The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ladies and gentlemen!

Eight days ago today I tried to present Heraclitus on the basis of the Greek Mysteries, because it seems to me beyond doubt that this personality and his world view can only be understood from this point of view. I mean that if one has before one such a personality from the [transition from the sixth to the] fifth century before our era and has only a series of fragmentary sayings from his life at one's disposal, and if one then tries to form a picture of the world view of this personality, and if one looks at this world view from the point of view that one gains when one starts from ordinary philosophy, and finds that one does not know what to do with this world-view, whereas with the contemporaneous, earlier and later Greek philosophers one is very well able to penetrate to a deeper understanding without further, deeper insights, this must make one suspicious, and one must look for the source elsewhere than in the source of reflection and pure science. I have said that the source that provides us with the conviction that Heraclitus has drawn from the immense depths of the Hellenic world view is nothing other than what Heraclitus implies when he says: 'If one looks around and sees the Mystery Being with the eyes of the layman, it might appear that the Mystery Being contains nothing special, contains nothing other than a cult of the lust for life, of the pleasure of the senses, a cult of the urge for the continual rejuvenation of existence. - There is no doubt that the god Dionysus was worshipped by the masses as nothing other than the god of the effervescent lust for life. If we look at Nietzsche, this Dionysus deity appears to us in a serene and profound way, but only in the form in which the researcher of Greek culture can see it. You can see what ideas you can gain [about the] god Dionysus if you don't delve deeper.

I would like to say a few words about Nietzsche's conception of the god Dionysus. For the first time, he and his friend Erwin Rohde, the [philologist], [fought] the view [prevailing] throughout the nineteenth century that it was the people of childhood who lived in eternal serenity, for whom the whole life of the day ran like a game. They fought this view of the Greeks because they saw that this absorption in beauty, this search for playful activity, rested on a deeper foundation. This is how Nietzsche came to understand Greek tragedy, the Greek work of art, not as it had been understood until Rohde, but in a completely different way. Until Nietzsche, the saying was not understood in the right way: The worst thing that could happen to man is that he lives at all; and the best thing would be that he is not born at all. But since he is born, it is best to die. - It is to the credit of Rohde and Nietzsche that they have correctly understood this saying and understood Greekism in this way. It is not pessimism. Nietzsche called his first work "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" because music is only a symbol for beauty, for the conception of the world as a work of art. Together with Rohde, Nietzsche understood that even the Greek could not find satisfaction in everyday life, but that he also had to rise above his unsatisfactory existence. This is why Nietzsche says that he wanted to see it as an urge not to perceive the world as it appears to us, but as a work of art. And the world as we see it with the Greeks is to be endured as such. He perceived life, the everyday, as a tragedy. And then you can only bear it if you see it in the mirror image [of art]. What the world is as a work of art is that which is intended to console us about the world of everyday life. Nietzsche understands this service as the cult of Dionysus. For Nietzsche, the urge for the life of appearance, of reflection, was the Dionysian urge. Nietzsche's entire urge to live emanates from here, and it continues to develop in him later. The idea of the eternal return [of the same] is not to be confused with the idea of reincarnation. If you put Nietzsche's idea together with that one, it looks very dull. Nietzsche says that everything that is taking place here before our eyes has already happened an infinite number of times and will happen an infinite number of times. Nietzsche developed the idea of the eternal return of the same from his own life. This is a specifically Nietzschean form of the urge to live. This Nietzschean idea is a subsequent construction, which he gained from the observation of externalities.

But if we start from the point we emphasized last time, that the cult of Dionysus can only be understood if we know that the Greeks also worshipped [Hades], the god of death, the underworld, in him, then we also get an idea of what to think of Heraclitus, who was deeply initiated into the meaning of the mystery cults and had the concept of the mystery cults themselves, which enabled him to give an image of those great truths that later reappear in our German mystics, in all those who were at all capable of living within the mystical world of imagination. Thus death is also the root of all life, which is also expressed in the saying of Jakob Böhme: "He who does not die before he dies, perishes when he dies." What I am about to say should lead us into what the Greek cults wanted. This is not easy to say in a nutshell.

What we can say in words about what lies at the heart of this is what we find in Aristotle. It is not a question of knowledge that can be expressed, but of having stood in the cults in order to have experienced these truths for oneself. We also know that the people who taught the mysteries said that those who were initiated into the mysteries were freed from all destruction, that they were partakers of an eternal life, that they praised initiation as the highest happiness of their lives. Plato does the same. And this would be recognized by anyone who was able to grasp his doctrine of ideas - which, however, is something quite different from what it is usually taken to be. So what are those who were initiated? Aeschylus was the predecessor of the Greek tragedians. Aeschylus was accused of betraying the Greek mysteries. The betrayal of the mysteries was punishable by death. He was also condemned. He could only save himself by proving that he had not been initiated into the mysteries at all. What does this mean now? Is this [story] to be taken as it is told to us? Was he really not initiated into the mysteries? Anyone who knows how to interpret such a tradition will see that this [story] is not a [story], but has an allegorical meaning. The whole [story] that he was accused of having betrayed the mysteries and then provided proof that he was not initiated at all is to be taken as an allegory. What does it mean that Aeschylus was actually highly versed in the Mysteries and, as far as we can know about this wisdom, was initiated? And what does it mean that he proved that he was not initiated? He has shown that what he said was not mystery wisdom at all, that it did not refer to mystery wisdom. The Aeschylus who was initiated could not reveal anything. The wisdom of the Mysteries could not be betrayed. One could say something about the wisdom of the Mysteries to this or that person. But anyone who doesn't start to really get into it hears words but doesn't understand their meaning.

Aristotle is not talking about this or that truth, but that those who participate in the mystery cults live these mysteries and absorb them as wisdom. Then it reveals itself as the greatest secret that could be transmitted to them, that what can be sought is nothing other than man himself. He is the highest and at the same time the deepest; he is that which reveals itself to the participant in the secret teaching. It is now a matter of presenting what it means: ["Man, know thyself!"].

We will stick to the external tradition. There is also a tremendous amount to learn from it. We cannot participate directly in the mysterious, at least not in the way it was understood when the Greeks spoke of the mystery being man. This teaching, it was said, was a corrupting truth. It was seen as destroying everything that existed in the Greek truths of faith. That is what is being emphasized. It should not be brought to the people because it was likely to overthrow all the old deities. We hear that something is being done which was capable of destroying the whole world of gods.

Now, let us stick to the mystery truths. If these are supposed to have been capable of destroying this religious world of the people, this world of the gods, then they had to have some relation to it. They could have appeared and had to have some relationship, and they did have a relationship. If we are clear about the relationship between mysteries and religious ideas, we can start from our most trivial concepts within our own worldview.

We always hear that humans anthropomorphize, humanize the processes in their environment. There is no other way. It is said that pagans humanize thunder and lightning, that they see the alternation of day and night as a battle between the gods, that they imagine that the gods are only related to each other in the same way as humans. This humanizes nature. Man humanizes it. When we progress to scientific ideas, we can't help it. We often don't even know that we are doing this.

The natural scientist will not present the sun as a light [deity]. He has sifted ideas. But they have become so refined that he no longer realizes that he is on the level of pagan mythology. Let us take the idea of impact as an example. Atoms collide in space. This looks very scientific, very advanced. But if we go back to the impact of two bodies, it is nothing other than a humanization. We transfer our subjective power to the being outside us, [even] if we are [often] not clear [about it] and no longer keep present how we have taken the ideas from nature. All this is not merely a crude description, a crude enumeration of what the eye sees: A ball rolls this far and hits another one there, then this one stops and the other one rolls. If you go just one step further, then you have humanized nature, then you have done the same as the pagan "researchers". We have such humanizations before us in natural science. Man puts his own nature out into the world as pure fact. We must hold fast to the fact that in pagan religion and in scientific ideas, when we speak of the outer world, we speak of nothing other than digging our own inner life into the outer world and this into our inner world and then seeing the whole inner and outer world come towards us as harmony. So if we want to make the outer world understandable and worthy of worship, that is our inner world.

All that I have said about the humanization of the outer world lies in religion, is what I have called the "conception of the great mass and what man wanted to get beyond. Is what Heraclitus wanted something else? It is something that stands in a certain contrast to the point of view of the world view [of the great masses]. The Mysteries are something quite different, something exactly opposite to the exoteric religions, which view the world in the way I have just described. The Mysteries begin with simple truths, with simple insights, so that what I have just said also applies to them. I mean that the simple truth, whether it be primitive religion or science, arises from the confluence of the spiritual and the material, from what lies subjectively within us and from what lies outside. Man must

realize this first truth. If he feels this truth, then he must ask: How do I see that which I seek as truth from the ideas in its pure form? At this preliminary stage I have humanized the world for myself. Now I must see in its purity that which I have contaminated in myself with real existence, with that which exists in the outer world.

Now the great cliff begins, that it is now possible that you try to get out of the world view filled with the content of the world of legends, but that you see nothing at all. This is because people tell themselves that they see nothing other than the gray, the abstract, the general. Just as someone whose eyes are not suitable for seeing colors sees the world grey in grey, i.e. not in colors, so it is with someone who has passed the first stage and still wants to retain a content, even if he no longer uses his senses, his eyes and ears to help him.

So the really big question is this - and a personality like Heraclitus has to ask it: If I renounce everything I have through the senses, do I still have any content at all? And if so, then it cannot be sensory content, but only spiritual content. This gift is called intuition, genius, grace and so on. But the basic level is this, the ability to experience something when the entire external world, which is perceived with the eyes and ears, is no longer there.

This is a correct understanding of the word: experiencing knowledge. - To experience means not to have gained knowledge through external sensory impressions, not even through religious ones, but to allow spiritual knowledge to light up within oneself, to be reborn from within into a state of consciousness which is higher than the everyday one and which at the same time has the effect that it has swallowed up the ordinary state of consciousness, that it is no longer there, but is reborn on a higher level. He is spiritually reborn, and that is a purely inner state of consciousness. But if he then [has gained such a] state of consciousness, then he must go through the same process again, he must

go through the process from the outer worldview to the inner worldview again, he must be born again. And when this has taken place, then he is no longer born as a human being, but at the higher level, where the human being is no longer an individual being, but is aware of what shines above every single thing, shines above everything - and that this light is a light, of which Heraclitus says: Now I know everything. - He did not mean to say that he knows all the details, but only that he has reached a state of consciousness where not the personal human being but the eye of the primordial human being sees.

We therefore have to distinguish three stages: 1. the ordinary world consciousness, interspersed with sensory perceptions, 2. the consciousness that is also still sensual, but which has fought down the sensual, 3. the purely spiritual consciousness, in which man still sees what is extinguished and intertwined; all perception has become one with the all-perception. - Heraclitus and his comrades had these three states in mind, had them in mind as lived states that they had actually experienced.

How do we imagine these purely internally experienced states? We have to think of them in a completely different way than in space and time. We can no longer say: this is this person and this is that person. In this third state of consciousness, there is no talk of multiplicity, but only of the all-consciousness that lives - and sees - in each individual.

Heraclitus and his comrades also have this experience in the ordinary ideas of the people, in the ordinary world view. But the ordinary world view now relates to these inner experiences in the opposite way to how these inner experiences used to relate to the outer processes in the world. When Heraclitus and his comrades (those who had these experiences) came to the people, they were confronted with the doctrine of the gods as we find it in Hesiod and Homer. They spoke of the existence of gods. They spoke of Uranos and that he had a wife, Gaea, and that this pair of gods was then replaced by Kronos and Rhea - not without them

defeating them. The third pair of gods is Zeus and Hera, because Zeus was saved and defeated his father Cronus. So we see a series of Greek gods and goddesses. They form the content of the Greek consciousness of the gods. This consciousness of the gods relates to the inner experience of the myths in the same way as the outer facts relate to the inner facts. While the external facts are lifted up so that they merge with the spiritual ones, [the myths] are created by the fact that all this gradually comes up and is only projected out into the world and that then nothing else is reflected in the experiences of the gods than the inner experiences.

Uranos and Gäa are the first consciousness. It was swallowed up by the second consciousness, by Kronos and Rhea. And the third is the general world light that shines in man, which has its outer projection in Zeus and Hera, who let all the earlier generations of gods sink into night. Just as the individual consciousness sinks into the night, so do they. Just as the individual consciousness is immersed in the outer world, so they are immersed in the inner world. Exactly the opposite process occurs. Therefore the doctrines of the gods first appear as something that is not known to those who have them before them only as doctrines of the gods, just as those who dream do not know the origin of the dream, but only know the dream. He who only sees the dream images would rightly consider them to be reality. He who lives only in the outer projection can take them for reality. And rightly so. But anyone who has seen through them and sees that they are nothing more than projections will no longer regard them as realities.

This is why the Mystery Being is a meaningful allegory. The world of the gods is dead to the mystic. The mystery cult represents the twilight of the gods. The outer concept of the gods is an inner state of consciousness. What burns away the outer conception of the gods and allows it to reappear as a purely spiritual state of consciousness, this primal element of the world is what Heraclitus also knew, it is what he and his contemporaries called the "fire" that causes the great world conflagration. The twilight of the gods consists of everything being burnt in order to dissolve it and allow it to reappear on a higher level.

When we look at our inner state of consciousness, we always have two things in front of us. First, we have to consider the content of what lives within us; and then we have to focus our attention on that which absorbs the content. In other words: We have to distinguish between the spiritual that is absorbed by us and is always reborn at a higher level, and the power that stands behind this activity of giving birth and rebirth. We have spirituality on the one hand and consciousness on the other. We have to distinguish between the world and the senses that grasp this world, and then the senses reborn in the spirit and the consciousness itself. Consciousness itself and that which is at the highest level of consciousness are the same thing that is seen. At the highest level they are one and the same. We always have to distinguish between these two powers, these two potencies. That which forms the content, which fills the consciousness, and that into which this content must submerge and through which it is reborn.

The Greek world of the gods also has a personification, a clear expression, for this inner process, for this division of spiritual life into two potencies. Otherwise we would have to wonder why this world of Greek gods always places the goddess next to the god, for example Gäa next to Uranos. If we stick to external mythology alone, we cannot find a real reason for this. But we must not imagine the matter so superficially. We must be clear about the fact that when we project the inner consciousness into the outer world, the fact that we are dealing with two different forces, with two potencies, enters our consciousness as that which is [devoured] and that which is reborn. This fact is expressed in the two sexes, in Uranos and Gäa, Kronos and Rhea, Jupiter or Zeus and Hera. The feminine in mythology means nothing other than consciousness. A woman, when she appears in mythology, signifies consciousness.

