not drawn into this realm without holding fast to the determination never to forget the many needs, the many woes of earth. Then our bonding with earth existence, that of course we must wander through, will be strongly established. And so sounds forth the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You hold of light’s radiant might
Thoughts alone fast within;
When light’s radiance thinks by itself in you,
So will untruthful spirit-being
Arise in you as self-delusion;
Reflection on the needs of earth
Will hold you in humanity.

[The first stanza of this mantra was now written on the board.]

You hold of light’s radiant might
Thoughts alone fast within;
When light’s radiance thinks by itself in you,

For a person will be totally changed through the imagination of the appearance of light, with thoughts no longer held in their abstraction, but rather as light playing over the sweep of breath.

So will untruthful spirit-being
Arise in you as self-delusion;
Reflection on the needs of earth
Will hold you in humanity.

As we ascend further into the etheric element, then the Luciferic allurement becomes still more intense. Coming into consideration now, are not just our thoughts, in which it is comparatively easy for us to find our way, but rather the dim element of feelings. For the only part a person holds of the gestalt of world-forming-design, which is working and weaving cosmically in the chemical ether, the only substantial part he holds fast to is in his feelings. And when he then imaginatively ascends out into the flow of this world chemistry, it is certainly not the way it is in a jovial philistine narrow-minded earth-chemistry laboratory, where the chemist stands by the laboratory table and all is external to him, but in ascending he must, the person must, in all the blending and separating of the stuff coming into himself, he must himself be drawn in. So he becomes himself a cosmic chemist. His own chemical processing is interwoven there, and in this existence, interwoven with the gestalt of world-forming design, he feels the Luciferic allurement in the design as a powerless becoming. For the person is thrown into a sort of willful lustful desire, knowing that he can indeed be spirit. He will no longer return, if he does not recollect the necessary tones of earth. He will be made powerless, in not being able to come again into his humanity. He must take great care in this soul-powerlessness, just as soon as he approaches this world, in regard to the love he has acquired for all that is of value on the earth, for the value of the earth.

You hold of world chemism

so says the Guardian of the Threshold:

Feelings alone fast within;
When world⁴ forming feels by itself in you,
So will powerless spirit experience
Smother⁵ your self-possession;
Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

[The second stanza was now written on the board.]

You hold of world chemism
Feelings alone fast within;
When world forming feels by itself in you,
So will powerless spirit experience

that comes at this level from Lucifer

Smother your self-possession;
Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

A person can only attain his cosmic intent by becoming angelic at the proper time. During the Jupiter evolution the man of today will certainly ascend to angelic existence. Lucifer's seduction consists of affecting people out of time, trying to make them into angels still in the Earth evolution, into stunted angels. Then would the souls of men be lost, and a stunted angel-soul would emerge. So we should attend to the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

The most intensive seduction is in the last element, in world life, when we ascend into global world life. We hold some of this fast within our will, but it is held as if in sleep, as I have often related to you. If it would be awakened in imagination, if we would be aware, instead of our well-circumscribed life on earth that is enclosed within our skin, of our experiencing world living, then we would be dead in an instant. For to live knowingly in the general earth-life, means undergoing death as an individual being. Universal life kills us, if and when we grasp it. Similar to the insect flying into a flame, entranced by the fire, by the light, and dying the instant it flies too close, in a similar manner individual life dies in the general world living, when it is entered knowingly with one's own spirit. And as the animal, out of an immense lustful desire, flutters into the flame, so does the person as an individual die in his spirit within the general, the cosmic life.

We ought not to suddenly be thinking of ourselves venturing into this element, if we have not first built up in ourselves a god-devoted, a spirit-devoted earthly will, namely, for us to be fully aware, that upon the earth we carry out the intentions of the gods. If we infuse ourselves with this god-devoted will, up to the point of inner sacrificial fervent love, then we will not let ourselves be enticed into becoming degenerate angels. Instead, so long as human existence is essential for the being living in us, we will remain human. And so sounds forth the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.

You hold of world life
Will alone fast within;
When world living fully captures you,
So will ruinous spirit rapture
Slay your experience of yourself;
Yet spirit-devoted earth-willing,
Will allow the god in man to rule.

[The third stanza was now written on the board.]

You hold of world life
Will alone fast within;
When world living fully captures you,
So will ruinous spirit rapture
Slay your experience of yourself;
Yet spirit-devoted earth-willing,
Will allow the god in man to rule.

And so, we have here the three-part admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold concerning the upper tier [of the schematic], concerning the etheric elements.

You hold of light’s radiant might
Thoughts alone fast within;
When light’s radiance thinks by itself in you,
So will untruthful spirit-being
Arise in you as self-delusion;
Reflection on the needs of earth
Will hold you in humanity.

You hold of world chemism
Feelings alone fast within;
When world forming feels by itself in you,
So will powerless spirit experience
Smother your self-possession;
Yet loving the value of the earth
Will save your human soul.

You hold of world life
Will alone fast within;
When world living fully captures you,
So will ruinous spirit rapture
Slay your experience of yourself;
Yet spirit-devoted earth-willing
Will allow the god in man to rule.

It is the practice of recognition, of inner knowing, that will be brought to you in these lessons, my friends. And the things given to you in this way, you should take in and understand as a simple description of theoretical matters, but rather, in order to experience the heart of the matter, you must put it in its proper perspective. The actual and truthful perspective, is that everything said in these lessons is the specific instruction of the Guardian of the Threshold himself, emerging directly out of what a person can receive, in discussions with the Guardian of the Threshold. For the intention here in these Class lessons, my friends, is not to give theories. The intention is to allow the spiritual world itself to speak. This was spoken about in the very first lesson, about how this school should be seen as having been established by the spiritual world itself.

This has been the nature of all mystery schools. In mystery schools people speak as entrusted by the spiritual guardianship of the world. And this must remain the nature of mystery schools. This is why it has been stipulated so strongly in earnest, that each and every participant in this class should make it come alive, and should enshrine it. Certainly no one can be a real member of this school of spiritual life without this serious demeanor. This is just what I would like to direct your attention to once again, quite seriously. Take up this school as having been constituted immediately out of the will of the spiritual world itself, which the school seeks merely to interpret in a manner proper for our period of time, for the era we have entered into, in which the darkness has passed and a light has once again come forth, a light that at first admittedly externalizes itself imperfectly upon the earth, as human beings still retain the old darkness. It is there however. And only those who understand that the light is there, will enter into the ways and means of this our spirit-school in the true sense.

• 1. Das Heft = the haft, meaning the handle of a tool which you hold in your hand. On a psychological level more properly, it is earth-being’s helm, although realm is probably good enough.
• 2. The fear changes you, and you change yourself in soul-courage. It is not fear that changes to courage.
• 3. weichen: Weichen is an ancient English and German word meaning “to be weak or soft,” but in German it has veered off to include the meaning “to yield,” and in English to include “to weaken in moral strength.” To adequately express this, it should be translated as “Must weaken and yield to spirit fire.”
• 4. Welten is cognate with world. The entire physical-material universe is the cosmos (Kosmos in German). Cosmic rays were initially mysterious, although we now know that they come from supernova and black holes, so cosmic in English acquired the secondary meaning of powerful and mysterious. A third meaning is cosmetic jewelry and makeup. The cosmetic adornment of the world-all is the cosmos. Our entire world, however, is quite a bit more than the cosmos, as it includes inner worlds (such as the world of mathematics, the world of education, and the spiritual world). We must translate various forms of Welt as world and never as cosmos or universe.
• 5. Ersticken: What does one do with a stick? A walking stick doubles as a fight stick, and with the prefix er- it becomes an internal action. You stick someone with emotional barbs, you stick it to someone until the person becomes overwhelmed, stifled, smothered, choked up, and loses his self-possession.

This evening we want to use to reflect on the interaction between the spiritual and physical worlds. This has already been the subject of other reflections in recent days. It will be the main point on which we will depend to further develop the topic that we have raised. But I would like to start from a more general consideration, which will show us how, in the more abstract, in the more general, the interaction of the spiritual and the physical, the unearthly and the earthly, can be thought of, can be encompassed by a simple thought. And from this more general consideration, we will then move on to what is important: the relationship of the disembodied human being, who has passed through the gate of death, to those people who are embodied in this earthly life.

Let us look at our Earth as the scene of what is expressed to our senses first. I will begin quite hypothetically, will propose thoughts and ideas that are initially just thoughts, or at least appear to be just thoughts. Let us assume that all the forces of our Earth, from a certain point of view, are concentrated and compressed into a small image of the Earth, in some way shaped. So let us assume that we have a small Earth, a small, tiny body, but one that contains in miniature the same forces as the Earth in the large. Let us visualize this schematically. Let us imagine that we have a small Earth, that is, a small, tiny body that contains within itself the same power relationships that are otherwise distributed throughout the large volume of the Earth's body. Let us imagine that this small Earth body is somehow connected to the Earth.

Now, if we imagine the earth correctly, we do not have to think of it as just any inanimate being, as it presents itself to the geologist, the mineralogist, who only imagines this earth as an inanimate being. Because if the earth were only mineral, as the geologist imagines it, it would never be able to harbor plants, animals, human beings on it. Of course the geologist is right to isolate what is dead, but he should be aware that this is only one aspect of the earth's existence. If, however, we imagine the earth as a living being, then we must also imagine that its life undergoes changes over time. So that this earth in winter — we have discussed this often — is in a very different state than in summer, just as a person is in a different state when asleep than when awake. We must not imagine that winter and summer simply brush over the earth, but that they are something that takes hold of the state of the earth, that is, the living being, just as the states of waking and sleeping take hold of us. This temporal sequence is therefore part of our earthly existence if we regard this earthly existence as a living one. But with this we also say that every being that is connected with this earth – and that includes this small earth we are talking about here – is in this changing state with the whole earth, that it shares in it.

What does this change of conditions mean for our earth? Let us say, for example, that spring is coming. When spring comes, it means that the sun's effect on the earth is quite different from that during the winter. We could also say: When spring arrives, the earth is seized by the effects of the sun. During the winter, when our little earth with the great earth was, so to speak, dependent on itself, when the sun did not care about our little earth, now our little earth is also seized by the effects of the sun, by what is outside of our earth. The sum of forces in the little earth is snatched from the earth. Our little earth is, so to speak, no longer dependent on the earth alone; it is claimed by the sun, it is snatched from the earth. Yes, when our little earth is snatched from the earth in this way, then other forces than mere earthly forces play into our little earth, then the external forces communicate with our little earth.

Now we have to imagine this small earth lined with substances. What a substance is is not considered here. From autumn to spring, this small earth is alone with itself, and so it can develop its forces within itself. But then comes the sun, which draws out the forces, so that under the influence of the sun's effect, what was first enclosed in our little earth now comes into extra-terrestrial spheres of activity. It is torn out and comes into extra-terrestrial spheres of activity. That which was compressed can expand and also acquires a relationship to the surrounding cosmic space under the influence of the sun.

Now, after a certain time, towards autumn, the effects of the sun cease again. Then this development cannot take place, and the forces of the sun's effect withdraw from the forces of the earth's effect, that is to say, this combination of forces is restored. It gathers the substance together: the earth takes back, as it were, what it had to leave to the sun for a certain period of time. The effects of the sun now cease for a while, winter comes. If this were left to the earth, the sun would completely take possession of the small earth within the great earth. During the whole of the winter the system of earth forces must be active within. Otherwise the sun would take possession of this small earth entirely for itself. It must be ensured that when the sun reappears it can take hold of this small earth; otherwise it will simply become a tiny ball that is consumed by the great earth. A force must assert itself so that the sun, when it comes, can reach this small earth again. But precautions must be taken for this.

If the earth has its own power only in this one inside it (it is drawn), then that is just a small earth. The sun has retreated, now this small earth is alone with the large earth. When the sun comes again, what should it do now with what has become mere earth? In reality, the sun must be able to reach in again – there is no difference here, whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth around the sun – the sun, when it is in a new relationship to the earth, must be able to reach in. You can imagine it in the following way: Imagine a person standing firmly in one place and using all his strength to remain standing. You approach from the side and try to push him over. If he has enough strength within him to stand, you will not be able to move him. But when it begins to move, you will be able to intervene in its direction of movement. Suppose there were a force inside it that would cause the orbiting movement of the sun, or of the earth itself, like an inner momentum; let us assume that the sun would communicate this momentum to the small earth: then the sun could in turn intervene in this movement that it has imparted. In this way, it could snatch this small Earth from the Earth, and the process could take place as described. In other words, towards spring we would have a small Earth in which the Sun intervenes through impulses of motion that it had already imparted the previous fall. The Sun intervenes, snatches the small Earth from the mere forces of the Earth, and, in accordance with the effect of the Sun, unfolds on a larger scale that which is limited only to the small Earth. The forces must contract, and the small globe of the earth must be given the momentum of the sun. You already suspect what it is: I have described in sketchy terms what happens during the growth of plants, the unfolding of plants into leaves, flowers and fruits. I have described to you here the participation of the sun's momentum: that is fertilization; the seed is fertilized and remains so until the following year, when it is again seized by the sun. The little grain that carries out the fertilization in the plant is the being in which, through the sun's maturation, the possibility is laid to convey this momentum to the earthly part.

You see, we have here a living interaction between the earthly and the extra-terrestrial. We cannot imagine that the plant's growth continues to flourish without the sun leaving it a replica of its momentum, in which it can engage again the following year. In other words, when we look at the plant, we are really not just looking at something that is connected with the workings of the earth; rather, we see in the whole cycle of the plant process an interaction between the sun and the earth. There are other planetary conditions to be considered, but we will disregard these for now in order to grasp the meaning of the whole process. We want to visualize how what we see on earth is not just an earthly product, but also a product of the sun. The fact that human knowledge is usually limited to what goes on inside and outside on earth prevents us from gaining a real insight, from truly understanding things. For with mere earthly forces, only our minerals are formed. The moment we go beyond the merely mineral into the vegetable, we must say that in the earthly itself there are no longer any forces that shape things.

The materialists always hope that one day they will be able to produce a plant seed in the laboratory, just like any other chemical composition. The point of the opposition to materialism is not this production, but rather that, by advancing from the mineral to the plant, from the chemical product to the living, the production can only take place through a supernatural process. And before they will succeed in realizing this ideal of materialism, in producing plant seeds just as they do mineral products, chemical substances, the materialists will have to learn – if I may express myself grotesquely – to believe in astrology, to believe that they must place a process that they want to bring about under the influence of the stars. Laboratories will have to be set up that work with the changing seasons and that take into account the constellation of the stars in the same way that the constellation of the stars is taken into account in nature. One must rise from the earth when one rises from the dead to the living. For the etheric-physical must also be involved in the creation of the living. This, however, is never dependent on the merely earthly, but on that which is spread throughout the whole world. When we survey our earthly surroundings, we survey what is merely physical; from the earthly point of view, we survey the physical by surveying the earthly. That which is ethereal to our earth is still exposed to the entire universe.

If we now go further to the astral, we come to an element that is no longer exposed to the visible at all. And if I were to develop this for the animal kingdom in the way I developed it for the plant kingdom, it would turn out to be more complicated; but you would see that not only the extra-terrestrial and the still visible in the starry world come into consideration, but that the supersensible comes into consideration at all, which is not even concluded in the starry world. One must go out of the realm of the visible.

I wanted to make such a consideration before you, so that you gain insight into the really deep inner mystery of what is going on in the everyday, in the daily growth of plants, so that you gain insight into how it is in the fertilizing grains of the plant , which are distributed in a circle or in some other pattern around the ovary, it is essential that they contain extraterrestrial effects, and that the seed itself is essentially a reflection of the whole earth effect, that it is a small earth. The interaction that takes place in the plant blossom through fertilization is a reflection of the process that takes place between the earth and the entire starry world of the surrounding cosmic space.

We are fundamentally surrounded by secrets everywhere, and knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge always inspire the deepest humility. Just imagine how far it is from the general view of such a thing to the concrete view of the details of all that covers the

4419 earth. The field of knowledge thus truly opens up as an infinite one. We are confronted with infinity at every point of our existence, so to speak. And it is part of the right attitude that a person should develop towards the world to have a sense that one is actually looking into an infinite existence everywhere. But through this one also feels a certain bond between the individual finite human existence and the infinite, the whole world. And this mood should actually be poured out over everything that spiritual science can bring us, because without this reverent mood towards the infinite, nothing can actually be grasped with the right feeling in spiritual science. From time to time, one must renew such a mood within oneself, so that one ceases to regard knowledge as something that is sought after on the side, as it were, in the course of life, while in fact it must belong to the most sacred spiritual that intervenes in our lives.

If we give ourselves up to such moods, then we will also receive with the right attitude that which will increasingly have to be proclaimed in our time from the sources of spiritual science for the progress that must necessarily come into the world from our present time into the future. And when we have developed such an attitude, then this attitude is something effective in our soul. It is really not just something abstract, but it takes hold of our soul, it warms and illuminates our soul. And only when this happens can the right thing emerge from spiritual science, when our soul becomes, as it were, a different one, when what can be explored through spiritual science is felt through. When we bring such an attitude into our soul, then we can approach the riddles of life in the right way, which otherwise flow past us in life without us being able to relate to them in the right way.

There is really an inner connection between the soul and these general considerations, which I have now made, and what I now want to say with regard to human life. If you look at the plant, if you see it sprouting from the earth, you can tune your soul so that you feel: What is sprouting as greenery comes from such a complicated little creature, the seed, that this little being – from certain points of view – is a reflection of the whole earth, that in what I see sprouting from leaf to flower, from flower to fruit, the whole universe is involved. When I look at a green plant leaf on its stem, I realize that in this leaf, the way it is positioned, the way it greens, what was first enclosed in the small earth is enveloped by the effects of the sun, what has been wrested from the earth until the effects of the sun have taken hold of it. Then the effects of the sun, however, leave behind their vibrational impulses, after they have made it impossible for that which was in the small earth to spread when it must contract again. We see, as it were, in the sprouting, unfolding plant an image of certain effects of the whole great cosmos. We must regard what presents itself to our senses in this way as something that reveals to us in every point secrets that permeate and interweave the whole cosmos.