The masculine signifies that which is absorbed by consciousness. The feminine is always the driving force. The female is what saves Zeus. Likewise, consciousness is the actual driving force, it is what brings about the various successive states. Now we will also understand why the deepest mystery, the symbol of the deepest mystery, which was offered to those initiated into the Mysteries, presents itself as the human being. This is nothing other than the highest level of development of consciousness. Then he has answered this "Know thyself" for himself. Therefore, the human being must also be regarded as the symbolic solution to the riddle of the world. And this person who confronts him is no longer bisexual, but unisexual. It is exactly the same as with the content of consciousness and the consciousness that has always confronted him as bisexual. Just as the latter then presents itself as unisexual, so there is no longer any separation in consciousness, but rather, to put it in the words of Meister Eckhart, that what sees and is seen is one and the same. The primal being sees itself. It only has to do with itself. In this, the highest solution to the riddle of the world presents itself as a being that is male and female at the same time.

These are the various clues that clearly show us that [in the Greek doctrine of the gods] we are dealing with a projection of inner states of consciousness. In addition, there is the myth of Dionysus, which has made its way along various paths. In Egypt in particular, we are dealing with the Osiris and Isis myths. However, we cannot go into details here. Dionysus is the son of Persephone. Persephone is the daughter of Demeter - these are nothing other than states of consciousness; [Dionysus] is overcome and dismembered by the Titans. Only the heart is saved. Zeus revives the heart. The limbs of Dionysus, Persephone's brother, are buried, and from them humans are born. So we see that this myth unites man with the supreme deity, i.e. with nothing other than his consciousness. Persephone is a daughter of Demeter and she is a daughter of Kronos. A higher state of consciousness emerges from the lower state of consciousness. This presents itself to us in Demeter. In Persephone an even higher level of cognition presents itself to us. From this highly developed stage emerges the consciousness of man, the answer to the question "Know thyself". But this answer is such an immense gulf, presents itself as so incomprehensible that man cannot bear it, that man first fragments the man he comprehends, that is, that he seeks to comprehend man in the general world consciousness.

From the general world consciousness, from the phenomena of nature, he first builds the human being again. He must first bury this first man, who handed him the questions, in the world and must then build the younger Dionysus from the entire world consciousness. In this way, Zeus rescues him from the old man's substance. This expresses nothing other than the various experiences, the various transformations that are expressed in individual Greek myths. Thus we now understand why the knowledge of the Greek mystery world would have meant the death of external popular ideas.

We must also realize that only those who could go through this inner state of consciousness were mature enough to overcome the gods. You had to experience Dionysus yourself, be dismembered yourself and collect the pieces in order to put the younger Dionysus back together again. To hand this over to the one who stands on the outer standpoint would have been poison for him and thus for the great crowd. It would only have taken something from her that could not have been replaced. If the gods had been taken from her, she would have been left with absolutely nothing. Nothing else would have given her other ideas of gods, other commandments. Aeschylus' statement shows us this: "It is impossible to speak of the [mysteries] and to guess or reveal anything about things. - The mysteries, he says, are only a communication of things that can only be experienced, not expressed in words. What one expresses in the mysteries is a projection of the inside outwards. That was the urge to recognize man, the illumination of the great question "Know thyself", since man's greatest enigma was man.

At the same time, this was connected with the great destruction of this basic conception of man, this dissection and dismemberment of Dionysus in the world, the gathering of him and his rebirth on a higher level of existence. If one has such an understanding, then many things become comprehensible that otherwise sound like empty words and cannot be understood. Everything must be understood as a fact. One of the most difficult tasks in life is to bring the details back together. This is nothing other than what the Greek mystics expressed with the words: [gap in transcript]

[Answer to question:]

And what Goethe expresses in his "Faust" is almost the same: "Everything transient is only a parable." [Goethe] means nothing other than that the world of sensory existence is only a parable for those who embark on the path to a higher consciousness. This world is perishing. "The inadequate, here it becomes [event], the indescribable, here it is done", that is, that which cannot be described but must be experienced, here it is done. A special light then falls on the final words of the Chorus mysticus: "The eternal feminine draws us in." The eternal feminine means nothing other than the upper state of consciousness, consciousness itself. And in the whole of Greek mythology, this drawing from one consciousness to another was represented under the image of the goddess, under the image of the woman. Goethe expresses this drawing towards with these words. Thus, the stage of Heraclitus leads him to the Mystery Being, and to have gained the stage of Heraclitus means for him to have gained the first stage to the Mystery Being itself.

He believes he has shown that when Heraclitus says: The world came into being from fire - this means nothing other than: The world originated from the Mystery.

Through Paracelsus we have a transition.

Nicolaus Cusanus is the forerunner of modern world views. At the same time, he had a deep understanding of the world.

The opposites always dissolve at the next higher level. All knowledge is: annihilation in order to be reborn at a higher level. The whole process is illuminated again from behind, as it were. Those who lose themselves in the sciences flutter away too easily.

Heraclitus did not have as much to overcome as Paracelsus.

Fichte overcame pantheism and thus arrived at an inner view.

Schelling also had this. His "Mythology" is the most important work we can read today.

In the "Theologia Deutsch", the language has become old.

One can express the facts of the spiritual world in different ways, illuminating them from the most diverse sides. This sometimes sounds different. But it is precisely through these various illuminations that the facts of the spiritual world are fully presented to the soul. And so this evening, in a slightly different language and in a different light, I will share some of the things I have discussed in the last two lectures in the Goetheanum building for the human being's experience between death and a new birth.

We have heard how the human being initially, when the physical body has fallen away from him, enters into a state of cosmic experience. After the physical body has fallen away, he still carries his etheric organism within him; but he no longer feels, as it were, within this etheric organism, but he feels himself spread out soulfully into the world. But in these cosmic expanses, over which his consciousness is now beginning to spread, he cannot yet clearly distinguish the entities and processes from one another. He has a cosmic consciousness, but this cosmic consciousness still has no inner clarity. And besides, in the first days after death, this consciousness is occupied by the still existing etheric body. What is lost first is that in man which is bound to the head organization. I do not want to say anything ironic, but something very serious: one loses one's head, also meant in a spiritual sense, first of all when one passes through the gate of death. The head organization ceases to function.

Now it is precisely the head organization that mediates thinking in earthly existence. It is through the head organization that man forms his thoughts during his earthly existence in a certain activity. One loses the head organization first when one has passed through the gate of death, but one does not lose one's thoughts; they remain. They only become interspersed with a certain liveliness. They become dull, dusky, spiritual entities that point one out into the world. It is as if the thoughts had detached themselves from the human head, as if they still shone back on the last human life, which one experiences as one's etheric organism, but as if at the same time they would point to the world. One does not yet know what they want to tell us, these human ideas, which were, as it were, harnessed and penned up in the head organization and are now freed and point out into the world wide.

When the etheric body has dissolved for the reasons and in the way I characterized yesterday over at the building site, when the cosmic consciousness is no longer banished in this way to the last course of earthly life - in the other way, which I also characterized , it remains transfixed for the time being. When this etheric body has also been released from the human being, then the ideas that have been wrested from the head organization become, as it were, brighter, and one now notices how these ideas point one out into the cosmos, into the universe.

It is the case that one comes out into the cosmos in such a way that, initially, the plant world of the earth is the mediator. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that the plants covering the ground at the place where one died are the ones that prepare the way out, but when we look at the plant world of the earth, it presents itself to the spiritual vision in such a way that what the physical eyes see is only a part of that plant world. I will draw what is taking place in a schematic way on the board (see drawing). Let us assume that this is the surface of the earth; plants grow out of the earth's surface (green). It is, of course, drawn out of all proportion, but you will understand what I mean. One follows these plants with the senses to the flowers (red). The spiritual view of these plants, however, shows that this is only part of the plant world, that from the flowers upwards an astral event and weaving begins. In a sense, an astral substance is poured out over the earth, and spiral formations (yellow) arise from this astral substance. Wherever the earth provides the opportunity for plants to arise, the flowing over of these astral world spirals gives rise to plant life.

These world spirals now surround the earth everywhere, so you must not believe that the downpouring, downshining and downglittering of these astral world spirals is only where plants grow. It is present everywhere in different ways, so that one could also die in the desert and yet have the opportunity to encounter these plant spirals as they pour out into space.

These spirals of vegetation are the path by which one moves from the earth to the planetary sphere. So, in a sense, one slips out of the earthly realm through the spiritual extensions of the plant world of the earth. This becomes wider and wider. These spirals expand more and more, becoming wider and wider circles. They are the highways out to the spiritual world. But one would not get out there, one would have to stand still, so to speak, if one did not gain the possibility of having a kind of negative weights, weights that do not weigh down, but weights that push one up. And these weights are the spiritual contents, the ideas of the mineral formations in the earth, especially of the metals; so that one moves out into the world on the plant paths and is supported by the power that carries one from the metals of the earth to the planet stars. All mineral formations have the peculiarity that the ideas inherent in them carry us to a particular planet. Thus, let us say, we are carried by tin-like minerals, that is, by their ideas, to a particular planet; we are carried to a particular planet by what is in the earth as iron, that is, by the idea of iron. What the physical human being takes in from the mineral and plant world during his earthly existence is taken over in his spiritual counter-images, guiding the human being after death into the world's vastness. And one is really carried into the planetary movements, into the whole rhythm of the planetary movements through the mineral and plant kingdoms of the earth.

By gradually expanding one's consciousness to include the entire planetary sphere, so that one is aware of the planetary life in one's own inner world of the soul, one passes through the entire planetary sphere in this way. If there were nothing in the planetary sphere except the outpourings of plant and mineral existence in its vastness, one would experience everything that can be experienced in the secrets of the mineral and plant kingdoms. And these secrets are extraordinarily manifold, magnificent, powerful, they are full of content, and no one need think that the life that begins there for the spiritual person when he has left his physical organism is somehow poorer than the earthly life we spend from day to day. It is manifold in itself, but it is also majestic in itself. You can experience more from the secrets of a single mineral than you experience in earthly life from all the kingdoms of nature combined.

But there is something else in this sphere, which one passes through as the planetary sphere. These are the lunar forces, the spiritual lunar forces, which were characterized in the last 'Days'. The lunar sphere is there. However, the further one enters into an extra-terrestrial existence, the weaker and weaker its effectiveness becomes. Its effectiveness announces itself strongly in the first times, which are counted in years after death; but it becomes weaker and weaker the more the cosmic consciousness expands. If this lunar sphere were not there, one would not be able to experience two things after death. The first is that entity which I mentioned in the last days and which one has developed oneself during the last earth life from the forces which represent the moral-spiritual evaluation of one's own earth life. One has developed a spiritual being, a kind of spiritual elemental presence, which has as its limbs, as its tentacle formations, what is actually an image of the human moral-spiritual value. If I may express myself in this way: a living photograph, formed out of the substance of the astral cosmos, lives with the soul, but it is a real, living photograph on which one can see what kind of person one actually was in one's last life on earth. This photograph is in front of one as long as one is in the sphere of the moon. But in addition, in this sphere of the moon, one experiences all kinds of diverse elemental beings, of whom one very soon notices that they have a kind of dream-like but very bright dream-like consciousness, which alternates with a brighter state of consciousness, which is even brighter than human consciousness on earth. These entities oscillate, as it were, between a dull, dream-like state of consciousness and a brighter state of consciousness than that of a person on earth. You get to know these entities. They are numerous and their forms are extremely different from one another. In the condition of life I am now describing, these entities are experienced in such a way that when they enter a duller, dream-like consciousness, they float down to the earth, as it were, through the moon's spirituality, and then float back again. A rich life presents itself from such figures, floating down to earth and back again, flowing up and down, as I have just described. One learns to recognize that the animal kingdom on earth is related to these formations. One learns to recognize that these figures are the so-called group souls of the animals. These group souls of the animals descend. This means that some animal form wakes up on the earth below. When this animal form is more in a state of sleeping below, then the group soul comes up. In short, it can be seen that the animal kingdom is related to the cosmos in such a way that within the lunar sphere is the living environment for the group souls of the animals. Animals do not have individual souls, but whole groups of animals, the lions, tigers, cats and so on have common group souls. These group souls just lead their existence in the lunar sphere, floating up and down. And in this up and down floating, the life of the animals from the lunar sphere is brought about.

It is a law of the world that in this sphere, where we find the group souls of the animals, that is, in the lunar sphere, our moral-astral counterpart also has its life. For when one then, with cosmic consciousness, lives one's way further out into the cosmic expanses, one leaves behind in the lunar sphere, as I have described it, this living photograph of what one has achieved as a moral-spiritual being during one's last life on earth and also in earlier ones. In this way, one enters the planetary sphere, experiencing the plant, mineral and animal worlds. One is still absorbed in the lunar sphere, but in this way one lives one's way into the planetary sphere. One experiences the movements of the planets. One has stepped out into the cosmos on the paths of the plant being. One has been carried by the ideas of the mineral, especially the metallic beings. One feels that a particular kind of plant on Earth is an earthly image of what leads one there as a spiral path that widens more and more, let us say to Jupiter. But the fact that one is led to Jupiter depends on experiencing the idea of a particular metal and certain minerals of the Earth in a living way.

Once the path of the plants has led one to a planet – one always has with one the idea of the mineral on the earth that carried one out – one has arrived at the planet in question, then this idea that carried one out of the mineral, this idea that has become ever more and more alive, begins to resound in the planet in question. So that after death one experiences a gradual development along the lines of the plant kingdom, the mineral inner beings experiencing themselves in ideas that are more and more alive. These ideas become spiritual beings. When the one living idea arrives at one planet and the other at another planet, the mineral ideas that have now become spiritual beings feel at home. One type of mineral feels at home in Jupiter, the other type in Mars, and so on. And that which was only regarded as inconspicuous on earth now begins to resound in the respective planet when it has arrived, and to resound in the most diverse ways. So that what has mineral images on earth, which can only be seen with the senses, can now be heard resounding from the interior of the planets and in this way one lives into the harmony of the spheres. For in the universe, in the cosmos, everything is connected internally. What grows out of the ground down here on earth as the plant world is a reflection of what connects the earth to the planetary system as if along plant pathways. What is in the ground as a mineral is actually only an inconspicuous image of what works as a force up along the plant paths, but what has its home outside in the planets and what introduces world tones into the planet, which combine to form a great world harmony.