In this way, human life itself is also connected with the whole cosmos and now also with what is there in relation to us of the extraterrestrially visible bodies and processes. But what appears in earthly processes is particularly significant to us when we consider, I would say, the deviations from what we see as normal earthly life, normal human life. It is true that we constantly see many more deviations than what is actually normal in life, but ordinary cognition, which is limited to the sense world, does not engage with these deviations; one might say that it does not engage with the meaning of these deviations. We live in a time in which, crowded together, many deviations present themselves to us, which at the same time are real riddle questions. Do we not see in this time of severe trial for humanity numerous of our human brothers going prematurely through the gate of death? We see them going through the gate of death not through some kind of illness, something that is in their own organism, but we see them forcibly going

go through this gate of death. Because it is something else whether a human soul goes through the gate of death so that she dies of an illness in her youth or because her organism is hit by a bullet or is forcibly taken away from the soul-spiritual in any other way. But I already spoke about it yesterday: What takes place here between birth and death is all significant in the context of life as a whole; we have to accept it as karmic connections, we have to fit into the karma as it is given. But what happens is significant.

Now let us consider the case of the physical organism being taken away from the soul-spiritual by a bullet at a relatively young age. Compared to what we have become accustomed to — that the human being consumes his own organism — this is an abnormality. It is therefore a twofold mystery. If death alone is a mystery for direct contemplation, which is revealed through spiritual science, a twofold mystery arises when the course of life is not such that the organism is taken away from the spiritual soul through inner organic processes, but when this happens through a bullet.

Facing the universe, the cosmos, an inner mood arises in the soul that is created by such simple considerations, but which, grasped in all its depth, seizes us with an inner mood in relation to the secrets of the universe. And then, when the soul is so moved, we also approach the event that I have just hinted at with the necessary reverent mood and dignity and with the necessary seriousness: that the physical-bodily is forcibly taken away from the human spiritual-soul. And then this question arises before our soul like a riddle. Because how such a question arises determines whether or not one can contribute something to its solution. If a person has just had a banquet and then rested and now sits down to his spiritual work, then he will not solve the deep riddle, then he will not find the mood that matters. But when he faces the riddle and his soul is imbued with the right attitude towards the universe, then the riddles can be solved.

When the spiritual researcher, with such a mood of the soul, faces the riddle of death, which approaches us in such a way that the physical body is violently snatched from the soul-spiritual, then all kinds of things arise in the soul that can contribute to solving the riddle. Then the right impressions come, which are needed to clarify such a matter. These impressions cannot arise from every frame of mind, but only from the right one. In order to make this vividly clear to you, I have chosen this particular path today, by showing you, as it were, how such a task presents itself to the spiritual researcher. When the spiritual researcher is in the right frame of mind, the enigmatic question arises before him. But then something quite different arises: just as thoughts usually follow each other in a lawless manner, so now an impression arises before the soul in a law-governed manner, alongside the question. And then, if one has sensed this riddle, the riddle of death, one can sense the other question as something that belongs to it: Yes, how do people actually – depending on their particular nature – accept life? And all kinds of thoughts arise, thoughts that I now want to spread out before your soul itself.

Especially in our present time cycle, people only really accept something as reality if it is not a “mere thought”. For them, thought is not really something real. And they may be right from their point of view, but it is just a certain mood of the soul. That which is real must approach man much more strongly than a mere thought. A mere thought is just that — a mere thought! But for modern man, that which is designated as being must on no account be a mere thought. What presents itself as a mere thought, that is what man today calls non-existent. That which exists must place itself firmly in the world, must not speak merely to the thought. Out of this mood, people only believe that they are standing in reality when they can speak of this reality as an existing being, when they are forced to recognize this reality through being.

Now, when we ascend from this world in which we live to the spiritual world that man inhabits when he has passed through the gate of death, the most uncomfortable thought is, one might say, the thought of the being that formed here in the physical world. A being that is like the being in the physical world disturbs the disembodied person in the spiritual world. Precisely what is here in reality called the unreal in contrast to the existing is the real in the spiritual world. If something were to approach you there as it does here in the material world, you would reject it. It would startle you and be something that does not belong in the spiritual world. This is an extremely significant thought. If one were to talk as trivially in the spiritual world as one does here, a spirit might say, when something approaches it as it does here: What am I supposed to do with it? That's not it at all! — Because in the spiritual world I must have the opportunity to experience everything that comes to me as an imagination — it is at the lowest level of knowledge in the spiritual world — that is, to be able to translate it into intuition through my own activity. While in our time people only recognize as reality what they have done nothing for, one cannot

'recognize this in the spiritual world. Rather, in the spiritual world, one must do something to help bring about what is to appear there as reality. One must always work together.

It is the case that a disembodied person in the spiritual world sees the spiritual world around them to the extent that they are active in it. And what they see when they are not active is the world beyond, the world that is our world here. When the disembodied person looks at the earth, they see what is there without them being involved. Just as we on earth call our visible world, our real world, our existing world the here and now and what cannot be seen the hereafter, it is exactly the other way round from the point of view of the spiritual world. In the spiritual world there is absolutely nothing except what we create out of nothing into the present by participating: That is then the here and now. Otherwise, this world in the spiritual world is dark and silent and desolate if we do not act spiritually and mentally in it. But the hereafter is there without us working. While we look up here to the unknown, we look from the spiritual world at what is familiar to us here, but that is precisely the hereafter, which has no reality because it is, without one doing anything to it. — One must familiarize oneself with such ideas.

Now there is something within our physical world, our physical reality, that not everyone, but certain people, accept as something meaningful, despite the fact that it is not real. It is something that individual people bring into this reality, and in contrast to this, those who have an understanding of it behave in such a way that they accept it, despite the fact that it has no real existence: These are the ideals that people have. Idealists bring something valuable into our sensual reality: the ideals by which people live, which have no material reality, and which only the coarse materialist does not accept. But at the same time, these ideals are something of immense value in this life. They are the ideals that give us the impetus for our lives, they are what we desire so that we can hold to them. In a certain respect, these ideals make life valuable in that man lives up to them. Something unreal in the materialistic sense must be carried into our sensual reality with the ideals, so that what we must characterize in the sense does not arise: mere existence would be bleak if ideals were not there, if man did not find them in them. Among those who have no ideals, there must be idealists who, as it were, develop something in our reality that is an image of the reality beyond, that is not an existing thing, that does not claim the existing and yet is a valuable thing, indeed, has an absolute value.

After the spiritual researcher has developed this impression, which is natural to him, his research leads him back to the riddle of the human being hit by a bullet in his youth. And he must now ask: Is there something for the world beyond, in which the disembodied human beings and spiritual beings live, that corresponds to idealism here on earth? Is there something similar for the beings in the hereafter as the ideals here on earth? And lo and behold, the following emerges. Take a person who was shot at a young age: his etheric body separates from the physical body, the physical body has gone in a violent way. Of course, the violence must come from outside. What I have said can never apply when it is a matter of one's own decision. The process must come from outside. The etheric body, as I have already emphasized, has forces within it that could have continued to supply life for decades, perhaps even for decades, here on earth. These forces do not disappear, they remain. The person who now discards his etheric body in this way hands over the forces of his etheric body to the general world. But he has entered the spiritual world in the manner indicated, or rather, his body has been taken from him. So he now ascends into the spiritual world as a disembodied soul. Something of him remains in the physical world that he could have used up himself but did not use up. Consider what is at hand here! The human being in question ascends into the spiritual world without having used up anything that he could have used up.

We now turn our attention to the individuality of the human being itself. The human being ascends into the spiritual world without having consumed something that he could have consumed. Thus he ascends into the spiritual world with something that could have been real down here in the physical world, but did not become real in the external sense. Those people who entered the physical world with the potential for prolonged use of the etheric body here, but did not experience this use, come up to the spiritual world differently than those who have used up this etheric body by the end of their existence. They come up having incorporated into this earth something that could have been, but did not become. But this causes a mood in them, through which they become something similar for the spiritual world as the idealists here are for the physical world. So the one who passes through the gate of death in this way enters the spiritual world by bringing in something that is idealism there for the spiritual world, which is similar to the ideals that are brought into the physical world here by the idealists. A meaningful context of life!

So in such martyrdom times as the present one, souls enter the spiritual world that have passed through a shorter existence. They have lived here on earth in such a way that something that could have come into existence did not come into being for them, and they enter the spiritual world in such a way that they represent the connection with the earthly world there in the same way that idealists here represent the connection between the earthly world and the spiritual world in their ideals. In other words, these human beings who have passed through the gate of death in this way have the task of proclaiming in the spiritual world that not everything on earth is as coarse as that which is called reality here under ordinary circumstances, that the earth also harbors something that is indeed predisposed to being, but does not live out this being in a coarse way. The fact that such an inner attitude of the soul is also carried up into the spiritual world gives rise, in the time between death and a new birth, to something similar to the idealism that exists here on earth. And if we look at such an age as ours from the standpoint of the wisdom of the world, then we look into the world in such a way that we say to ourselves: Within the whole, wisdom-filled course of the world, we also accept this in such a way that we work our way up to its understanding with reverence. We then recognize that in such ages of martyrdom the spiritual worlds are given in a great, all-embracing sense that which must live with them, just as our idealism must live on earth, so that those who, as such, go up into the spiritual world at all and live through the life between death and a new birth may find something similar in this world to what we find here in idealism. Therefore, these ages must come into being. Whether they must always arise in the future is not a matter for discussion today, because that depends on the way in which the life of knowledge of mankind on earth is spiritualized, not only whether but in what way. No one should draw from what has been said that such ages should necessarily be defended forever; but if one examines their meaning, it becomes clear what has been said for the present time of mankind.