Thus, when one understands what is here on earth, one speaks the truth when one says to gold: I see in gold, which shines with its own peculiar color, the image of that which, in the sun, resonates a central cosmic tone for my soul when I have carried it up into the sun along certain plant pathways.

When a person has gone through this, when what I have described as necessary in the last days occurs, then the possibility begins for him to rise above the planetary sphere and enter the sphere of the fixed stars. He can only do this by extricating himself from the lunar sphere. This must, as it were, remain behind him. But what he experiences in the way described in the planetary sphere, what he experiences as the sense of the mineral-metallic realm of the physical earth, what he experiences as the guiding directions of the plant world of the earth, all the magnificent things he goes through there, are disturbed in a certain way disturbed by the impacts of the lunar sphere, it is darkened for him in a certain way by the fact that he experiences the elemental beings that belong to the animal kingdom and that, in addition to those actually quite harmonious movements in which they ascend and descend, thus in addition to these vertical movements, also have horizontal movements. In these horizontal movements, which are carried out by the group souls of the animals within the sphere of the moon, terrible archetypes for disharmonious, discrepant forces in the animal kingdom take place. There are terrible, savage struggles between the group souls of the animal kingdom. Through this impact of the lunar sphere into the planetary sphere, what can otherwise be experienced in inner peace and with dignity and majesty through the archetypal nature of the plant and mineral kingdoms is disturbed to a certain extent.

When the human being escapes from the lunar sphere and enters the sphere of the fixed stars, then what remains for him is a cosmic memory – we can call it that – of these powerful, majestic experiences of the planetary sphere with the archetypal nature of the earthly mineral and plant kingdoms. This remains with him as a memory. And he enters into a world of spiritual beings, of which, as I have already said, the physical, sensory image is the constellations of the stars, those star constellations which, when understood in the right way, are the expression, so to speak, the written characters from which one can experience the peculiarity, the deeds and the volitional intentions of the spiritual beings in the sphere of the stars. In a sense, one now experiences by vision the spiritual beings that do not walk on earth in physical bodies, which can only be experienced in this sphere of the stars. And one enters this sphere in order to penetrate one's own being with the deeds of these divine spiritual beings, within the same, one's own being with the cosmic consciousness – which has now expanded, for which spatial vision has passed over into a qualitative vision, for which temporal vision has passed over into simultaneity.

While here on earth we are enclosed in our own skin and the other human beings outside in theirs, doing what they have to do, while we are all next to each other here on earth, in this sphere of stars we are not only in each other as human souls, but we are also such that our cosmic consciousness expands and we feel the entities of the divine spiritual world within us. Here on earth we say “we” to ourselves, or rather, each of us says “I”. Out there, he says “I” by which he means: Within this my I, I experience the world of the divine-spiritual hierarchies; I experience them as my own cosmic consciousness. This is, of course, an even more powerful, expansive, diverse, meaningful and majestic world of experience that one now enters. And when one becomes aware of the forces that play into the soul of man from the most diverse entities of the divine-spiritual hierarchies, then one sees: they are forces that all interact, having cosmic intentions, which all, so to speak, aim at one point. One's own spiritual and soul activity is interwoven with the intentions of the divine spiritual hierarchies and their individual entities. And everything in which one is enveloped, into which one's own cosmic activity, felt within and encompassed by cosmic consciousness, passes, all this ultimately aims at constructing the spirit germ, as I have described it, of the human physical organism.

Indeed, the ancient mystery centers spoke of a profound truth when they said that man is a temple of the gods. What is built first in mighty, majestic grandeur out of the spiritual cosmos and then contracts into the human physical body, so as to be transformed that one no longer recognizes the original image, the mighty, majestic original image, is actually what the context of the divine-spiritual hierarchies builds in order to have its goal in this building.

This sphere of experience is such that, when we are in this sphere, we see the cosmos, which we see from the inside when we are in the earthly position, from a point from which we look out in all directions, from the outside. For when we enter the sphere of the stars, we feel even at the moment when we have snatched ourselves from the sphere of the moon that we are outside in the universe and actually looking at the cosmos from the outside.

I will try to sketch what is taking place (see drawing). Let us assume that the Earth is here. Of course, the proportions are not correct, but we will understand each other. We look out into the vastness of the cosmos. We see stars wandering outside, the planets, and the fixed stars are outside. Here on Earth, our consciousness is concentrated as if in a small point (red). We look out centrally into the universe. In the moment when we have escaped from the sphere of the moon, we arrive with our consciousness in the sphere of the stars. But we pass, as it were, only through the sphere of the stars, guided by the memory that remains to us from the experiences of the planetary sphere, and enter the sphere beyond the stars.

In this sphere beyond the stars, space no longer actually exists. Of course, when I draw here, I have to draw what is actually qualitative in spatial terms. I can then draw it like this: While our consciousness on earth is, as it were, concentrated at this point as our ego (red), it is peripheral when it has reached beyond the sphere of the stars (blue). We look inwards from each point (blue arrows). This looking is only represented in the image of space. We look inward. If we have the constellation of Aries here (red at the top left) and if we see the sun (yellow) standing in the constellation of Aries from the earth, so that the sun, as it were, covers the constellation of Aries for us, and if we then go out into space, we see Aries standing in front of the sun. But to understand from the cosmic consciousness means something else: to see Aries standing before the Sun — than to look with the earthly consciousness and see the Sun standing before Aries. We see everything spiritually in this way. We look at the universe from the outside.

And in the development of the spirit germ of the physical organism, we actually have the powers of the spiritual-divine beings within us, but in such a way that, basically, we feel outside the whole cosmos, which we experience from the earth. And now, in our cosmic consciousness, we experience being with the divine-spiritual beings.

When we then look back and see, as it were, the constellations — but all in a qualitative rather than a spatial sense — above the sun, one time this, the other time that, then we recognize in what we are experiencing, by connecting it with the memory we have of how the metals and minerals, after the plant paths had been completed, had sounded in the planets, then we experience that this sounding, which was initially a world music, is transformed into the cosmic language, into the Logos. We read the intentions of the divine-spiritual beings among whom we are by experiencing the individual signs of this cosmic writing: The standing of Aries before the Sun, the standing of Taurus before the Sun and so on — by experiencing how this takes place and how the sounds that the metals make in the planets resonate with this writing. This instructs us how to work on the spiritual germ of the physical organism on earth.

As long as we are in the lunar sphere, we have a vivid feeling for this photograph of our moral and spiritual life on earth. We have a vivid feeling for what is going on among the group souls of the animals. But these are a kind of demonic, elemental entities. Now that we find the zodiac on the other side of the sun, we are learning to recognize what we have actually seen. For the memory of these animal forms, of these group soul forms of the animals, remains with us into the beyond of the sphere of the stars, and we make the discovery that these group souls of the animals are, so to speak, lower — if one human language), are the caricatured after-images of the magnificent forms that now permeate our cosmic consciousness beyond the sphere of the stars as the entities of the divine-spiritual hierarchies.

Thus, outside the sphere of the stars we have the entities of the divine-spiritual hierarchies, and within the sphere of the stars, insofar as it is interspersed with what spiritually belongs to the sphere of the moon, we have the caricatures of the divine-spiritual entities in the group souls of the animals. When I say caricatures, please do not take this in a pejorative sense. What a caricature is in the human-humorous-artistic view is, of course, something extraordinarily trivial compared to the grandiose caricature of the divine spiritual beings in the world of the moon sphere, which is at the same time the world of the group soul beings of the earthly animal kingdom. We owe an extraordinary debt to the experience we have in this sphere. I have already mentioned this in a more conceptual form in the last few days, now I would like to express it more in an imaginative way.

Imagine the human being is up there (see drawing on page 19, red). He looks back here. His actual area of perception of his spiritual and soul world is beyond the star sphere. This is where he has the field of his current activity. It is like standing on a high mountain, with sunshine above and fog below. In this cosmic experience, you have the entire surging, struggling, and discordant group soul of the animals below, but also their harmonious ascent and descent. Like a multiform mist, it propagates itself down below, lives itself out down there. And while gazing at the constellations, beholding the intentions of the divine-spiritual beings, while reading the intentions of the divine-spiritual beings, while learning in cosmic consciousness to understand how the temple the temple of the gods, this spirit germ of the physical body, has its secrets in itself, those secrets that correspond to the pure world of extra-terrestrial and extra-lunar existence, one looks down and sees what is going on in the sphere of spirituality of the animal kingdom. And by looking down as if from a sun-drenched mountain peak into a lower mass of fog clouds, one has the same experience as one has in cosmic thoughts: If you do not take with you all the strength with which you have now imbued yourself from this divine spiritual world as you descend back down, you will not emerge unscathed from this world of the foggy clouds of animal group souls. There you will find the image of your previous earthly life with a moral and spiritual evaluation. This will be floating in the fog down there. You have to take it up again. But there will be all the group souls of the animals, wildly rushing into each other; there will be all the wild hustle and bustle. You must take such strong powers with you from your beyond the sphere of the stars that you can take these powers of the group soul nature of the animals as far away from your destiny as possible. Otherwise, just as matter attaches itself to a crystal, what these group souls of the animals cosmetically exude towards your moral-spiritual core of being will attach itself to you. And you will have to take with you everything that you cannot then hold back through the powers you have accumulated, and you will have to integrate it as all kinds of urges and instincts for your next earthly existence.

However, one will only be able to draw from the hereafter the forces of the sphere of the stars that one has made oneself capable of drawing by developing in the inclination towards Christ, in the inclination towards the Mystery of Golgotha, in the truly religious, not in the egoistic religious, permeation of the soul in the sense of the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” This makes one strong to penetrate beyond the sphere of the stars, in the company of the divine spiritual beings, with those forces that one has to take with one as one's destiny core when going back down through the sphere of the moon from that which which is grouped in the disharmonious, discrepant play of the spiritual-animal environment and permeates this spiritual-soul core.

If one wants to describe what the human soul experiences between birth and death, what unites it with itself, what it incorporates into its perceptions, feelings and impulses of will, then one must describe the earthly world around the human being. But if one wants to describe what the human being experiences between death and a new birth, then one must describe what the archetypes of what is on earth are. If one wants to know what the minerals really are, then one must hear their essence resounding in the life between death and a new birth from the planets. If one wants to know what the plants really are, then one must study the essence of what grows out of the earth in a faint afterimage in the plant, on the paths that lead from the plant kingdom out into space and that are traced in the forms of plant formations. If one wishes to study the animal kingdom, one must become acquainted with the ebb and flow of the group souls of the animals in the sphere of the moon. And when one has extricated oneself from all this, when one has entered the sphere beyond the world of the stars, only then does one learn to recognize the actual secrets of the human being. And one learns to look back on all that one has experienced in the archetypal worlds of the mineral, the plant, and the animal.

One carries this out into those regions of the cosmos where one not only recognizes the actual secrets of the human being, but also experiences them vividly and is active in shaping them. One carries into these regions, like a cosmic memory, everything one has experienced with reference to minerals, plants and animals on the ascent. A rich and varied life takes place in the confluence of these memories and what one sees as the secrets of human existence, what one actively experiences and participates in, and in the confluence of this memory and this activity. And it is this varied life that a person goes through between death and a new birth.

It is necessary to let certain fundamental truths of spiritual development come to mind whenever you have gained some material, as we may call it, by way of knowledge and the like, for this will allow you to penetrate those fundamental truths more deeply. In the last days we have considered all kinds of ideas which may explain the events of our time, at least to some extent. We have therefore acquired a number of ideas concerning present developments. We can put these together with fundamental truths which we already know from certain points of view, but which can be penetrated more deeply if we approach them again following further preparation.

I have frequently spoken of the significant break which occurred in the spiritual development of the peoples of Europe and America in the middle of the nineteenth century, and especially in the 1840s. I have pointed out that this was the time when the materialistic point of view came to its peak, with a peak was reached in what we may call a way of grasping dead, outer facts with the intellect, refusing to enter into living reality.

The deeper sources of such events—and today we are very much involved in their after-effects, which will continue to have an influence for a long time to come—must be sought in the world of the spirit. And if we investigate the processes in that world which have come to outer expression in the event of which I have just spoken, we have to point to a struggle, a real war in that world, which began then and came to a certain conclusion for the world of the spirit by the autumn of 1879. To have the right idea about these things, you must visualize a battle which continued for decades in the spiritual worlds, from the 1840s until the autumn of 1879.

This may be called a battle which the spirits who are followers of the spirit belonging to the hierarchy of Archangels whom we may call Michael fought with certain ahrimanic powers. Please consider this battle to have been in the first place a battle in the spiritual world. Everything I am referring to at the moment relates to this battle fought by Michael and his followers against certain ahrimanic powers. A good way of strengthening this idea, especially if you want to make it fruitful for your life in the present time, is to have it in your mind's eye that the human souls who were born exactly in the fifth decade of the nineteenth century actually took part in this battle between Michael's followers and the ahrimanic powers when they were in the spiritual world. If you think on this, it will give you a great deal of understanding of the outer and inner destiny experienced by these individuals, and above all of their inner constitution. The battle thus took place in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and came to a conclusion in the autumn of 1879, when Michael and his followers won a victory over certain ahrimanic powers.

What does this signify? To see something like this in the right way, we can always call on an image which humanity has known throughout its evolution—the fight between Michael and the dragon. This image has come up again and again in the course of evolution. We may characterize it by saying that every battle between Michael and the dragon is similar to the one in the 1840s, but it is about different things—harmful and damaging things. We may say that a particular crowd of ahrimanic spirits seek over and over again to bring something into world evolution, but they are always overcome. And so they also lost the battle in the autumn of 1879, and, as I said, this was in the spiritual world.

But what does it signify that the powers of the dragon, this crowd of ahrimanic spirits, are driven down into the human realms, banished from heaven to earth, as it were? Losing the battle means they are no longer to be found in the heavens, to use the biblical term. Instead they are to be found in the human realms, which means that the late 1870s were a particular time when human souls became subject to ahrimanic powers with regard to certain powers of perception. Before this, these powers were active in the spiritual realms and therefore left human beings more in peace; when they were driven out of the spiritual realms they came upon human beings. And if we enquire into the nature of the ahrimanic powers which entered into human beings when they had to leave the realms of the spirit, the answer is, the ahrimanic materialistic view with its personal—mark this well—its personal bias.