Then we look into the wisdom-filled context of the world and say to ourselves: How does fear and terror, suffering and pain, and what those who pass through the gate of death must necessarily find in the spiritual world fit together? — We see how suffering, pain, blood and martyrdom, which present themselves to us here from one side, look from the other side. One can well imagine that there are people who want to be wiser than the gods and who therefore raise the question: Would the gods not have brought about something in the spiritual world that corresponds to idealism on earth, without having imposed on earth what is imposed on earth in such a martyr age? — Such questions are raised only by those who want to be wiser than the gods. Those who look into the human age in the right way want to understand the world because they are convinced that it must be as it is, and that anything man dreams up about something that would be better for this world could only be worse for it.

We look at the idealists, perhaps at a truly idealistic person in this world; we are perhaps tempted, if we have a sense for ideals, to say: See this man, he brings heaven into the earth, because what is not in the material sense, he brings as something valuable for the existing, as a guiding principle to people! The souls that have normally passed through the gate of death and are going through the life between death and a new birth also see in this life souls that have in some way undergone a sacrificial death, from whom the physical body has been taken from the outside by earthly necessity. They look to these souls as to those who have to proclaim to them that down there on earth there is not only coarse existence, but that, connected with the earth, there are also human tendencies that could be existence and yet do not come to full existence, but instead of consuming this full existence, pass over at an earlier point in their lives between birth and death into the spiritual world.

A significant question arises here, namely, what is the difference between such a violent death and a death caused by an early illness? For what I have said now is nothing but a statement of facts. Precisely those who have ended their physical lives in this way, as described, are, as it were, the idealists of the spiritual world, and they are idealists for the reason that, as can be seen from further observation, the physical body has been taken from them by earthly events, by events that merely belong to earthly life.

When a person undergoes an illness, the body is taken from him by forces other than earthly ones. For consider, even in the growth of plants, not only earthly forces are at work, but extraterrestrial forces also collaborate. This is of course also the case with animals and even more so with human beings. Our illnesses do not come from the earth alone. Death comes to us only from the earth in no other way than when we die a violent death. However death may come, it is never a mere earthly event, unless it be a violent death in the sense indicated. Whether death comes to us through an illness – and suicide is not an earthly event either, since it comes about through a decision of the soul – there is no death that is merely brought about by earthly forces, except that which, through sacrificial deaths, through forces that play on earth, frees the body from the soul-spiritual. So that here earthly forces and relationships enter into reciprocal relationships with that which is spiritual. Otherwise, death is always something that completely transcends the earth; it is never a mere interaction between the earth and what is in the spiritual world. The etheric body, which was early deprived of its activity, is given over to purely earthly conditions, to something that is merely earthly, that is merely earthly events. For death is such — hold what I am about to say together with some of my thoughts these days — that when viewed from the physical side, it appears quite different than when viewed from the spiritual side. I have hinted at this in various ways. But always, when death does not occur in the way I have now indicated, it is something that can be understood from the other side. If one enters the other world through a death from illness, from old age, or through suicide, then one has what is needed to understand death there. If death is caused by a bullet on the battlefield, then one must look at purely earthly conditions to understand it. It is the same with accidents. One must look down from the spiritual world to have been earthly; death is to be explained from earthly conditions. And that makes that one must look down from the here and now of the spiritual world into the hereafter of the physical world in order to understand such a death.

Just as our ideals connect us to heaven, so the heavenly ideals connect these dead to the earth. Therefore, the one who thus passes through the gate of death, in the life between death and new birth, is one who weaves into all that takes place between the human souls that come to be embodied again, that which then results in our earth in spiritual things, which results in our earth in the earth itself also consisting of our thoughts, feelings and not merely of earthly things.

It must be admitted that the characteristics of these things, which I have discussed, are difficult. But it is understandable that this must be difficult, because one speaks with words that are coined for physical conditions about that which extends far, far beyond physical conditions. In any case, it is one thing to look, I would say, dull-witted and uncomprehendingly, at the mysterious nature of such events that emerge from the bosom of history into human life, such as our present difficult time of trial for humanity, and quite another to look at them and say to oneself: What gives meaning to such an event is not only significant for our Earth, but for all life! And in this feeling one is led into the deep meaning and the wisdom of the whole. One gradually learns to sense what must all be involved in order for the human being to be placed in this world in the course of his entire life.

This is what I wanted to suggest in the second mystery drama, from the mouth of Capesius, who speaks of the fact that the thinking of many gods and the cooperation of many gods is necessary to make man appear to all the worlds as their goal. That which in this drama emerges as a world-sentiment from the soul of Capesius, can perhaps become objective if one tries to appropriate such ideas, as we have tried to put them into our souls today. In such personalities as Capesius, such moods arise tragically because they can also arise without one immediately finding the full solution to the riddle. That is one thing to be noted in this connection; the other is that we must always bear in mind how much such study calls upon us to be modest and humble, not proud, not to have human delusions of grandeur.

To appropriate human self-awareness in the right sense means to consciously visualize it inwardly. And when we begin to sense what we can extend our consciousness to, how wide the horizon of the riddles of the world is, we will take care not to fall for the proud thought: O man, how you are actually a summary of the whole cosmos! — I believe that precisely such a thought must be very far from us. On the other hand, the other thought will be close to us: How little we know in our consciousness of what is knowable! — Infinity is necessary to put together the human being; but we have never gone further than knowing a very small piece of it. Modesty and humility are what descends into our soul precisely from knowledge as it expands. One can never learn more about the spiritual world than one already knows without also learning that what can be known is infinite. And the more one knows, the more vividly one senses this infinity. And one learns to understand how a part of life consists in allowing oneself to be seized by the great, mighty riddles and secrets that pulsate through existence.

Much of what humanity must now regain was known by people in ancient times within an ancient wisdom like a heritage. What people possess today has only been gained by this inheritance disappearing from the souls. In order for human souls to acquire this wisdom again, it first had to disappear. It had to disappear so that it could become acquired wisdom. We must work our way up again in order to gain in further earthly lives, in the further existence of the earth, what has disappeared from the souls as inherited wisdom. Thus, we must look into the perspective of the human future; then we will understand the necessity of spiritual science entering the world. It is precisely this living relationship with the infinite, as it has been characterized, that enables us to truly grasp esoteric science as something that is inwardly alive, that is also active and effective in us, and that can make us true co-workers in the shaping of the earth, which we must become if the earth is to develop further.

To reinforce this, I would like to mention one more thing. There are people we should certainly listen to, because they are saying the right thing from the point of view of the present. They say: In earlier times, people did not know what a criminal is, why a person develops as a criminal in the world. Today, however, we know. If you dissect the head of a criminal, you will find that it has a certain characteristic: the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum, as it does in normal people. It was a great and significant discovery made by Moritz Benedikt, the famous criminal anthropologist, which shows how a certain simple physiology of the occiput determines whether someone is a criminal. So consider: You are a criminal because the posterior lobe does not cover parts of the brain that should be covered! There is nothing to be said against this truth. It is there, and it would be quite foolish to rebel against it, because it is a truth. But think: If you are a materialist, what do you have to say? Well, some people are born with brain lobes that are too small; they are then predestined to become criminals. Consider – I need not elaborate further – the infinite bleakness of such a view of the world! Consider how all human feeling must be changed when one knows nothing but this, and when one must say to oneself: Why do people become criminals? Because that is how nature has placed them in life, so that they cannot help but become criminals. But if one begins to know that the human being has an etheric body, then one knows something else to say about the matter, one knows something else about it. One knows that this ether body encompasses all parts, and that in the case of a person who has a occipital lobe that is too short in the physical sense, the corresponding ether parts can still attain their full development. Whatever the physical condition may be, the correction can also be achieved with the ether body. If we succeed in having a form of education that draws on spiritual science as well as physical science, we can develop an insight into a child's behaviour that enables us to recognise what is needed for its education and what we need to provide so that the ether body develops in such a way that it counteracts the effect of the underdeveloped occipital lobes. Then a person can, even if their hindbrain is not normally formed in the etheric body, still become a good person, even if they are physically predestined to be a criminal. Here you can see how spiritual science can and must practically intervene in life. Because purely physical science must let the criminal brain be a criminal brain, because it is only a science of the physical. But if you take spiritual science into consideration, you paralyze the physical defects. From this you can see what must develop in the future.

And now imagine: this spiritual science did not exist! Then there would never be the possibility of developing the etheric body in the way I have described. That means that anyone born in the future with an atrophied brain will live out their life in a way that corresponds to this brain. There will be no possibility of pedagogically improving this. The consequence of this will be that people will become what their physical organization is capable of. And this will continue forever. And people will reach the state of Jupiter, and the materialists' current dreams will become true. If spiritual science does not overcome what follows from the merely material organization, then people will gradually develop in such a way that this material organization will be decisive; people would then merely be a result of their material development. Because spiritual science intervenes in life, this will not be the case on Jupiter; the etheric body will again transform the physical body. For if in a life in which the physical brain has atrophied due to the karma of earlier lives, the etheric body is properly developed, then in the next incarnation the physical brain will develop properly. These things are all connected. So that spiritual science really becomes a reality, that it transforms humanity again.