Materialism had, of course, reached its peak in the 1840s, but in those days its impulses were more instinctive in humans, for the crowd of ahrimanic spirits still sent their impulses from the spiritual world into human instincts. From the autumn of 1879 onwards, these ahrimanic impulses—powers of perception and of will—became the personal property of human beings. Before this they were more of a general property, now they were transplanted to become personal property. We are thus able to say that due to the presence of these ahrimanic powers from 1879 onwards, personal ambitions and inclinations to interpret the world in materialistic terms came to exist in the human realm. You only have to trace some of the events which have arisen because of personal inclinations since then, to understand that they resulted when the Archangel Michael drove the dragon, that is the crowd of ahrimanic spirits, from the realms of the spirit, from the heavens, down to earth.

This occurrence has profound significance. The people of the nineteenth century and of our own time are not inclined to pay attention to such occurrences in the spiritual world and to the way in which they relate to the physical world. Yet the ultimate reasons and final impulses for events on earth can only be found if one knows the spiritual background. It has to be said that it takes a fair amount of materialism, even if dressed up as idealism, to say: ‘In terms of eternity, what does it matter if so and so many more tons of organic matter will perish as the war is allowed to continue?’ One has to feel the extent to which such a view has its roots in ahrimanism, for its roots truly are in the realms of inner response. The philosopher Henri Lichtenberger's¹ philosophy of ‘tons of organic matter’ is one of many examples which may be quoted to Show the specific forms taken by the ahrimanic way of thinking.

The deepest impulse which has been living in many human souls since 1879 is therefore one which was cast down into the human realms; before that, it lived as ahrimanic power in the world of the spirit. It is helpful to look for other ways of strengthening the idea in our minds by using concepts from the material world, using them essentially as symbolic images. What happens today more at the level of soul and spirit had more of a material bias in very early times. The world of matter is also spiritual; it is merely a different form of spirituality.

If you were to go back to very early times in evolution, you would find a battle similar to the one I have just described. As already mentioned, these battles have recurred over and over again, but always on different issues. In the distant past, the crowd of ahrimanic spirits were also cast down from the spiritual worlds into the earthly realm when they had lost such a battle. You see, they would return to the attack again and again. After one of these battles, for example, the crowd of ahrimanic spirits populated the earth with the earthly life-forms which the medical profession now calls bacilli. Everything which has the power to act as a bacillus, everything in which bacilli are involved, is the result of crowds of ahrimanic spirits being cast down from heaven to earth at a time when the dragon had been overcome. In the same way the ahrimanic, mephistophelean way of thinking has spread since the late 1870s as the result of such a victory. Thus we are able to say that tubercular and bacillary diseases come from a similar source as the materialism which has taken hold of human minds.

We can also compare the occurrences of the last century with something else. We can point to something which you know already from Occult Science² the withdrawal of the Moon from the sphere of Earth evolution. The Moon was once part of the Earth; it was cast out from the Earth. As a result, certain Moon influences took effect on Earth, and this, too, followed a victory won by Michael over the dragon. We are therefore also able to say that everything connected with certain effects relating to the phases of the Moon, and all impulses which reach the Earth from the Moon, have their origin in a similar battle between Michael and the dragon.

These things really do belong together, in a way, and it is extremely useful to consider this, for it has profound significance. Some individuals develop an irresistible hankering for intellectual materialism which arises from being in league with the fallen Ahriman. They gradually come to love the impulses which Ahriman raises in their souls and, indeed, consider them to be a particularly noble and sublime way of thinking. Once again, it is necessary to be fully and clearly aware of these things. Unless they are in our conscious awareness and we have clear insight, we cannot make head or tail of events. The danger inherent in all this must be looked at with a cool eye, as it were, and a calm heart. We have to face them calmly. We shall only do so, however, if we are quite clear about the fact that a certain danger threatens human beings from this direction. This is the danger of preserving what should not be preserved. Everything which happens within the great scheme of things does also have its good side. It is because the ahrimanic powers entered into us when Michael won his victory that we are gaining in human freedom. Everything is connected with this, for the crowd of ahrimanic spirits has entered into all of us. We gain in human freedom, but we must be aware of this. We should not allow the ahrimanic powers to gain the upper hand, as it were, and we should not fall in love with them.

This is tremendously important. There always is the danger of people continuing in materialism, in the materialistic, ahrimanic way of thinking, and carrying this on into ages when, according to the plan of things, it should have been overcome. The people who do not turn away from the ahrimanic, materialistic way of thinking and want to keep it, would then be in league with everything which has come about through similar victories won over the dragon by Michael. They therefore would not unite with spiritual progress in human evolution but with material progress. And a time would come in the sixth post-Atlantean age when the only thing to please them would be to live in something which will have been brought about by bacilli, those microscopically small enemies of humanity.

Something else also needs to be understood. Exactly because of its logical consistency, and indeed its greatness, the scientific way of thinking, too, is in great danger of sliding into the ahrimanic way of thinking. Consider how some scientists are thinking today in the field of geology, for instance. They study the surface formation of the earth and the residues and so on, to determine how certain animals live, or have lived, in the different strata. Empirical data are established for certain periods. Scientists use these as a basis for their views as to what the earth looked like thousands and millions of years ago, arriving, for instance, at the nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace.³ They also develop ideas as to the future evolution of the earth, and from the physical point of view these are quite correct. They are often utterly brilliant, but they are based on a method where the evolution of the earth is observed for a time and then conclusions are drawn: millions of years before, and millions of years afterwards.

What is really being done in this case? It is the same as if we were to observe a child when it is seven, eight or nine years old, taking note of how its organs gradually change, or partly change, and calculate how much these human organs change over a period of two or three years. We then multiply this to work out how much these organs change over a period of centuries. So we can work out what this child looked like a hundred years ago, and going in the other direction we can also work out what it will look like in a hundred and fifty years. It is a method which can be quite brilliant and is, in fact, the method used by geologists today to work out the primeval conditions of the earth; it was also used to produce the hypothesis of Laplace. Exactly the same method is used to visualize what the world is going to be like according to the physical laws which can now be observed. But I think you will admit that such laws do not signify much when applied to a human being, for example. A hundred years ago the child did not exist as a physical human being; neither will it exist as a physical human being in a hundred and fifty years' time.

The same applies to the earth with reference to the time-scale used by geologists. The earth came into existence later than Tyndall, Huxley, Haeckel⁴ and others reckon. Before the time comes when you can simply paint the walls of a room with protein and have enough light to read by, the earth will be nothing but a corpse. It is quite easy to work out that one day it will be possible to use physical means to put protein on a wall where it will shine like electric light, so that one can read the paper. This is bound to happen as part of the physical changes, no doubt. But in fact the time will never come, just as it will never happen that in a hundred and fifty years time a child will show the changes calculated from successive changes seen in its stomach and liver in the course of two or three years between the ages of seven and nine.

Here you gain insight into some very strange things we have today. You can see how they clash. Think of a conventional scientist listening to what I have just been saying. He will say this is sheer foolishness. And then think of a spiritual scientist; he will consider the things the conventional scientist says to be foolish. All the many hypotheses concerning the beginning and the end of the earth are indeed nothing but foolishness, even though people have been utterly brilliant in establishing them.

You see from this how unconsciously human beings are, in fact, being guided. But we are now in an age when such things must be perceived and understood. It is necessary to link such an idea with the other ideas we have characterized today. A time will come when we must have transformed our materialistic ideas to such an extent that we can progress to a more spiritual form of existence, but by then the earth will have been a corpse for a long time. It will no longer support us, and incarnations in the flesh such as we seek today will no longer be sought. But the individuals who have become so tied up with the materialistic way of thinking that they cannot let go of it will still sneak down to that earth and find ways of involving themselves in the activities of bacilli—the tubercle bacillus and others—bacillary entities which will be rummaging through every part of the earth's corpse. Today's bacilli are merely the prophets, let us say, of what will happen to the whole earth in future. Then a time will come when those who cling to the materialistic way of thinking will unite with the moon powers and surround the earth, which will be a burnt-out corpse, together with the moon. For all they want is to hold on to the life of the earth and remain united with it; they do not want to take the right course, which is to progress from the earth's corpse to what will be the future soul and spirit of the earth.

In our time particularly, all these things are having an effect on many much admired brilliant ideas and moral impulses—people christen everything ‘moral impulse’‘ nowadays—in which the ahrimanic and materialistic powers are alive. These have the capacity to develop into the impulses which act as numerous ties to hold human beings to the earth, of their own will. It is important, therefore, to turn our attention to these things. And it is really most necessary to pay real heed to some highly respected elements which are taken as a matter of course today, such as certain laws of nature. Anyone who does not accept them is called an amateur and a fool. Certain moral and political aspirations are taken as a matter of course. Great Wilsoniades are proclaimed with regard to them. All these things have the potential to develop into something that can be characterized in the way I have just done.

I had my reasons for saying that the people who had a part in the beginning of the battle in the 1840s were in a special position. They were placed on earth at that time. And we can understand a great deal of the inner life of these people, especially those who were active in mind and spirit, and of their doubts and their inner battles, if we consider the impulse they brought from the life of the spirit in the 1840s into the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.

Something else also relates to this, something which should not be overlooked today, but very often is. It is the belief that spiritual entities and their activities have no part in human affairs. People do not like to speak of events in human affairs having spiritual causes. Anyone who knows the real situation, however, is well aware that psychic or spiritual influences from the spiritual world on human beings here in the physical world are, in fact, particularly powerful at the present time. It is not at all uncommon to find people today who will tell you that a dream, or something like a dream—they do not normally understand what is going on, but these are always non-physical elements—drove them to a particular course of events. Psychic influences of this kind play a much greater role today than materialists are prepared to believe. Anyone who has the opportunity to go into such things will find them at every turn. If you were to take the published works of today's better poets and do a statistical analysis of how many poems have come into existence in a way for which there is a rational explanation, and how many by an inspiration—a definite spiritual influence from the other world, with the poet experiencing it in a dream or something similar—you would be surprised how great is the percentage of direct influences from the spiritual world. People are influenced by the spiritual world to a much greater extent than they are prepared to admit. And the human actions performed under the influence of the spiritual world are indeed significant ones.

Now and then the question comes up: ‘Why was a particular newspaper started?’‘ The individual who started it had a particular impulse from the spiritual world. If he trusts you enough to speak openly about his impulses, he will speak of a dream when you ask about the real origin. This is why some time ago I had to say here that when historians come to discuss the outbreak of this war in time to come and use the documents of our civilization in the same way as did Ranke⁵ and other historians who went by the documents, they will never write about the most important event, which is something that happened under the influence of the spiritual world in 1914.

Things go in cycles or periods. Anything which happens in the physical world is really a kind of projection, or shadow, of what happens in the spiritual world, except that it would have happened earlier in the spiritual world. Let us assume this line here (Fig. 9a) was the line or plane separating the spiritual and the physical worlds. What I have just said could then be characterized as follows: Let us assume an event—for example the battle between Michael and the dragon—happens first of all in the spiritual world. It finally comes to an end when the dragon is cast down from heaven to earth. On earth, then, the cycle is brought to completion after a time interval which approximately equals the time between the beginning of the battle in the spiritual world and the time when the dragon was cast down. We might say: The dawn, the very beginning of this battle between Michael and the dragon, was in 1841. Things were particularly lively in 1845. It is thirty-four years from 1845 to 1879, and if we move on thirty-four years after 1879 we come to the mirroring event: You get 1913, the year preceding 1914. You see, the developments which started in the physical world in 1913 are the mirror-image of the prime reasons for the spiritual battle. And now consider 1841—1879—1917! 1841 was the crucial year in the nineteenth century. 1917 is its mirror-image. If one realizes that the exertions of the crowd of ahrimanic spirits in 1841, when the dragon started to fight Michael in the spiritual world, are mirrored right now in 1917, much of what is happening now will not really come as a surprise. Events in the physical world can really only be understood if one knows that they have been in preparation in the spiritual worlds.

These things are not being said to worry people or put strange notions in their heads; they are meant as a challenge to see things clearly, to resolve to make the effort to look into the spiritual world and not to sleep through events. This is why it has become necessary in the field of anthroposophical development to say over and over again that there is need to be watchful, to take note of what is happening and not let events go by unnoticed.

It is sometimes only possible to say what I mean by using an analogy. Yesterday I spoke of the way in which the people in Eastern Europe draw conclusions from such events. If we here in the West want to find out what actually lives in the East European soul, the best way is to study the works of the philosopher Soloviev, <⁶ though there are serious limits to what we can learn in this way. Real insight can only be gained from what has been said for many years in lectures and lecture courses given within the anthroposophical movement on the destiny and true nature of the Russian spirit. But by turning our attention to the philosopher Soloviev it is possible to express by means of an analogy what one really wants to say in this case. As you know, Soloviev died at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century and has therefore been dead for a long time. Western people did not bother much with his philosophy. They had little opportunity to get to know it and little effort was made to study Soloviev as a representative of Eastern Europe. At best we have the situation of the professor who some years ago had an idea that it was not exactly right for a Professor of Philosophy to know nothing about Soloviev—you know the story. So he let someone write a doctoral dissertation, saying to himself: He can study the work of Soloviev and I can read his dissertation.

I merely want to use the point at issue as an analogy, therefore. I should like to put it like this. If we were to say that, hypothetically, Soloviev were alive today and had known this war and the events taking place in Russia—what would he, a Russian, have done? The answer can, of course, only be hypothetical, but it is a reasonable assumption that Soloviev would have found a way of removing everything he had written before the war and would have written new works. He would have realized that it was necessary to revise his views completely, for his views were based on the time when they were written. He would thus have drawn the same conclusion as the whole of Eastern Europe.

It seems paradoxical to say something like this. But if one reads Soloviev today it is best to be clear in one's mind that little would have Soloviev's absolute approval today. It would be a sign of being wide awake to make a fundamental revision of ideas which carried the greatest weight at the time but have since been reduced to absurdity. 2+2=4 would still be 2+2=4, but other things must certainly be revised. And we are only awake in our time if we are aware of this need for revision.

In this year of 1917—thirty-eight years after 1879, with 1879 thirty-eight years after 1841—something important is being asked of humanity. What matters today is not what people did in 1914, but that they get themselves out of this situation. The problem we have to face now is how to get out of it again. And unless people realize that the old ideas will not get us out of it and that new ideas are needed, the result will be failure. Anyone who thinks we shall get out of this with the old ideas is barking up the wrong tree. The effort must be made to gain new ideas, and this is only possible with insight into the spiritual world.

It has been my intention today to give you something of a background to much of I have been saying in there last days. You see, if one deals with spiritual life in concrete terms, it is not enough to have the general twaddle which is so popular with the people who believe in pantheism and similar philosophies—that there is a spiritual world, that the spirit is behind all physical things. Talking about the spirit in vague general terms will get you nowhere. We must consider specific spiritual events and spiritual entities which are beyond the threshold. Events in this world are not merely general but quite specific, and they are concrete and specific in the other world. I do not think that there are many who, as they get up in the morning, would think: ‘If I step outside the front door, I shall be out in the world.’‘ They would not say this, but they will have ideas about something specific they are going to encounter. In the same way we shall only manage to deal with the deeper sources of human and world evolution if we are able to visualize the things which are beyond the threshold in a specific and concrete way and not just refer to them in general terms such as ‘universal’, ‘providence’, and the like.

Much, much can be felt when we look at the figures 1841 and 1917 in the diagram (see Fig. 9a). But our inner response to this has to be alive in us if we are to understand what is really happening.

• 1. See Note 1 of lecture 8.
• 2. See Note 2 of lecture 4.
• 3. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher, wrote an essay on Newtonian cosmology in 1755 in which he anticipated the nebular hypothesis of Simon Pierre Laplace (1749–1827). The hypothesis is that the planets condensed from a nebula which finally contracted into the primitive Sun.
• 4. John Tyndall (1820–1893), Irish physicist. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), English biologist, friend of Darwin and one of the major protagonists of Darwinism. Ernst Haeckel, see Note 1 of lecture 2.
• 5. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), German historian. His best known work in English is his History of the Popes in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1834–37; translated into English by Sarah Austin, 1846). He wrote many historical works right until the end of his life.
• 6. See Note 6 of lecture 8.

In the lectures to-day and tomorrow I wish to give certain indications which will throw light, not only on the working of karma, but on the wider importance of karmic knowledge for our general knowledge of the history of evolution, especially in the domain of the spiritual life. We cannot understand the real working of karma if we merely consider the successive earthly lives of any one individuality. Certain it is that within this earthly life, being strongly impressed by the earthly career and history of one man or another, or maybe even of ourselves, we are most keen to know: How do the results of former earthly lives reach over into a later one? But the ways of the working of karma would never become clear to us if we stopped short at the earthly lives themselves. For between one earthly life and another man spends the life between death and a new birth, and it is there that karma is elaborated from what has happened in a former earthly life. There it is elaborated in co-operation with other karmically connected human souls who are also in their life between death and a new birth, and with the Spirits of higher and lower Hierarchies. And this elaboration of karma can only be understood if we can look to the world of stars beyond the earth. For we know that the realm of the stars as it appears to physical sight, reveals only its external aspect.

Again and again we must repeat that the physicist would be in the highest degree astonished if he arrived at the places of the stars which he observes through his telescope, whose constitution and substances he analyses with his spectroscope. The physicist, if he were to go to the places where the stars are, would be astonished to see something totally different from what he would expect. For what the star shows to earthly observation is in reality only an outward semblance, comparatively unessential to its own true being. What the star really contains is of a spiritual nature, or, if physical it appears as the remnant, so to say, of something spiritual.

We can best explain this in the following way. Imagine that an inhabitant of some other star were to observe the Earth in the way our astronomers and astro-physicists observe other stars. He would describe a luminous disc shining far out into the cosmos. On it he would find perhaps darker and lighter spots which he would somehow interpret. Probably the interpretation would altogether disagree with what we who inhabit the globe know amongst ourselves. Or perhaps, if Vesuvius were erupting and such a being could observe it, he would theorise that a comet was colliding with the Earth, and so forth. At any rate, what such a being described would have very little to do with the real essence of our Earth.

For what is the essence of our Earth? You must remember that this Earth has proceeded from the Saturn-existence as I described it in my Occult Science. In Saturn there was as yet no air, no gas, no liquid, no solid earth-constituent. There were only varied differentiations of warmth. But in those warmth-conditions, everything that afterwards became the mineral, plant and animal, and human kingdoms was contained germinally. We human beings, too, were in the warmth of ancient Saturn.

Then evolution went forward. Out of the warmth, air was precipitated, water was precipitated, and at length the solid element. All these are remnants, precipitated, cast out by humanity in order that it might attain its further evolution. The whole solid mineral world belongs to us. It is but a relic that has remained behind. So, too, the watery and airy elements. Thus the real essence of our Earth is not what we have in the kingdoms of Nature, and not even what we carry in our bones and muscles (for these too are composed of what we have thus cast out and afterwards absorbed again). Our own souls are the real essence, and everything else is in reality more or less a semblance, a remnant, a waste product, or the like.

The only true description of the Earth would be to describe it as the colony of the souls of man in cosmic space.

Thus are all the stars colonies of spiritual Beings in cosmic space, colonies which we can learn to know as such. And having passed through the gate of death, our own soul lives and moves among these starry colonies. It goes on its further journey, evolving towards a new birth in community with other human souls that are there, and with the Beings of higher or even of lower Hierarchies. And when a man's karma is elaborated and he is ripe to take on an earthly body once again, his soul starts on the returning journey.

To understand karma, therefore, we must return once more to a wisdom of the stars. We must discover spiritually the paths of man between death and a new birth in connection with the Beings of the stars.

Now until the beginning of the age of Michael there have been the greatest difficulties for the men of modern time to approach a real wisdom of the stars. And Anthroposophy, having nevertheless found its way to such a wisdom, must be deeply thankful for the fact that the dominion of Michael really did enter the life of Earth-humanity with the last third of the 19th century. For among many things that we owe to the dominion of Michael there is this too: we have gained once more unhindered access to discover what must be investigated in the worlds of the stars if we would understand karma and the forming of karma in the sphere of humanity.

To introduce you gradually into the extremely difficult questions that arise in the investigation of karma, I will give you an example to-day. It will show you by an illustration how much must be achieved before we can speak of the working of karma as we are doing in these lectures.

It is true enough, is it not, that if we were to speak popularly or in public of the content of these lectures nowadays, these things which are truly an outcome of exact research would be treated as an absurdity. Nevertheless it is a most exact research and you must make yourselves acquainted with all the responsibilities of which one becomes aware in the course of it. You must learn to know all the obstacles and difficulties one meets in such research—the thorny hedges, as it were, which one must pass. For all these things are necessary in order that at length a number of human beings, united karmically in the community of Michael, can learn to know the things of karma. You must know that these are questions of the most earnest spiritual research, far removed from what is imagined by the layman who stands outside this Anthroposophical Movement.

Most of you will remember a character who occurs again and again in my Mystery Plays—the character of Strader. I have already to some extent spoken of these things. The character of Strader is partly drawn from life, in so far as that is possible in a poetic work. I had a kind of pattern for the personality of Strader. It was a man who lived through the developments of the last third of the 19th century and came to a kind of rationalistic Christianity. After an extremely difficult period of youth (as is suggested in the description of Strader) this man became a Capuchin monk, but he could not bear it in the Church, and at length became a professor.

Having been driven from theology into philosophy, he wrote and spoke with great enthusiasm of Lessing's “free-thinking religion” if one may so describe it. Having come into an inner conflict with official Christianity, he then wanted to found a sort of rationalistic Christianity on a basis of reason and in a quite conscious way. The soul-conflicts of Strader as described in my Mystery Plays did indeed take place in the real life of this man, though of course with certain variations.

Now you know that in the last Mystery Play, Strader dies. I myself, if I now look back and see how I wove the character of Strader into the plot of the four Mystery Plays, must see that though there was no external difficulty in letting him live on just like the other characters, he dies out of an inner necessity at a certain moment. One may well feel his death as a surprise when reading through the plays. But I had the strong inner feeling that I could no longer continue the character of Strader in the plays.

Why was it so? You see, in the meantime the original, the model, if I may call him so, had died. Now having based the character of Strader on him, you may well imagine how deeply interested I was in the original, in his further course of evolution. He continued to interest me when he had passed through the gate of death.

Now it is a peculiar thing when we wish to follow the life of a human being clairvoyantly through the time directly after death, through the period that lasts about a third of the physical life on earth. The earthly life, as we know, is in a certain way gone through again backward, at a threefold speed. Now what is the human being really experiencing in these decades that immediately follow his earthly life?

Imagine a human life here upon earth. We know how it falls into day and night—alternating conditions of waking and sleeping. Already in the periods of sleep man experiences reminiscences of the day-waking life pictorially, but he is not conscious. Ordinarily when we look back upon our life we remember only the day-waking states. Nor do we bear in mind what the chain of memories is really like, for in reality we should say: I remember that day from morning till evening, then there is a break, then again from morning till evening, then again a break and so on. But, as the nights are an empty void in our memory, we draw the line continuously through and thus falsify the chain of memory by placing one day directly after another. After death it is different, for then we must live with intense reality through all the experiences that were present in the nights of our life, comprising about a third of the length of our life. We live through it backwards. Now this is the peculiar thing—we have, as you know, a certain sense of reality, a certain feeling of real existence with regard to the things we meet with here in the physical world. If we had not this sense of reality we could consider as a dream all the things we meet with, even in the daytime. Thus we undoubtedly have a sense of the reality of things. We know that they are real; they hit us if we knock against them; they send us light and sound. In short, there are many things that give us our sense of reality here in this earthly life between birth and death.

Now all that we have here on earth as feeling of reality, all that we should describe as the reality—the real existence—of human beings whom we meet here, is in its intensity like the reality of a dream compared to the immensely strong reality which we experience in the decades immediately after death and which the clairvoyant observer can experience with us. For there, everything seems to us more real. The earthly life seems like a dream. It is as though the soul were only then awakening into the real intensity of life.—That is the peculiar thing.

Now as I followed the image of Strader (or of his counterpart) after his passage through the gate of death, the real individuality living after death naturally interested me far more than the reminiscence of his earthly life. For the earthly seems like a dream compared to what emerges after death. Faced with the strong impressions of the dead I could no longer have evolved sufficient interest in the living man to describe his life. In this case I speak out of my own experience. How weak is the reality of earthly life compared with that intensest life which meets us when we follow a man after his death!

When our interest has been kindled on the earth and we try to follow the life of a man in his further course after death, we begin to realise the tremendous difficulties and hindrances. For if we observe rightly and penetratingly, we see, already in that backward course which takes about a third of the time of the past earthly life, how the dead man begins to approach and prepare for the forming of his karma. In a reverse and backward life, he sees all that he underwent during his life on earth. If he offended another man he experiences the event again. If I die at the age of seventy-three, and at the age of sixty I offended someone, I experience it again on the backward journey. But this time I experience, not the feelings which I had in giving the offence, but the feelings of the other man. I live right over into him. Thus I with my own experience live in those who were touched in a good or in a bad sense by these my experiences in life. And thus the tendency is prepared and grows in me myself, to create the karmic balance.

Now my interest in the earthly archetype of Strader who now appeared before me as an individuality in higher worlds—my interest in him had been kindled especially by his desire to take hold of Christianity in a very penetrating, in a very brilliant, but rationalistic way. In his case we cannot but admire the thinker, and yet in the books he wrote, in his rationalistic description of Christianity, we see again and again how the thread of rationalism, the thread of abstract concepts breaks at the critical moment, and in the last resort appalling abstractions are the outcome. He cannot really enter a spiritual conception of Christianity. He builds up a religion of abstract philosophical concepts for himself. In short, the whole workings of modern intellectualism find expression in him.

This again appeared in a peculiar way as one followed his path of life after his death. Ordinarily, when there are no special difficulties, we find the human being living gradually into the sphere of the Moon, for that is the first station of the life after death. When we arrive after death in the Moon-region, we find all those whom we might call the “Registrars” of our destiny, who in primeval time were the wise Teachers of humanity. How often we have spoken of them here! As the Moon separated physically from the Earth, and, having been a part of earthly substance, became a heavenly body by itself, so the primeval Teachers of mankind afterwards followed the Moon, and we to-day, when as dead men we pass the region of the Moon, find the great primeval Teachers of mankind. They were not here in physical bodies, but they founded the primeval wisdom of which the traditions of sacred literature are but an echo.

Unhindered, if there are no special hindrances, we find our way after death into that region of the Moon. Now with the human being who was the archetype of Strader, something peculiar occurred. It was as though he was simply unable to approach the Moon-region unhindered and undergo that life of soul which follows directly after death. There were perpetual hindrances, as though the Moon-region simply would not let this individuality approach it.

Then if one followed the real events and causes in pictorial Imagination, the following appeared.—It was as though the Spirits, the primeval Teachers of mankind who had once brought to humanity the original and spiritual wisdom, called out again and again to this human being, the archetype of Strader: “Thou canst not come to us, for owing to thy special qualities as man thou mayst not know anything as yet about the stars. Thou must wait, and first repeat and recapitulate many things that thou didst undergo not only in thy last, but in thy former incarnations. Thou mayst not know anything at all of the stars and their real being, till thou hast thus prepared thyself.”—It was a strange scene. One had before one an individuality who simply could not grow out towards the spiritual of the world of stars—or could only do so with the greatest difficulty. And in this case I made the strange discovery that these modern individualities of the rationalistic, intellectualistic mind, find the great hindrance in the shaping of their karma, inasmuch as they cannot approach unhindered the spiritual being of the stars.

On further investigation it appeared that this personality had drawn all the forces of his rationalism from the time that still preceded the dawn of the Age of Michael. He was not yet really touched by the dominion of Michael.

In this case I felt strongly called upon to follow the individual karma farther into the past. It was a real challenge. For I said to myself: something is here, which, working from the results of former lives on earth, has prepared this human being karmically, so that the karma works itself out not only in this earthly life, but extends even into the life after his death. It is indeed a strange phenomenon.