” If you summarize these thoughts, you will be able to say to yourself: What the materialists think of man today is not yet reality, because today man is still so predisposed that the spiritual can intervene. But it could become as the materialists think, if it were up to the materialists, if spiritual science could be eradicated by the materialists. If the materialists had their way, people on Jupiter would live as a result of their material organization alone. What are materialists, then? They have a world view that does not correspond to reality today, but which could correspond to reality for people one day. These materialists are prophets, only false prophets! They dream of a world that, if it were up to them, could be created in their image. The materialists are dreamers, but mari must work against their dreams. When people realize that the materialists are dreamers, that they should be told: You go through the world and do not see reality, you dream of an existence that could at best be brought about by your lack of insight into the world, you are false prophets, you make all kinds of fantasies! At that moment materialism will be correctly assessed. So the opposite judgment of what the materialists, well, let's say, dream of themselves, that's what you'll have to have. Then the time will have come when one can really understand spiritual science. In a certain sense, spiritual science will already transform the world from this point of view.

In the last few days, I have tried to give you a few hints about this or that in the context of the physical and spiritual worlds. I have said it out of impulses that arise from the momentous events of our time. At a time when death is so present before the soul, one might say a thousand times a day, such reflections, when offered as a possibility, are indeed close to the human soul. For how could one refrain from searching for the meaning and purpose of existence in such difficult times of trial as these? The fact that we are able to talk about such questions here gives me great satisfaction and allows me to be among you again even in these difficult times. I would just like to add the comment that in the present situation, some things have to be viewed in the context of this present situation. It is not as easy as in peacetime to travel everywhere. Therefore, our members must be aware, as indeed everyone must be aware, that war times are different from normal times, and that we cannot demand everything as we would in normal times. I say this especially with regard to the fact that this is often overlooked, especially by our members, while our members should have a great deal of understanding for our present situation, and should be aware of its context. It has often been shown that our members cannot understand that one must bear in mind the difficult times in which we live and that not everything can happen with the same regularity as usual. But we must hold on to that, so that we are also loyal to our cause. What each of us can do in this time, through the individual branches of our Society working very hard and very thoroughly on our cause, is really done not only for the good of our cause, but for the good of much more.

It is natural that the community must now be looser; the work in our branches must be all the more intensive, especially with regard to deepening our souls. This is what I would like to place especially in your soul and heart at this time and today. Let us each try to remain holy and true to our ideals, especially in this time, to remain holy and true to what has been able to develop as an attitude through spiritual science in the course of time. Spiritual science must prove itself not only in easy but also in difficult times. What can be stated as a truism, but is nevertheless the keynote of all our striving, must now connect itself particularly deeply with our soul: the attempt at a comprehensive grasp of life. In contrast to so much that is now given in the outer world, in the outer world tending towards materialism – often with such one-sidedness – we want to strive for the versatility of life. We want to know that we must guard against every comfortable one-sidedness in every moment, because we face an infinity in every moment.

Some of you may have heard that in a place where our spiritual science is cultivated, it is necessary to talk about all kinds of shortcomings that have arisen here or there. If certain words have been used to offend certain people, we must not fall into the opposite extreme of one-sidedness. I am not saying this now in order to go into these things in more detail, but only as an example. If, for example, people who spoke of all kinds of occult events and experiences did not speak about these experiences in the right way, it must not be concluded from this that in our Society, for example, occult experiences are not the main thing. Of course they are, for we are striving from the external into the internal. Nor was there any need to object to occult experiences as such. But it is important to realize that within our movement, what counts is the level at which these experiences occur. For it is one thing to speak in a certain light-hearted way about occult experiences, and it is quite another to say that one does not want to hear about them at all. We have been talking about the most intimate occult experiences for three days. What is being created in our circle cannot be a mere science of thought. That is not what our society is for. We must not go from one one-sidedness to another.

I would like to draw particular attention to the intimate, to the way our spiritual science is so closely connected to the innermost part of our soul. What matters is that we do not turn our soul into something other than what it was before when we go through spiritual science. And that must also prove itself in difficult times. That is why I wanted to make such observations, which may be suitable for putting us in that reverent mood towards the spiritual life that is appropriate for the true spiritual scientist. Because basically the greatest and the smallest event in life, everything in life, is something that fills us with deep reverence if we are only able to go deeply enough into the spiritual background of this particular event. And even the painful events of life, the smallest and the greatest, can be placed in such a light through spiritual science that their contemplation helps to bring our soul into the right relationship with the wisdom that flows and weaves through the world.

From the point of view of world wisdom, we wanted to look at events in life that are connected with what is happening today in our environment, which is so great, but also so full of trials. If we feel this way about our time, then we feel right about what we wanted to suggest with the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

From yesterday's discussions, you were able to see how, in our time, the human being is part of the overall development of humanity. It was shown what, as it were, approaches the individual personality through the development of humanity itself, and how this development of humanity absolutely requires that the urge to fire and awaken the inner soul awakens more and more, so that man will find progress less and less as an external influence, so to speak, but that he will have to acquire it from within himself. That is the purpose of spiritual science: to enable human individuality to progress further, whereas in ancient times, simply by being born into humanity, a person had a certain amount of experiences that matured him to a certain degree. You will feel that the realization of such a fact, as we were able to describe it yesterday, is of tremendous importance and thoroughly illuminates what is needed in our time, what is needed by people of our time.

One can only really get into these things, as one should in the sense of a spiritual scientist, by looking with open eyes at the way in which people in the present day relate to the whole of earthly evolution. One can make discoveries of infinite significance. One must only make these discoveries in such a way that one is in a position to evaluate the facts. There are certainly people in our time who feel that something is needed to lead the soul, as it were, beyond itself, that is, beyond the twenty-seven years. But the courage and energy that accomplishes such wonders in external fields today, the courage and energy to really develop the inner soul forces, are not so common today. And so it happens that we meet people who have a certain striving in their nature to find something other than what can be offered by the culture of our time and the tasks of the world around us. But they do not have the courage to approach the kind of work and attitude that wants something truly new: spiritual science. And so we learn that such people do not clearly say to themselves, but feel: In the past, the environment gave people more, so we must again seek what the world gave people in the past, we must find the connection to earlier human gifts again.

That is why people who are more longing for the spiritual, I would say, out of powerlessness, take refuge in all sorts of things that have actually already been extinguished within human development. We could cite examples of this everywhere. Let us quote a very characteristic example from the writer Maurice Barres, who in his youthful impetuosity once wanted to storm, one might say, the spiritual heavens, but then, because he did not find the courage to join some new spiritual movement, sought to join Catholicism, as so many do in the present day. But it is a strange attitude that seeks a way backward instead of a way forward. And the words with which Barres describes his striving for Catholicism are characteristic, for these words testify to how a dispirited, energy-less soul, because it does not want to seek the new, reaches for the old. But how he reaches is the characteristic thing. Take the words of a man of this kind of mind, who has grown entirely out of the education of today, stands entirely in it, and out of this education has developed his inclination towards Catholicism. Take these words: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist!” Imagine someone who has sought this connection to Catholicism talking about the hereafter: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist; and however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers; whatever form mysticism may take, it contradicts reason. But let us turn to the Church, first of all because she is inseparably linked to the tradition of France. And then, because it formulates, with the authority of centuries and great practical experience, the rules of that ethic that must be taught to nations and children. And finally, because it, far from abandoning us to mysticism, defends us directly against it, silences the voices of the mysterious groves, interprets the Gospels and sacrifices the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society.” You see the motives of a man who is characteristic of the present age, driven to seek the spirit of his own kind: he reaches for what humanity once had without human effort. But he takes it without really laying any claim to the full meaning of what he takes. One would be tempted to say that such a thing is cynical or frivolous if it were not for the great seriousness of the endeavor. But that is precisely the fatal thing: the seriousness of the endeavor itself becomes frivolous due to the conditions of the time. Do not take this word lightly! The great damage of our time is rooted in the fact that people are always inclined to take things lightly. Examples like that of Maurice Barres could be cited countless times. What is characteristic of our time, in the sense of what has just been explained, would emerge everywhere in the most diverse ways.