Then the following appeared. The earthly life which I have indicated in bare outline, which is reflected in the character of Strader, this earthly life of the individuality was preceded by a life in spiritual worlds which I can only describe as a sore and grievous trial. It was a trial in the spiritual worlds: “What shall I do with Christianity?” It was like a slow preparation of the influences which then made him insecure in earthly life in his conception of Christianity. This too shines through in the figure of Strader. He is in no way certain. He rejects the super-sensible in a way; he tries only to take hold of it with intellect, and yet after all he wants to see. Call to mind the character of Strader, and you will find it so. Thus the real life of the archetype of Strader grew out of his former karma. In effect, in his passage through the life between death and a new birth, before his earthly life at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, he had passed through the world of the stars in a very dim and darkened consciousness. His consciousness was darkened as he went through that life between death and a new birth. And as a reaction, in his life on earth he conceived concepts the more clear and sharply outlined for the bluntness of the conceptual pictures he had experienced between death and a new birth.

We go backward still—beyond these phenomena which seemed to show the starry worlds as though in a perpetual fog—backward to his former life on earth, and there we find the most remarkable thing of all. We are led to begin with, or at least I was led, to the Battle of the Minstrels in the Wartburg, A.D. 1206. It was the very time of which I told you how the old Platonists from the School of Chartres, for instance, had gone up into the spiritual worlds and the others had not yet descended. It was the time when a kind of heavenly conference took place between the two groups of souls as to the further progress of the activities of Michael. In that time there took place the Battle of the Minstrels in the Wartburg.

It is ever interesting to observe: What is happening here on earth and what is happening yonder? Thus we have an event on earth in the Battle of the Minstrels on the Wartburg, not directly connected with the continued stream of Michael.

Now who was there in the Battle of the Minstrels? The greatest German poets were there together, vying one with another in their song. The story is well known—how the Minstrels fought for the fame of princes and for their own repute: Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Reinmar von Zweter, and how there was one who stood against all the others—Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

In this Heinrich von Ofterdingen I found the individuality that underlay the archetype of Strader.

Thus it was Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Now we must concentrate on this: Why did Heinrich von Ofterdingen meet with such difficulties when he had passed through the gate of death? Why did he have to go through the world of stars, as it were, darkened and befogged?

To answer this we must return to the story of the Battle of the Minstrels. Heinrich von Ofterdingen takes up the fight against the others. They have already called the hangman. He is to be hanged if he loses. He manages to withdraw; but, hoping to bring about a renewed contest, he summons the magician Klingsor from the land of Hungary. He did, in effect, bring the magician Klingsor from Hungary to Eisenach. A new Battle of the Wartburg ensues and Klingsor enters the lists for Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Klingsor himself sings against the others, but it is quite evident that he is not battling alone. He causes spiritual beings to battle with him. For instance, in order to do so, he makes a youth become possessed by a spiritual being—and then compels the youth to sing in his place. He calls still stronger spiritual forces into play in the Wartburg.

Over against all that comes from Klingsor's side stands Wolfram von Eschenbach. One of Klingsor's practices is to make one of his spiritual beings put Wolfram to the test, as to whether he is really a learned man. For Klingsor finds himself driven into a corner by Wolfram. In effect, Wolfram von Eschenbach, observing that some spiritual influence is at work, sings of the Holy Communion, the Transubstantiation, the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the spirit is obliged to depart, for he cannot bear it. There are indeed “real realities” underlying these things, if I may use the tautology.

Klingsor puts Wolfram to the test, and succeeds indeed, with the help of the spiritual being, in proving that Wolfram (though indeed he has a star-less Christianity, a Christianity that no longer reckons with the cosmos) is quite unlearned in all cosmic wisdom. This now is the point. Klingsor has proved that the Minstrel of the Holy Grail, even in his time, knows only that Christianity which has eliminated the Cosmic Christianity. Klingsor himself, on the other hand, is only able to appear with the support of spiritual beings, inasmuch as he possesses a wisdom of the stars. But we recognise, from the way he uses his wisdom, that what is called “Black Magic” is indeed mingled in his arts.

In a word, we see Wolfram von Eschenbach, who is a stranger to the stars, encountered by a wisdom of the stars unrighteously applied.

This was in the 13th century, immediately preceding the appearance of those Dominicans of whom I told you. It was at the very time when Christianity, just where it was greatest, had divested itself of all insight into the world of stars. Indeed at that time the wisdom of the stars only existed in quarters that were inwardly estranged from Christianity, as was the case with Klingsor of Hungary.

Now it was Heinrich von Ofterdingen who had summoned Klingsor. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, therefore, had allied himself with an unchristian wisdom of the stars. And thus Heinrich remained united in a certain way, not merely with the personality of Klingsor (who in fact afterwards vanished from Heinrich's life in the super-sensible) but with the unchristian cosmology of the Middle Ages. In this way he lived on between death and a new birth, and was reborn as I described it to you. He came into an uncertainty of Christianity.

But the most important thing is this.—He dies again and enters on the returning journey of his life. And in the world of souls, at every step he stands face to face with the necessity, if ever he is to approach the world of stars again, to pass through the grievous battle which Michael had to wage in the last third of the 19th century when he claimed his dominion especially against those demonic powers which were connected with the unchristian cosmology of the Middle Ages.

To complete the picture, I will add that it is clearly possible to see among those who fought hard against the dominion of Michael, and against whom the spirits of Michael had to proceed—it is clearly possible to see among them to this day, the very spirit-beings whom Klingsor conjured up in the Wartburg long ago against Wolfram von Eschenbach.

Thus we see a man whose other results of past karma even led him for a time into the services of the Capuchin Order, unable to come near to real Christianity. He could not come to it because he bore within him the antagonism to Christianity which he had raised in his past life,when he summoned Klingsor to his aid from the land of Hungary, against Wolfram von Eschenbach, the singer of Parsifal. Darkly in the unconscious life of this man the unchristian cosmology still showed itself, but in his ordinary consciousness he evolved a rationalistic Christianity which is not even very interesting. For the interest attaches more to the great conflict of his life, when with a Christian rationalism he tried to found a kind of rationalistic religion.

But it is most significant of all to recognise this connection of abstract rationalism, abstractly clever thinking, with that which lives in the subconscious as darkened, veiled conceptions about the stars and relationships to the stars. Such things, living in the subconscious, rise into consciousness as abstract thoughts. We can study the karma of the cleverest men of the present day—cleverest in the materialist sense—and we find that as a rule in former earthly lives they had something to do with cosmological aberrations into the realms of black magic. This is a very significant connection. An instinctive feeling of it is preserved in the peasants and country folk, who feel a certain aversion from the outset when they find among them someone who is all too clever in a rationalistic sense. They do not like him. In their instinctive conception of him there is something which, if we follow it up, leads eventually to such connections.

Now I want you to consider all these things in relation to our main subject. Such human spirits one could meet with in the last third of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th. They are among the most interesting. A reborn Heinrich von Ofterdingen, who had to do with the blackest magician of his time, with Klingsor, proves indeed most interesting in his present-day rationalistic intellect.

We see here how great the difficulties are when one wishes to approach the wisdom of the stars rightly and righteously. Indeed the true approach to the wisdom of the stars, which we need to penetrate the facts of karma, is only possible in the light of a true insight into Michael's dominion. It is only possible at Michael's side.

I have shown you a single example to-day—the example of him who was the archetype of Strader. It will show you once more, how through the whole reality of modern time there has come forth a certain stream of spiritual life which makes it very difficult to approach with an open mind the science of the stars, and the science, too, of karma. But difficult as it is, it can be done. Despite the attacks that are possible from those quarters which I have described to-day, we can nevertheless go forward with assurance, and approach the wisdom of the stars and the real shaping of karma. As to how these things are possible, I will tell you more tomorrow.

The essential purpose of the lectures I have been giving here for some weeks past was to show how through his spiritual life man partakes in what we may call the world of the Stars, just as through his physical life on Earth he partakes in earthly existence, earthly happenings. In the light of the outlook acquired through Anthroposophy we distinguish in man the forces that lie in his physical body and in his etheric or formative-forces body, and those that lie in his Ego and his astral body. You know, of course, that these two sides of his being are separated whenever he sleeps. And now we will think for a short time of a man while he is asleep. On the one side the physical body and the etheric body lie there in a state of unconsciousness; but the Ego and the astral body are also without consciousness.

We may now ask: Are these two unconscious sides of human nature also related during sleep?—We know indeed that in the waking state, where the ordinary consciousness of modern man functions, the two sides are related through thinking, through feeling and through willing. We must therefore picture to ourselves that when the Ego and astral body plunge down, as it were, into the etheric body and the physical body, thinking, feeling, and willing arise from this union.

Now when man is asleep, thinking, feeling, and willing cease. But when we consider his physical body we shall have to say: All the forces which, according to our human observation belong to Earth-existence are active in this physical body. This physical body can be weighed; put it on scales and it will prove to have a certain weight. We can investigate how material processes take their course within it—or at least we can imagine hypothetically that this is possible. We should find in it material processes that are a continuation of those processes to be found outside in Earth-existence; these continue within man's physical body in the process of nutrition. In his physical body we should also find what is achieved through the breathing process. It is only what proceeds from the head-organization of man, all that belongs to the system of senses and nerves, that is either dimmed or plunged in complete darkness during sleep.

If we then pass on to consider the etheric body which permeates the physical, it is by no means so easy to understand how this etheric body works during sleep. Anyone, however, who is already versed to a certain extent in what Spiritual Science has to say about man will realize without difficulty how through his etheric body the human being lives, even while asleep, amid all the conditions of the ether-world and all the etheric forces surrounding existence on Earth. So that we can say: Within the physical body of man while he is asleep, everything that belongs to Earth-existence is active. So too in the etheric body all that belongs to the ether-world enveloping and permeating the Earth is active.

But matters become more difficult when we turn our attention—naturally our soul's attention—to what is now (during sleep) outside the physical and etheric bodies, namely, to the Ego and astral body of man. We cannot possibly accept the idea that this has anything to do with the physical Earth, or with what surrounds and permeates the Earth as ether. As to what takes place during sleep, I indicated it to you in a more descriptive way in the lectures given here a short time ago, and I will outline it today from a different point of view. We can in reality only understand what goes on in the Ego and astral body of man when with the help of Spiritual Science we penetrate into what takes place on and around the Earth over and above the physical and etheric forces and activities.

To begin with, we turn our gaze upon the plant-world. Speaking in the general sense and leaving out of account evergreen trees and the like—we see the plant-world sprouting out of the Earth in spring. We see the plants becoming richer and richer in color, more luxuriant, and then in autumn fading away again. In a certain sense we see them disappear from the Earth when the Earth is covered with snow.

But that is only one aspect of the unfolding of the plant-world. Physical knowledge tells us that this unfolding of the plant-world in spring and its fading towards autumn is connected with the Sun, also that, for example, the green coloring of the plants can be produced only under the influence of sunlight. Physical knowledge, therefore, shows us what comes about in the realm of physical effects; but it does not show us that while all the budding, the blossoming and withering of the plants is going on, spiritual events are also taking place. In reality, just as in the physical human organism there is for example the circulation of the blood, just as etheric processes express themselves in the physical organism as vascular action and so forth, and just as this physical organism is permeated by the soul and spirit, so also the processes of sprouting, greening, blossoming and fading of the plants which we regard as physical processes, are everywhere permeated by workings of the cosmic world of soul and spirit.

Now when we look into the countenance of a man and his glance falls on us, when we see his expression, maybe the flushing of the face, then indeed the eyes of our soul are looking right through the physical to the soul and spirit. Indeed, it cannot be otherwise in our life among our fellow-men. In like manner we must accustom ourselves also to see spirit-and-soul in the physiognomy—if I may call it so—and changing coloring of the plant-world on our Earth.

If we are only willing to recognize the physical, we say that the Sun's warmth and light work upon the plants, forming in them the saps, the chlorophyll and so forth. But if we contemplate all this with spiritual insight, if we take the same attitude to this plant-physiognomy of the Earth as we are accustomed to take to the human physiognomy, then something unveils itself to us that I should like to express with a particular word, because this word actually conveys the reality.

The Sun, of which we say, outwardly speaking, that it sends its light to the Earth, is not merely a radiant globe of gas but infinitely more than that. It sends its rays down to the Earth but whenever we look at the Sun it is the outer side of the rays that we see. The rays have, however, an inner side. If someone were able to look through the Sun's light, to regard the light only as an outer husk and look through to the soul of it, he would behold the Soul-Power, the Soul-Being of the Sun. With ordinary human consciousness we see the Sun as we should see a man who was made of papier-maché. An effigy in which there is nothing but the form, the lifeless form, is of course something different from the human being we actually see before us. In the case of the living human being, we see through this outer form and perceive soul-and-spirit. For ordinary consciousness the Sun is changed as it were into a papier-maché cast. We do not see through its outer husk that is woven of Light.

But if we were able to see through this, we should see the soul-and-spirit essence of the Sun. We can be conscious of its activity just as we are conscious of the physical papier-maché husk of the Sun. From the standpoint of physical knowledge we say: ‘The Sun shines upon the Earth; it sparkles upon the stones, upon the soil. The light is thrown back and thereby we see everything that is mineral. The rays of the Sun penetrate into the plants, making them green, making them bud.’—All that is external. If we see the soul-and-spirit essence of the Sun, we cannot merely say: ‘The sunlight sparkles on the minerals, is reflected, enabling us to see the minerals,’ or, ‘The light and heat of the Sun penetrate into the plants, making them verdant’—but we shall have to say, meaning now the countless spiritual Beings who people the Sun and who constitute its soul and spirit: ‘The Sun dreams and its dreams envelop the Earth and fashion the plants.’

If you picture the surface of the Earth with the physical plants growing from it, coming to blossom, you have there the working of the physical rays of the Sun. But above it is the weaving life of the dream-world of the Sun—a world of pure Imaginations. And one can say: When the mantle of snow melts in the spring, the Sun regains its power, then the Sun-Imaginations weave anew around the Earth. These Imaginations of the Sun are Imaginative forces, playing in upon the world of plants. Now although it is true that this Imaginative world—this Imaginative atmosphere surrounding the Earth—is very specially active from spring until autumn in any given region of the Earth, nevertheless this dreamlike character of the Sun's activity is also present in a certain way during the time of winter. Only during winter the dreams are, as it were, dull and brooding, whereas in summer they are mobile, creative, formative. Now it is in this element in which the Sun-Imaginations unfold that the Ego and astral body of man live and weave when they are outside the physical and etheric bodies.

You will realize from what I have said that sleep in summer is actually quite a different matter from sleep in winter, although in the present state of evolution, man's life and consciousness are so dull and lacking in vitality that these things go unperceived. In earlier times men distinguished very definitely through their feelings between winter-sleep and summer-sleep, and they knew too what meaning winter-sleep and summer-sleep had for them. In those ancient times men knew that of summer-sleep they could say: During the summer the Earth is enveloped by picture-thoughts. And they expressed this by saying: The Upper Gods come down during the summer and hover around the Earth; during the winter the Lower Gods ascend out of the Earth and hover around it.—This Imaginative world, differently constituted in winter and in summer, was conceived as the weaving of the Upper and the Lower Gods. But in those olden times it was also known that man himself, with his Ego and his astral body, lives in this world of weaving Imaginations.

Now the very truths of which I have here spoken, show us, if we ponder them in the light of Spiritual Science, in what connection man stands, even during his earthly existence, with the extra-earthly Universe. You see, in summer—when it is summer in any region of the Earth—the human being during his sleep is always woven around by a sharply contoured world of Cosmic Imaginations. The result is that during the time of summer he is, so to speak, pressed near to the Earth with his soul and spirit. During the time of winter it is different. During winter the contours, the meshes, of the Cosmic Imaginations widen out, as it were. During the summer we live with our Ego and astral body while we are asleep within very clearly defined Imaginations, within manifold figures and forms. During winter the figures around the Earth are wide-meshed and the consequence of this is that whenever autumn begins, that which lives in our Ego and astral body is borne far out into the Universe by night. During summer and its heat, that which lives in our Ego and astral body remains more, so to speak, in the psycho-spiritual atmosphere of the human world. During winter this same content is borne out into the far distances of the Universe. Indeed without speaking figuratively, since one is saying something that is quite real, one can say: that which man cultivates in himself, in his soul, and which through his Ego and astral body he can draw out from his physical and etheric bodies between the times of going to sleep and waking—that stores itself up during the summer and streams out during winter into the wide expanse of the Cosmos.

Now we cannot conceive that we men shut ourselves away, as it were, in earthly existence and that the wide Universe knows nothing of us. It is far from being so. True, at the time of Midsummer man can conceal himself from the Spirits of the Universe, and he may also succeed in harboring reprehensible feelings of evil. The dense net of Imaginations does not let these feelings through; they still remain. And at Christmastime the Gods look in upon the Earth and everything that lives in man's nature is revealed and goes forth with his Ego and astral being. Using a picture which truly represents the facts, we may say: In winter the windows of the Earth open and the Angels and Archangels behold what men actually are on the Earth.

We on Earth have gradually accustomed ourselves in modern civilization to express all that we allow to pass as knowledge in humdrum, dry, unpoetic phrases. The higher Beings are ever poets, therefore we never give a true impression of their nature if we describe it in barren physical words; we must resort to words such as I have just now used: at Christmastime the Earth's windows open and through these windows the Angels and Archangels behold what men's deeds have been the whole year through. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies are poets and artists even in their thinking. The logic we are generally at pains to apply is only an outcome of the Earth's gravity—by which I do not at all imply that it is not highly useful on Earth.

It is what lives in the minds and hearts of men as I have just pictured it, that is of essential interest to these higher Beings; the Angels who look in through the Christmas windows are not interested in the speculations of professors; they overlook them. Nor, to begin with, are they much concerned with a man's thoughts. It is what goes on in his feelings, in his heart, that in its cosmic aspect is connected with the Sun's yearly course. So it is not so much whether we are foolish or clever on Earth that comes before the gaze of the Divine-Spiritual Beings at the time of Christmas, but simply whether we are good or evil men, whether we feel for others or are egoists. That is what is communicated to the cosmic worlds through the course of the yearly seasons.

You may believe that our thoughts remain near the Earth, because I have said that the Angels and Archangels are not concerned with them when they look in through the Christmas windows. They are not concerned with our thoughts because, if I may use a rather prosaic figure of speech, they receive the richer coinage, the more valuable coinage that is minted by the soul-and-spirit of man. And this more valuable coinage is minted by the heart, the feelings, by what a man is worth because of what his heart and feeling contain. For the Cosmos, our thoughts are only the small change, the lesser coinage, and this lesser coinage is spied out by subordinate spiritual beings every night. Whether we are foolish or clever is spied out for the Cosmos every night—not indeed for the very far regions of the Cosmos but only for the regions around the Earth—spied out by beings who are closest to the Earth in its environment and therefore the most subordinate in rank. The daily revolution of the Sun takes place in order to impart to the Cosmos the worth of our thoughts. Thus far do our thoughts extend; they belong merely to the environment of the Earth. The yearly revolution of the Sun takes place in order to carry our heart-nature, our feeling-nature, farther out into the cosmic worlds.

Our will-nature cannot be carried in this way out into the Cosmos, for the cycle of the day is strictly regulated. It runs its course in twenty-four hours. The yearly course of the Sun is strictly regulated too. We perceive the regularity of the daily cycle in the strictly logical sequences of our thoughts. The regularity of the yearly cycle—we perceive the after-effect of this in our heart and soul, in that there are certain feelings which say to one thing that a man does: it is good, and to another: it is bad.

But there is a third faculty in man, namely, the will. True, the will is bound up with feeling, and feeling cannot but say that certain actions are morally good, and others morally not good. But the will can do what is morally good and also what is morally not good. Here, then, there is no strict regularity. The relation of our will to our nature as human beings is not strictly regulated in the sense that thinking and feeling are regulated. We cannot call a bad action good, or a good action bad, nor can we call a logical thought illogical, an illogical thought logical. This is due to the fact that our thoughts stand under the influence of the daily revolution of the Sun, our feelings under the influence of its yearly revolution. The will, however, is left in the hands of humanity itself on Earth. And now a man might say: ‘The most that happens to me is that if I think illogically, my illogical thoughts are carried out every night into the Cosmos and do mischief there—but what does that matter to me? I am not here to bring order into the Cosmos.’—Here on Earth, where his life is lived in illusion, a man might in certain circumstances speak like this, but between death and a new birth he would never do so. For between death and a new birth he himself is in the worlds in which he may have caused mischief through his foolish thoughts; and he must live through all the harm that he has done. So, too, between death and a new birth, he is in those worlds into which his feelings have flowed. But here again he might say on Earth: ‘What lives in my feelings evaporates into the Cosmos; but I leave it to the Gods to deal with any harm that may have been caused there through me. My will, however, is not bound on Earth by any regulation.’—

The materialist who considers that man's life is limited to the time between birth and death, can never conceive that his will has any cosmic significance; neither can he conceive that human thoughts or feelings have any meaning for the Cosmos. But even one who knows quite well that thoughts have a cosmic significance as the result of the daily revolution of the Sun, and feelings through the yearly revolution—even he, when he sees what is accomplished on the Earth by the good or evil will-impulses of man, must turn away from the Cosmos and to human nature itself in order to see how what works in man's will goes out into the Cosmos. For what works in man's will must be borne out into the Cosmos by man himself, and he bears it out when he passes through the gate of death. Therefore it is not through the daily or the yearly cycles but through the gate of death that man carries forth the good or the evil he has brought about here on Earth through his will.

It is a strange relationship that man has to the Cosmos in his life of soul. We say of our thoughts: ‘We have thoughts but they are not subject to our arbitrary will; we must conform to the laws of the Universe when we think, otherwise we shall come into conflict with everything that goes on in the world.’—If a little child is standing in front of me, and I think: That is an old man—I may flatter myself that I have determined the thought, but I am certainly out of touch with the world. Thus in respect of our thoughts we are by no means independent, so little independent that our thoughts are carried out into the Cosmos by the daily cycle of the Sun. Nor are we independent in our life of feelings, for they are carried out through the yearly cycle of the Sun. Thus even during earthly life, that which lives in our head through our thoughts and, through our feelings in our breast, does not live only within us but also partakes in a cosmic existence. That alone which lives in our will we keep with us until our death. Then, when we have laid aside the body, when we have no longer anything to do with earthly forces, we bear it forth with us through the gate of death.

Man passes through the gate of death laden with what has come out of his acts of will. Just as here on Earth he has around him all that lives in minerals, plants, animals and in physical humanity, all that lives in clouds, streams, mountains, stars, in so far as they are externally visible through the light—just as he has all this around him during his existence between birth and death, so he has a world around him when he has laid aside the physical and etheric bodies and has passed through the gate of death. In truth he has around him the very world into which his thoughts have entered every night, into which his feelings have entered with the fulfilment of every yearly cycle ... “That thou hast thought; that thou hast felt.” ... It now seems to him as though the Beings of the Hierarchies were bearing his thoughts and his feelings towards him. They have perceived it all, as I have indicated. His mental life and his feeling-life now stream towards him.

In earthly existence the Sun gives light from morning to evening; it goes down and night sets in. When we have passed through the gate of death, our wisdom rays out towards us as day; through our accumulated acts of folly, the spiritual lights grow dark and dim around us and it becomes night. Here on Earth we have day and night; when we have passed through the gate of death, we have as day and night the results of our wisdom and our foolishness. And what man experiences here on this Earth as spring, summer, autumn and winter in the yearly cycle, as changing temperatures and other sentient experiences, of all this he becomes aware—when he has passed through the gate of death—also as a kind of cycle, although of much longer duration. He experiences the warmth-giving, life-giving quality (life-giving, that is to say, for his spiritual Self) of his good feelings, of his sympathy with goodness; he experiences as icy cold his sympathy with evil, with the immoral. Just as here on Earth we live through the heat of summer and the cold of winter, so do we live after death warmed by our good feelings, chilled by our evil feelings; and we bear the effects of our will through these spiritual years and days. After death we are the product of our moral nature on Earth. And we have an environment that is permeated by our follies and our wisdom, by our sympathies and antipathies for the good.

So that we can say: Just as here on Earth we have the summer air around us giving warmth and life, and as we have the cold and frosty winter air around us, so, after death, we are surrounded by an atmosphere of soul-and-spirit that is warm and life-giving in so far as it is produced through our good feelings, and chilling in so far as it is produced through our evil feelings. Here on Earth, in certain regions at least, the summer and winter temperatures are the same for all of us. In the time after death, each human being has his own atmosphere, engendered by himself. And the most moving experiences after death are connected with the fact that one man lives in icy cold and the other, close beside him, in life-giving warmth.

Such are the experiences that may be undergone after death. And as I described in my book Theosophy, one of the main experiences passed through in the soul-world, is that those human beings who have harbored evil feelings here on Earth, must undergo their hard experiences in the sight of those who developed and harbored good feelings.

It can indeed be said: All that remains concealed to begin with in the inner being of man, discloses itself when he has passed through the gate of death. Sleep too acquires a cosmic significance, likewise our life during wintertime. We sleep every night in order that we may prepare for ourselves the light in which we must live after death. We go through our winter experiences in order to prepare the soul-spiritual warmth into which we enter after death. And into this atmosphere of the spiritual world which we have ourselves prepared we bear the effects of our deeds.

Here on Earth we live, through our physical body, as beings subject to earthly gravity. Through our breathing we live in the surrounding air, and far away we see the stars. When we have passed through the gate of death we are in the world of spirit-and-soul, far removed from the Earth; we are beyond the stars, we see the stars from the other side, look back to the world of stars. Our very being lives in the cosmic thoughts and cosmic forces. We look back upon the stars, no longer seeing them shine, but seeing instead the Hierarchies, the Spiritual Beings who have merely their reflection in the stars.

Thus man on Earth can gain more and more knowledge of what the nature of his life will be when he passes through the gate of death. There are people who say: ‘Why do I need to know all this? I shall surely see it all after death!’—That attitude is just as if a man were to doubt the value of eyesight. For as the Earth's evolution takes its course, man enters more and more into a life in which he must acquire the power to partake in these after-death experiences by grasping them, to begin with in thought, here on the Earth. To shut out knowledge of the spiritual worlds while we are on the Earth is to blind ourselves in soul and spirit after death. A man will enter the spiritual world as a cripple when he passes through the gate of death, if here, in this world, he disdains to learn about the world of spirit, for humanity is evolving towards freedom—towards free spiritual activity. This fact should become clearer and clearer to mankind and should make men realize the urgent necessity of gaining knowledge about the spiritual world.

The previous lecture, which is followed by today's lecture, was about the hidden depths of the soul's life and explained that the soul's life is not absolutely bound to matter, that it is not only separable from the physical, but also from the ideas that are gained from it through the senses and the mind. The possibility of the separation of soul experiences from physical ideas was demonstrated by the difference between memories and dreams. Those [memories] arise without the original power of the soul's compassion, these [dreams] with the original accompanying phenomena of the emotional life of joy, suffering and the like. There - in memory - the soul life detaches itself from the life of imagination, which is gained in the outside world, and withdraws into the hidden depths of the soul, where it works and works, where it exercises its power by working on the entire human organism.

While the life of imagination often proves powerless – for we know not what goes on in the depths of the sea when the surface ripples – the hidden life of the soul proves itself to be a power. We see this in dreams, in the trance of mediums, in the work of art and in the knowledge of the spiritual researcher. For man can penetrate into it by training his mind, so that he learns to consciously draw from the sources of truly real life, into which he not only gazes without control like the dreamer and fantasist and thereby becomes a dreamer, hallucinist or even a liar, not like the one with atavistic gifted with atavistic clairvoyance, becomes the plaything of the spirits of such a soul or astral world in his dreams, nor alone, as the true artist draws from the spirit and shapes it in beauty, but as a knower, consciously seeing, can distinguish what is vision from what is true and self-willed. [...]

This knowledge of the hidden can only lead to the right spiritual research if it is gained, firstly, through self-knowledge, through descending into one's own inner being. With this self-knowledge, secondly, knowledge of the spiritual environment arises and grows. The greater the self-knowledge, the broader the spiritual horizon, the power to penetrate into the realities of the environment, into the hidden world spirit. l..]

Dear attendees! When approaching the subject of today's consideration, then one comes, starting from the points of view that are represented here, in a basically quite strange situation compared to everything that has been thought and researched in our age for decades about the important question of the origin of man. The reason why one finds oneself in a strange position is that, over the past few decades, the origin of man has been presented primarily in the form in which one believes one should think about the origin of man in the present day: in terms of the results of modern science. And who could deny that the great and tremendous advances in natural science in recent times have every right to have a say at the moment when this important question is put to man.