We ask ourselves: What is the cause of this? We ask ourselves this question because it is important for us to recognize how we must do things differently. However, we can only find our way around in this if we have a little insight into the plight of the time, into what underlies such an attitude. We must look back a little into the meaning of human evolution if we want to understand what we must understand in the present if we are to move forward. If we go back in the evolution of European humanity and the Asian part of humanity that belongs to it — we only need to go back to the first third of the post-Atlantic period — we find today, even by outwardly scientific means, that people in those days clearly distinguished between the three basic components of the human being, and that the old, albeit more vague and dreamlike, understanding has come to the point that people knew how to distinguish between the three basic components of the human being. And this, in turn, is the reason why I emphasized with particular clarity in my 'Theosophy' that these three basic components must be taken as the basis for the whole structure of the human being. If we go back, we find everywhere that people can see how the human being can be traced back to body, soul and spirit. But just think about the lack of clarity that has arisen today, even among those who seek clarity, with regard to an overview of the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit! You can pick up one philosophy after another today, you can study Wundt, who was not only famous in Germany but world-famous, with great zeal, and you will see that the gentleman is unable to distinguish the soul from the mind, even though distinguishing the soul from the mind is one of the most fundamental necessities today. When did it actually come to light that people have confused the soul with the spirit? As I said, you can find it everywhere: man is divided into body and soul, and the soul is confused with the spirit, without any distinction. This was clearly expressed in 869 at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was abolished, excuse the harsh expression, because the teachings that were formulated at that time essentially culminated in making it a dogma that man has a thinking soul and a spiritual soul within him. Thus the spirit was done away with, and what little spirit was still sensed at that time was smuggled into the soul by saying: It has the power of thinking and something spiritual as well. Then came the Middle Ages with their scholastic research, which was admirable in many respects; but this was everywhere subject to the strict constraints of dogma, and so-called trichotomy was strictly proscribed. Spirit had to be left out everywhere. And this is also the source of the way in which modern university professors, who, according to their own statements, pursue science without preconditions, think – or do not think – about soul and spirit. But they are unaware of the prerequisites, namely the decrees of the Council of 869. The fact that they have no idea what they actually depend on is the reason why they call themselves unconditional. That is the way things are, and they must be heard and vigorously considered; there is no point in closing our eyes to them. For if spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy is to become for man what it must become according to the laws of human evolution, then such things must above all be faced, and man must be given back an understanding of the threefold constitution of the human being as body, soul and spirit. Just as on the one hand there is the body, which between birth and death or conception and death, is the physical mediator of consciousness, so the spirit must be recognized as the spiritual mediator of that higher consciousness that man has to develop between death and a new birth. But this is connected with the deep inner, significant life circumstances of modern humanity. Let us take a characteristic example from our time. In many cases, public life is based on three abstract ideas, even though people have deviated from them here and there. And particularly in our time we see these three abstract ideas being wielded by the whole world against the center of Europe. But this center of Europe will only spiritually grasp its task if it is willing to make the three abstract ideas into concrete ideas imbued with reality. These three ideas were forcefully called into the consciousness of mankind at the end of the 18th century in the words: fraternity, freedom, equality. They almost remind us of three very concrete ideas, which are only now being understood in a very abstract way, but which were meant very literally in their time when they were incorporated into the consciousness of mankind. They remind us of faith, hope and love. But let us dwell on the three ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality. It is a shadowy thinking that one seeks to visualize these three ideas in the whole modern world. All the efforts that the human soul makes in this direction are based precisely on the fact that people do not have the inclination to enter into reality. They do not approach these three great, these three cardinal ideas any differently than they would the idea of reorientation: that every person should stand in the place that is best for them. They declaim beautiful ideas, make abstract concepts out of these ideas, but have no inclination to engage with reality. And this reality lies in understanding spiritual science.

Just as one muddles mind and soul, so one also muddles freedom, equality and fraternity. The idea of brotherhood will only be grasped by humanity in the right way when it becomes clear that man is only fully present here on the physical plane with one part of his being, the part we call the body. It is with the body that man stands here on the physical plane; but this body connects man with the whole human race through blood and other ties. Let us think back to older times, especially with regard to the way the physical human being relates to the physical human being here in the world. After all, the human being does not only have within him what he has inherited from his parents; he carries within him the part of immortality that passes through birth and death. But this is divided into embodiments in the physical body. In ancient times, as I discussed yesterday, the human being was able to perceive the spiritual in the environment by going through eating, digesting and breathing; he was capable of that. In this way, something was instinctive in him, so to speak, which we can call a sum of feelings, sensations, perceptions and concepts that regulated his behavior towards his fellow human beings. Instinctively, this was in him. We see this instinctive element diminishing in more recent times, and the terrible explosions of hatred that we are now encountering can only be understood if we understand their real basis, if we understand how the old instincts are diminishing. These instincts of hatred are much more serious than is still recognized today. We will experience terrible things as a result of this state of affairs. And if that which must be conquered in the sense of the developmental history of mankind could not be conquered, the instincts of hatred would grow ever greater and greater. For even if, especially in this age of freedom from authority, in this age of the unconditioned nature of science, there are individuals who particularly strive to be led by the hand again and again, the feelings that arise from the unconscious do not allow this. Today, such people seek out all kinds of leaders. The more unnatural it is for them to strive to follow these leaders unconditionally, the more they are exposed to the danger of their so-called love turning to hatred. This is not something that can be remedied by mere criticism, because it is deeply rooted in the entire laws of human development. The more philanthropy is preached as an abstract idea, the more fraternity is preached in the abstract, the more mutual antipathy between people will develop. This is also a truth that must be taken very seriously and deeply into consideration if one wants to understand the present. What must happen is that what we call the view of repeated lives on earth is transformed into feeling. Merely adhering to the theory of repeated lives on earth does not account for it!

But if we take together all that is being attempted to be gathered together in order to extract from the laws of human development, in the course of time, that which does not present itself to us as an abstract idea but as a concrete fact, that something lives in every human being that goes through birth and death, then the abstract idea is transformed into feeling, not into instincts like those that existed earlier, but into conscious instincts, into a certain way of relating to other people. Today, there is still all too much of an urge to interpret what one takes on board as the idea of repeated earthly lives in an egotistical way. And how much of it have we experienced, that one person or another is above all keen to know some earlier incarnation of themselves very well indeed! This cannot be the practical consequence of the idea of repeated embodiments, of the idea of repeated earthly lives. The genuine consequence must be that we learn more and more to look at each person as if there were much more to him than he can live in one earthly life, in which he is now standing before us. Above all, what is often mentioned is the sense of distance, the right measure, the feeling for finding the right relationship with the other person: without deifying him, but always seeking deeper and deeper what belongs to infinity in him.

It is a false mysticism to brood within oneself. The mysticism we need is the one that guides us to a practical, but intuitive knowledge of human nature, so that we do not approach a person from the outset as either sympathetic or unsympathetic, but with the awareness that every human soul is actually an infinite mystery. If we take the idea seriously, something streams forth from repeated earthly lives, and from this outpouring into our soul there wells up what should be experienced in the right sense for later humanity as brotherhood, as brotherly love. Such brotherly love will not typically and repeatedly want to help people only according to the idea that appeals to us; it will want to respond to people so that we help them in a way that is appropriate for them, that helps them as their deeper selves require. But such an idea will also keep us from the thoughtless criticism that often erects a barrier between us and the other person, especially today, which does not allow us to look impartially at what lives in another person. Only when the idea of repeated earthly lives is alive and practically working in our soul, then the idea of brotherhood for what people in their corporeality are for each other will be able to take on the right form.

A second factor that must be taken into account in the development of humanity is that we not only recognize the physicality of the human being, which materialism alone wants to recognize today, but that we also recognize the soul of the human being, that we consciously ascribe soul to every human being. But we do not ascribe soul to him if we only seek to violate this soul in our attitude, that is, if we think that we really respect the soul by expecting this soul to have our thoughts, especially the form of our thoughts. We must grant freedom to the soul; we cannot grant it to the body. Freedom is only the basis in the interaction between soul and soul, that on which it depends. And the fundamental nerve of freedom is, namely, freedom of thought. If we come to understand this second link of humanity, the soul alongside the physical, then we will no longer confuse freedom and brotherhood, but will say: brotherhood is necessary because people must establish a social order in the sense of brotherhood. A social structure in the sense of brotherhood must come about, and until people are seized by right, practical ideas of brotherhood, they will not be able to find state structures in which people can live together reasonably. But if people do not recognize that within the state structure man lives not only as a body but also as a soul, they will never be able to grasp the idea of freedom in the appropriate way. For freedom lies in the relationship from soul to soul, not from body to body. The freedom that bodies need comes about of its own accord as a necessary consequence when soul to soul expands in the sense of freedom of thought. Above all, however, this requires that we finally learn to no longer want to impose our own thoughts on people, but that we learn to duly respect the direction of thought in every soul. But above all, we must acquire a sense of reality, for there is no field in which more sins are committed than in the fields of science and religion.

I can only refer to an example that I once encountered in a town in southern Germany. I gave a lecture on wisdom and Christianity. It was a town in southwestern Germany, so two Catholic priests were also at my lecture. After the lecture, they said: Yes, after what you said today, there is not much to be said against your assertions in terms of content, but one cannot agree. — I said: Yes, why? — Yes, the main thing, said the two gentlemen, is that you talk about all these things in relation to Christianity in a way that can only be understood by certain people with a certain level of education, with certain needs and so on. But we are seeking a way of speaking that is for all people; we are formulating our thoughts so that everyone can agree. — I replied: Pastor, how I or you think about what is good for all people depends on you or me, you and I can certainly form ideas about that; and when we do form such ideas, we will of course be fully convinced that they are right. We would be strange old fogies if we formed ideas that we did not believe were suitable for all people. But what matters is not what you or I think, according to our particular development, that something is suitable for all people. In the end, that is completely irrelevant. We have to get beyond that through proper, active, practical self-knowledge. What matters is to study reality and ask: What does reality dictate, what does the time and its content teach us as necessary for people, what do people's longings teach us? But then a question arises that is different from the one you ask: Do all people today go to your church? If you spoke for all people, everyone would go to you. — There they could not help saying: It is true that not all people go to church anymore. — So, I said; you see, and among those who have sat here are mostly those who do not go to church, but who also have the right to find the way to Christ, and I speak for them.

One must not form an idea about what people need according to one's own stubborn opinions, but according to what reality says. But it is more uncomfortable to study reality. There one must always and again apply the sense of observation accordingly, always and again have the will to ask: What are the needs of the time? How does what is necessary in our time present itself? — And until this sense, this practical sense, which must underlie freedom of thought, enters into the souls of men, we will not come to a corresponding relationship from soul to soul. Just as the social structure towards which humanity must strive depends on arriving at a correct understanding of the body in the sense of spiritual science and being able to understand the idea of brotherly love, so we must learn to gain understanding for souls and to help realize the idea of freedom of thought in the field of science and education, in the field of religious sentiment.

And a third aspect is the spirit. If we now really succeed in reinstating the rights of the spirit, in reversing what the Council of Constantinople in 869 recognized, then the spirit, too, will come to what, in a practical sense, leads the life of the people of the future. We already have two tendencies today: one tends to move in the same direction as the Council of Constantinople, that is, to abolish the spirit. A monistic world view also seeks to abolish the soul, and anyone who thinks that scientific monism has so much tolerance – as the word is used today – that it would not be able to hold a council and ban the soul is thinking wrongly. The tendency is already moving towards abolishing not only the spirit but also the soul. And those who are today the little monists will want to grow into quite great monists, and even if they disdain to hold councils, for they are free spirits, because they have freed themselves from all spirit, if they disdain to hold councils, then they will have a certain custom naturalized. And it will come - do not let this be a joke! —that the soul will be abolished. In addition to the various physical remedies that exist today, a series of others will be added that will be designed to treat those who talk about such fantasies as spirit and soul; they will be cured, they will be given medicine so that they no longer talk about spirit and soul. The spirit could be done away with in a trice; the soul can only be driven out of man by treating the body in the right medical way. However grotesque it may appear today, there is a tendency in a certain direction to invent means by which all kinds of stuff is instilled into the child, so that his bodily organization is so enfeebled that the materialistic attitude lives quite well in him, and it does not even occur to him to treat the old idea of soul and spirit as anything other than something in which the old days believed and into which it is a great delight to look.

Of course, saying such things is considered madness by a great many people today; but if one does not have the courage to admit these things to oneself, one will never find the energy to bring spiritual science spirituality to full bloom and to spark it in the souls of others. Therefore, in addition to this tendency, which I have just characterized and which will also cure the soul because it will be considered an illness, the other tendency must be added: the tendency to assert again energetically that, in addition to the body and the soul, the human being also carries the spirit within himself. For this, however, it would be necessary that knowledge of the spirit take hold, that spiritual science really becomes established, that it is recognized by man what belongs to his nature when he has passed through the gate of death. And one of the old folk proverbs that so often carry old good views into the new time is this: In death, all are equal – because all become spirit, and because the idea of equality is the one that corresponds to the spirit. Equality to the spirits! One cannot confuse the three ideas – liberty, fraternity, equality – but one must know in the concrete, in reality, what man is, and that he should be free according to the soul, fraternal according to the body, that men must be equal

must be equal in spirit. For the inequality that exists among people is that specialization brought about by body and soul, in that the spirit specializes in body and soul. Pneumatology, spiritual teaching, spiritual insight is the basis for the idea of equality. And so we have the strange fact that at the end of the 18th century the idea of brotherhood, freedom, equality was shouted out all over the world in a chaotic way, but that gradually it must be understood how the ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality can only be realized if one is also able to carry the knowledge of the threefold nature of

human being, in body, soul and spirit, into reality. This was the underlying reason for the attempt in my Theosophy to carry out this division into body, soul and spirit in such an energetic way: This division is a demand of our time and the near future. But it is only by realizing these ideas in practice, by learning to see humanity in this way, that one can go beyond the twenty-seven years; otherwise one gets stuck in the twenty-seven years. And just imagine the prospect: our fifth post-Atlantic period will be followed by a sixth and a seventh. In the sixth, general humanity will yield that which, in the individual development, corresponds to the time between the fourteenth and twenty-first year. No matter how clever the people are who direct education in the outside world, they will not be able to get more than what corresponds to individual development up to the age of twenty-one. One will not be able to live past the age of twenty-one, even if one does not die there. And in the seventh post-Atlantic age, one will not live beyond the age that corresponds to the fourteenth year of life in individual development. If one does not grow older through the inspiration of the inner being, then an epidemic of juvenile feeble-mindedness will seize humanity. Anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, and does not live thoughtlessly, can, armed with such ideas, already evaluate many phenomena of the present in the right way!

Let us take just one area: Where has our present age brought us in our understanding of, say, the Christ impulse? How many people are quite close to Barre's idea that the Savior's generous world view has been adapted by the Church to the needs of modern society, and that it is precisely for this reason that we can get along so well with the Churches? Who is making an effort – perhaps there are still individuals who do, but generally speaking – who is really trying to resurrect from the Gospels the teachings of Christ that were directed against the other, the principal opponent? How are the most significant and profound teachings of Christianity understood today? I would like to mention just one central Christian concept: the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even Blavatsky ridiculed the prediction that the Kingdom of Heaven would come, saying that at the time it should have come, no more wheat had blossomed than before, the grapes had not grown larger, in short, the Kingdom of Heaven had not come to earth.

One thinks oneself clever; but from this cleverness nothing else comes out than this judgment, and this cleverness does not allow the deeper question: Could not perhaps the Christ have meant something else? — One already recognizes the Christ today, but in such a way that one wants above all that one's own ideas, precisely as one has conceived them oneself, also live in the Christ. The socialist makes a good socialist out of him, the liberal a liberal, the Protestant a Protestant, and so on. A modern school theologian constructs him in the image of Professor Harnack, and people listen to how Professor Harnack speaks about the most important concepts of Christ Jesus. Once it happened that I had to give a lecture in a club whose chairman was a man well versed in the Bible and also in modern 'T'heology. In the course of this lecture I said that Harnack actually had a strange concept of resurrection, because in his “Essence of Christianity” there is the strange sentence: “Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, we can no longer judge it today, because it exceeds human knowledge and also exceeds the legitimate demands of faith. But from the garden in Gethsemane came the belief in resurrection, and this has become especially valuable to mankind. Whether it is true that the Christ was resurrected in some way is not the point! One should believe that from the garden in Gethsemane came faith. That is Harnack's doctrine. The man who was the chairman of the association said: You were mistaken, because in that case Harnack would be nothing less than a Catholic – the man in question felt quite Protestant and exalted – it would be just like the Catholics who say: Where the piece of clothing that is venerated as the Holy Robe of Trier comes from, or where any old knucklebone comes from, it doesn't matter, what matters is that faith has spread, that these things come from a particular saint. But that is Catholic, said the person concerned. Of course, we cannot believe in something like that. And it would be all the same if Harnack said that it does not matter whether it is true that Christ was resurrected in some way, but that people believe that faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane. So, he said to me, you must have been mistaken. – So I said: Yes, you know, but it is written in 'The Essence of Christianity'. – No, he replied, it cannot be written there. Have you read it? – Oh, often, I said, tomorrow I will send you a postcard with the page and line from the book 'The Essence of Christianity' where it says that.

The man, who knew theology so well and was so well-versed in the Bible, could not read so carefully that he knew what was in the book. But it is in there. That is how today's thinking is. In all areas, it is quite strange, especially when one endeavors to make it so popular.

But not only theologians are guilty of sin; natural scientists are guilty too. There is a little book called “The Mechanics of the Spiritual Life”. I do not know whether there is already a book about the stiffness of iron. The author's name is Verworn. I esteem him, as I do many of those I criticize. In this little book he also deals with dreams and asserts that in dreams a subdued, paralyzed brain life takes place, that brain life is only partially active. If someone were to tap a pin against a windowpane, Verworn says, we may dream that cannon shots are going off one after the other. That is a well-known dream. Verworn says this at the top; then he says something in between, and at the end he says further down on the same page: The dream has its peculiar character because the brain is tuned down in its activity. Now imagine the cleverness: when we have a full brain, we hear the soft taps, the soft pinpricks; when the brain is down, less active, we hear the thunder of guns. — That is an explanation that is accepted, like much of Freud, and accepted with pleasure, because a few lines are in between.

But this is the basis of our time: the will to really go through with thinking what comes to one is very rare in our time. And so it is not particularly incomprehensible that one does not easily want to understand something like the coming of the “Kingdoms of Heaven”, because it takes a lot to do so. Until then, until the Mystery of Golgotha, the Kingdoms of Heaven approached man as in a dream. Before the Atlantean catastrophe, they were even assimilated through digestion. But now they had to come down. They came down, but in such a way that man had to exert his mind to grasp the Kingdoms of Heaven. It is not meant that the grapes become larger, that the ears of wheat become fuller, but that the kingdom lives in the midst of us, but we must find it through the preparation of our own spirit around us. |

This, as I have briefly outlined it, underlies the grandiose conception of Christ Jesus. This is, however, a conception that demands energy from our soul if we want to empathize with it. And so are many Christian conceptions. With these the Christ opposed the Imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire, which developed in complete opposition to Christianity. This Imperium Romanum, which had developed into Caesaranism, brought the old mysteries under its control through its tyranny. Augustus was the first Caesar who, because of his external power, had to be initiated into the mysteries. And his successors, Tiberius, Caligula and others, were people initiated into the mysteries. They only applied the mystery view to the external realm of the world; they did not, like the Egyptian temple priests, carry the realm of the spirit into the realm of the world. Commodus even had himself made an initiator, and when he initiated another man whom he had to initiate, he is said to have given him such a strong blow, symbolically, that he killed him.

So there were two powerful contradictions facing each other: the Imperium Romanum and Christianity. This contradiction must find its resolution. It has not yet found it to this day. We must become capable of recognizing the spirit and also of introducing the spirit into life. I only want to say so much about this point, because in our thinking, in our feeling, lives on in many ways that which has moved into people as the logic, the way of thinking and feeling, as it was dominant in the Roman Empire. Our grammar school pupils learned Latin first and with it the way of thinking of the Imperium Romanum, which has been passed on. We do not know how much of this is at the innermost nerve of our lives; we still do not know how to seek and find the spiritual path to Christ in the right sense. But this path can only be one that has the will to think, which has particularly declined in our time; one could say, intelligence itself. Our time, so proud of its intelligence, actually lacks intelligence because it lacks conscientiousness on the basis of thinking.

A much-read booklet, which deals with “Christianity in the ideological struggle of the present”, reproduces lectures that have been given to thousands upon thousands of people by a very leading spirit of the present day, who has of course thoroughly studied philosophy and theology. Ideas are developed there that make you want to climb up the walls! Finally, you come across a beautiful sentence, yes. Goethe is supposed to have said:

No created spirit can penetrate into the innermost nature

,

Happy the one to whom she only

reveals the outer shell!

We would actually have to get to that point in order to recognize something like that! The man knows his Goethe so well that he cites this saying of Haller as a saying of Goethe, despite the fact that Goethe said:

I curse it, but furtively.

Nature has neither core nor shell;

All at once it is everything.

You alone are tested most of all,

Whether you are core or shell.

So today people are talked into believing as a Goethean view what Goethe himself said: “I curse it”! But people listen willingly to it, that is the general thinking of today. It is of no use to look up with desire at certain ideas that come from spiritual science. These ideas must fully enter into the life of the soul, then the other current will establish itself, the spiritual current, which does not allow today's way of thinking to take over humanity, but allows people to develop individually so that they can bring into the general development that which can now be released from what is there by itself. But much must still come before such things are grasped in the right concrete sense, grasped in such a way that thinking really based on reality reaches people.

A very fine book has been published: “The State as a Form of Life” by Kjellen, the famous Swedish political scientist. I mention him because he is a man who has been very sympathetic to our cause, to my cause, so that one should not think that I am angry about anything. But for that very reason I may mention him as typical of certain ways of life.

In this book, he attempts to gain ideas about the state that may lead out of many an error. He naturally comes back to the idea of the state as an organism. He is further along than Wilson. Wilson in his time criticized very sharply the fact that in Newton's time people did not think independently about the state, but were so influenced by the theory of gravity that they judged the various impulses in human thought according to abstract gravity. One must think about the state as one would about an organism. In doing so, he fails to realize that people thought in Newtonian terms and he in Darwinian terms. Kjellén also thinks that the state is an organism; the individual people are then the cells. Now, of course, you can compare a whole that has impulses of life within it with an organism and its parts with cells. But you can actually compare anything if the ideas are not willing to delve into reality, ultimately even a lizard with a pocket knife. Everything can be compared. Only when one has a sense of reality does comparison lead to the right conclusion. In Kjellén's comparison, one state would be understood as a single organism and the other as a neighboring organism. However, anyone who can think realistically cannot possibly think of people as cells. The comparison could apply if one compares the whole of the states with an organism and the individual states as cells; but then the whole person does not merge into the state. Only social life over the whole earth can then be compared with the organism. But if one wanted to insert the human being now, it would look like this: if we imagine an organism, the cells would have to stick out everywhere. A strange kind of hedgehog would come out of it. But if that were the case, an organism with living things coming out everywhere, then that would be an organism with which we can compare the whole social life on earth.

But that means that the entire life of man cannot be absorbed into the state order at all. It must everywhere protrude into the spiritual from what the state is able to encompass. In practice, this is all too often forgotten in all areas today, and one could cite institution after institution that would prove how this is forgotten, how one forgets, in addition to the external, modeled on the Imperium Romanum, to establish the kingdom of the spirit that the Christ wanted to bring over the earth. It was very necessary to take this thought in its full seriousness.

You know, where it comes to the concrete, thinking usually does not extend. Think how in recent times everyone has sought to push back the autonomy of scholarly education in such a way that all the things that are associated with learned institutions have been pushed back and the principle of the state has been placed above them. Today, in order to become a medical doctor, one must first pass the state examination, and then one can receive the medical doctorate as a kind of decoration. The autonomy of the medical school as such has been completely suppressed. We could cite many examples where there is a real enthusiasm for moving in this direction. People cannot do enough to nationalize all titles. The word engineer was associated with “ingenium”. Now they no longer strive to do that, but they do strive for the diploma. If it says on it that you are an engineer, then you can call yourself that; otherwise the ingenium is of no use. This is a step away from a spiritual understanding of the world. People do not think about that. On the contrary, they are enthusiastic about this fight against the spirit in all areas. One would have to, in order to make this noticeable, because one likes to swear by words so much today, perhaps invent a new word and say: people are 'beleibert' for de-spiritualization. Then perhaps some would begin to pay a little attention to the direction one is taking! But the fact that people do not pay attention is precisely the proof of the thoughtlessness of life, of the hatred that one has almost against the will to think.

So you see how necessary it is to really introduce spiritual science into the most everyday life. Spiritual science is a serious matter. Therefore, in addition to yesterday's significant matter, the immediate current situation had to be mentioned. For the aims of spiritual science must not be compromised by its becoming philistine and ossified, by the Anthroposophical Society creating obstacle after obstacle for what spiritual science wants. Of course, reasonable people will always understand that the people who come to the Anthroposophical Society are those who have somehow come into conflict with life, and so strongly that they have lost their balance. The question then always arises: Do we want to accommodate these people, or be hard? — Sometimes such people change so much that they lose their balance even more, or they change so much that they tell stories like the ones they are telling now, which are likely to turn a sacred matter into gossip, into slander, into vilification. If what I said yesterday is considered unjust – that basically little is made of what I say – then of course that is the individual's prerogative. I only said: Outside, people speak of 'blind followers'. For the teaching, this is not necessary, because it can be examined. Only for some things that relate to institutions is trust sometimes necessary. But it is just in such matters that the opposite of what I myself mean usually happens. And so what I presented yesterday as a necessary measure may be felt to be unjust. But this measure will be maintained, although on the other hand it will be ensured that anyone who really wants to undergo it can go through the esoteric development. We must give it a little time. How many things will be revealed through the economy of the Anthroposophical Society, how much will be exposed to misunderstanding and calumny in the world! People who are well aware of how long some things have taken will be convinced that books that have not appeared will appear when this measure has been in force for some time. At the time, I was forced to print the cycles, which I cannot review. It was not my will; it was the will of others who want to read them. Certainly, one does not have to insist on one's will; it has been yielded; but you can read the accusations that are made, saying it would be a trick, and that the cycles have a style that one must only criticize. Everything is ultimately distorted by ill will. But, my dear friends, if spiritual science is to have the right relationship to the Anthroposophical Society, then the Anthroposophical Society must also feel connected to the life of spiritual science as such. But how many feel connected only to their own personal life!

There are, of course, and always have been, numerous people in the Anthroposophical Society who have simply said, in one form or another, that they actually only join the Anthroposophical Society in order to discuss this or that esoteric matter with me, and who refuse to trust people whom I myself trust. In this respect, something particularly bad is being experienced. It is of no use at all that I myself trust this or that friend in this or that society; they do not want the person concerned, and they try to ignore him. Now, these things all have their origin in the fact that so much, so much personal is brought into this Anthroposophical Society. Do you know which word I have really heard most often in the so-called esoteric discussions? Do not think that I heard most talk about such matters as freedom, equality, the evolution of humanity, and so on. Most of all I heard the word “I” from each individual. People come there with their most personal matters. This was also gladly taken into account, but it cannot go further, for the reasons given yesterday. And that must be understood.

I know that it will be best understood by those who really work devotedly and understandingly with the anthroposophical development, who are able to see in the anthroposophical development a task for humanity, who do not merely seek to facilitate their family or other personal affairs by belonging to the Anthroposophical Society, who are not merely seeking a back door to avoid the law because they would withdraw if it came to publicly opposing the materialistic medical system; but they are seeking a back door to be cured, apart from this materialistic medical system! There is no other way to counter all the things that have emerged from society to harm the Anthroposophical Society than through these measures, which I spoke of yesterday and which will certainly not be abandoned in the near future. Only in this way will it be possible to truly fight against what has become so terribly entrenched. The Anthroposophical Society will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. And esoteric life too — I will see to that — will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. As for those inventions — and this is what matters — to which I referred yesterday, it may still be possible to somewhat undermine them if only the two-part measure mentioned yesterday is vigorously implemented. Please understand this, because by understanding this you show understanding for the nature and task of the anthroposophical movement. There are enough people outside today who do not feel able to fight anthroposophy, as it is meant here, [objectively]. That is also too uncomfortable for them, since it is necessary to first know anthroposophy. This is an uncomfortable thing for many who want to fight it. But to allow oneself to be slandered and vilified and to spread these things provides a means of fighting anthroposophy without understanding it. For our contemporaries are indeed very susceptible to slander and vilification. Nothing is read with more relish than calumny and vilification. If we take the task of Anthroposophy seriously, if we grasp the seriousness of the situation, then we will also be able to cope with this measure. In this spirit, we want to conclude. Hopefully we will remain, working in the appropriate way with our strengths, together.