Most of the people present who are dealing with the question from the point of view of natural science must understandably have the impression that anything that can be said here from the point of view of spiritual science about this question is basically directly opposed to what natural science has to say about the point – understandably, dear attendees, and I ask you to bear in mind that this is being said. For it is precisely with such questions that what should emerge on the occasion of the two lectures of my last visit, which dealt with how to refute theosophy on the one hand and how to defend it on the other, always hovers in the background. Especially with questions like today's, the spiritual scientist must be completely clear that much, much can be brought forward from the ideas of the present, seemingly with good reason, against his assertions. Therefore, it must be understood that a lecture such as this evening's can provide some suggestions, but is far from quickly convincing someone who is still unfamiliar with the theosophical views. This is said as an introduction to characterize the attitude from which such a lecture is given. What have we experienced in recent decades [in relation to our topic today]? More and more, those [scientists] who believe they have a judgment in this area have come to the conclusion that man in the totality of his being has its origin from creatures that, in the sense of a systematic arrangement of living beings, actually belong to the sphere of what today's man calls his education, his culture, in fact, the sphere of his human activities. The extraordinarily fruitful principle of development has led to the belief that in the past, development would have progressed in such a way that from simple, primitive life forms, to which today's primitive life forms still resemble, through slow development - as a result of the “struggle for existence,” through adaptation - gradually more and more complicated forms of life have formed, up to the higher animals, and that in such a progressive development, man has risen, as it were, from the lower realms. So man's ancestors are sought in animal life, and there is such a conviction in [wide] circles on this point that anyone who wants to put forward something that does not agree with it is actually thought of as a retarded mind. Now, first of all, the natural scientists – not so much the natural scientists who remain in the realm of facts, but rather the natural scientists who have felt called upon to link worldviews, world mysteries to their research – they have felt compelled to present, so to speak, the outer form and the outer physical conditions of human life as a first as complications that arose from the forces that come from the realms that stand below the human, so that one would only have more complicated living conditions than in the case of animals, especially those that stand one step lower than humans, but that one must still derive the forces from what is already found in the lower living beings.

Those natural scientists who wanted to tie an outlook on life to the facts of natural science have strengthened this belief. But not only has this belief become established, but it has also become established that the higher intellectual powers, what we call man's aesthetic perception, his moral impulses, are also only higher forms of the spiritual, of the soul, that one finds in the animal kingdom, that one can also look for the more primitive forms more primitive forms of moral behavior in animals that can be grasped in terms of moral concepts in relation to humans, so that one is often convinced that man has emerged as an intellectual, moral, and aesthetic being only through complication from the living beings below him.

It must be conceded that in the face of the magnificent results of modern natural science, it is extremely difficult to come up with any other attitude, any other view. And it must be readily admitted that as a spiritual scientist one often finds oneself in a strange position when, on the one hand, one allows the achievements of natural science to take effect and, on the other hand, one has to deal with what certain more or less amateurish spiritual scientists believe they have to extract from the scientific results. When one compares the conscientiousness of the two presentations, it is the case that, in terms of conscientiousness, one would actually prefer to side with the natural scientist than with some amateur spiritual researchers.

Now the point is that spiritual research in this field is also in a very special position because, basically, it only comes into disharmony with the thoughts, ideas and hypotheses that have emerged from the results of natural science , while it becomes ever clearer to the spiritual researcher that the actual results of natural science virtually force human thinking to gradually take a perspective as it is given by spiritual science. Actually, the dichotomy between spiritual science and natural science is not that great, because the facts of natural science correspond more to spiritual science than to the monistic and materialistic [interpretations]. So, as a spiritual researcher, one feels in harmony with the facts as one progresses, and only comes into conflict with the hypotheses that are drawn from the facts from some quarters.

If one observes man in his development and wants to trace him back to his origin, it seems only natural that the views about him must be in line with the views one has about the course of the earth's development, [this going back] was indeed [previously] held entirely in the materialistic sense in which the biological theory of evolution, the theory of the development of living beings, is [carried out]. When one reflects on the course of the Earth's development, then as a rule one only considers what the external, inanimate forces, the forces of physics, chemistry, geology, can achieve, and one follows the Earth in a state in which it looked different from what it looks like today, in which it was perhaps in a state that, compared to our present-day Earth formation, resembles a gaseous ball. We know that this is a widespread hypothesis, that it is assumed that the Earth condensed from a gaseous state. It is known that if you trace this back even further into the distant past, you come to see the whole solar system in a gaseous state. The spiritual researcher recognizes that objections have recently been raised against this so-called Kant-Laplace theory, but in the broadest circles it still prevails. It is believed that the whole solar system itself emanated from a kind of primeval nebula that was in rotation, and it is also imagined that the planets, including our Earth, were separated by the forces that were at work in this rotation.

I have often pointed out how the so-called [Plateau's] experiment is carried out in schools to illustrate this Kant-Laplacean theory. You take a large drop of a substance that can float on water, let a sheet of card penetrate at the point of the equator, pierce it at the point of the axis with a needle and make the drop rotate, thus showing that small drops do indeed come off and move around the center. What could be simpler than to prove in this way how a planetary system could have formed in such a way? But in an experiment, it is important to take into account everything that needs to be logically included, and it turns out that something is forgotten in this experiment: one forgets oneself, forgets that one is standing there and turning, and that you only have the logical right to put forward the hypothesis [and to transfer the experiment to the solar system] if you assume that there is a giant teacher out there in the universe who has caused all this movement with a giant needle. If you do not make this addition in this experiment, then you are on completely unjustified ground.

Of course, spiritual science does not place a professor out in space, but it does say that nowhere is there a formless matter like this cosmic fog; that matter is permeated or at least directed by spiritual powers and forces everywhere, [without us falling into anthropomorphism in the process]. Therefore, for spiritual science it is clear: Even if it is justified in terms of material formation that such a primeval nebula is there, then a spiritual event underlies this outer event, just as the activity of the spiritual soul underlies the events in the human body. Spiritual science does not start from an analogy, but from spiritual research. In the specifically concrete, spiritual science seeks the spiritual events, the spiritual forces and the spiritual entities that underlie them, so that instead of external, materialistic hypotheses, it sees the spirit in them.

Now, if one were to undertake the usual presentations of the Kant-Laplacean theory and the associated operations, one could say that it is possible to derive what our body is and the shaping of physical and mental structures from the rotation in the primeval nebula. If we want to make the assumption that some kind of giant teacher is out there and sets the whole thing in motion, then we can speak, if need be, of the formation of the earth having emerged from the Kant-Laplacean primeval nebula. But then we come to a critical point again, and this has been seen not only by spiritual researchers, but also by thoughtful natural scientists. This point concerns the origin of life in general on our earth body. One can, of course, if one does not take certain conditions into account, perhaps indulge in the belief that living things could once have come into being through the spontaneous generation of certain substances. It would be a very long way indeed if one wanted to explain all the philosophical and other reasons that demonstrate the impossibility of deriving life from conditions that are purely physical. It is much more important that this impossibility has become clear to deep-thinking natures such as Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Preyer, the brilliant biographer of Darwin, that they found no way to come to terms with it in their thoughts, to see life emerging from a spiritless, [inanimate] earth. So these researchers have resorted to the assumption that our Earth, at the beginning of its formation, was by no means just any physical or physical-chemical body, but they assumed that, even if it is true for the present that the Earth body that we have under our feet, presents itself as a lifeless one to mineralogists, and that the living beings on it reproduce in their own realms through inheritance, this does not apply to ancient times, but Preyer and Fechner were forced to think of the earth in the distant past as a living being, as a large organism, so that in the sense of these naturalists the earth was originally a large living organism in the universe. Then the time would have come when certain substances and components of this earth crystallized out of this so-called living substance, and what crystallized out is our present body, containing chemical and physical forces. While originally the earth had a life of its own, it now gives its life, in its own way, to individual earth creatures, so that the origin of living beings could be thought of as the emergence of a living being from a living earth body.

It makes a strange impression when Darwin's biographer directs his thoughts to this primeval form of the earth and creates an image out of his thinking. When we read in Preyer that the earth organism was originally to be imagined as being alive, that its bloodstreams were glowing iron vapors, that the breath of this earth body was incoming world vapors from the environment and the nutrition of the earth body was matter that flowed to it from the universe - a strange mixture of natural physical ideas [with life processes]! He cannot completely free himself from his physical conceptions, but he must admit that something like nutrition, breathing and blood circulation can be assumed in the incoming vapors. We do not think of glowing iron as performing these functions when it comes to nutrition. But Preyer shows us one thing: that even natural scientists can feel compelled to recognize the earth as an organism. They meet spiritual science halfway; they admit that if you go backwards, you come to a starting point where the earth [was a large living organism], that the earth, as something dead, in the further course [of development], has set the living [...] aside, [specialized] into [the most diverse] beings, into [plants], animals, humans. They think of remote pasts imbued with full life. But there is still something missing, which spiritual science must ascribe from these prerequisites to this earth body: [The thought is missing] that the earthly body must in truth not only have a living starting point, but that it must be thought of as having a soul and a spirit, so that when we look at the origin of the earth, we are not only dealing with a living organism, but we have to imagine the earth as a soul-inspired, spirit-inspired organism.

Yes, now one could say: What is being done here, other than what is to be explained first, is being placed into what was originally assumed? Instead of developing the spirit, one assumes the spirit as originally existing. But that is what one must do, ladies and gentlemen, according to all the possible prerequisites of a science of knowledge, because it is nowhere possible, even conceivable, that the higher natural kingdoms develop from subordinate natural kingdoms; nowhere in the course of experience are we given a stepping out of the spiritual-soul from a merely physical, of a living being from a merely [physical-] chemical. What we encounter, especially in ourselves, is that we see the spiritual-soul working on the material; and anyone who has followed the lectures given here and has heard what has been said about this spiritual-soul will know how right it is to say that, especially in the case of human beings, the spiritual-soul works on the external physical-material.

We follow the person in us, let us say, in the time from that moment until we remember back in normal [human life], and see our experiences emerging from the depths of our consciousness in our memory. We see at the center of these events of consciousness becoming more and more alive that to which we apply the word “I”. It would be absurd to assume that this 'I' only began at the moment up to which we can remember. It must also have been there in the dream-like, dusky consciousness, when the child does not yet say 'I' to itself. The 'I' must have been there. How was it present in connection with the other soul forces? If we consider the ordinary life of the human soul, we can say that what emerges as consciousness in this stage is something special, something personal. We see how we work the special life energies, which are individual to us, into it. Therefore, we are compelled to think of what we see working within our consciousness later in life as the actual agent of our whole organism. We have to think that we inherit the general structure of this organism from our ancestors, but that the energies that make up our organism have to be worked into it, [right down to the finest plastic formations of the brain].

When we recognize this, then we are no longer far from being able to trace this individuality back to a previous life on earth. There we see the spiritual and soul forces at work on our inner physical and material being, and we can then say to ourselves that, as today, as in our earthly present, our ego with its soul forces is still working on our body in early childhood. This work is not inherited from our ancestors; rather, there is still a certain scope left in what we have become through the forces of heredity, in which we can work our spiritual and soul nature. We see this, for example, in the fact that we develop from a crawling creature into a walking one. We see how the spiritual-soul element lifts us up, we see the spiritual-soul element working on the physical.

Only when we progress to what was mentioned in the last lecture - about the hidden depths of the soul life - to the spiritual training through which one gains insight into the spiritual world behind the physical, then we can consider what has already been described here. If you apply the methods that you will find in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds” to yourself, you will gradually come to a point where you, as a human being, are no longer dependent on living in the soul in such a way that you have to use physical tools. Spiritual science shows that man can apply methods of meditation and concentration to himself, through which he can acquire a spiritual essence, independent of the physical, so that he has experiences and knows that he did not have them with the help of the senses; but knows: Now you are experiencing something in your original spiritual-soul nature, you become aware of what you are beyond this physical being.

And it is particularly interesting that when you ascend to such a training, you have the feeling from the very beginning: Yes, you are now experiencing something supernatural. But at the same time, at the beginning you are not able to express what you experience in the same way in concepts and ideas and words. Why not? Because when you express ideas and concepts in words, you need the instrument of the brain. The ideas and concepts that people form are taken from the world, so that a gap opens up between what one experiences and what one can express. Only when one practices patience and perseverance and continues the exercises does the time come when one is able to truly express the experiences one brings down from the spiritual world in terms of concepts and ideas taken from the outer life. Before this possibility arises, one knows that one feels the brain as something that offers a great deal of resistance. One feels that in the further course of training, one must do the work of shaping the brain plastically, in a way similar to the way the child must shape the still clumsy brain plastically for life. The aim is to work such fine shapes into the brain that they cannot be recognized by natural scientists with external instruments. The work of the soul-spiritual being on the material substance of the body can, however, only be followed inwardly. Thus, we see again in the spiritual-soul realm the actual origin of what is becoming.

It is no longer an unjustified claim to say that, as things currently stand on our earth, the spiritual and soul life of man, as it was before the first material atom of our body came into being, is only able to use the scope that is limited in the general structure of our physical body. While this scope, over which the conditions of heredity have no power, shapes the soul and spirit, we see that the physical, the general human form, can only be preserved by human beings of a similar nature. Thus, under today's living conditions, the soul and spirit are only able to shape certain things within a body received through heredity.

If this is the case today – and if we assume that the earth has undergone an evolution, which even natural science admits – it is not to be said that in the distant past the spiritual-mental was only able to work within a certain scope. Take it for the moment as a hypothesis; it need not be dismissed out of hand as absurd, when spiritual science says: The further we go back into primeval conditions, the more powerfully the spiritual-soul [of man] is effective. In the remote past, this spiritual-soul was so significant, so powerful that it could also shape that which today can only be shaped within heredity. Just as we see today that the spiritual soul forms only a small part of the material human being, so we see that in ancient times it formed the entire organism, so that the human soul was present in the ensouled earth organism, and the earthly body was once able to yield such a substance that could be formed directly from the soul into a full human being by the spiritual-soul worlds.

Thus we look back into the ancient past, where conditions were not yet as they are today, where within the total soul of the earth organism the human souls were contained, that is, the earth organism also had organic substance that was different from the present one, which can only be classified according to the forces of inheritance in the human body. So we come back to an earth configuration - in contrast to the earth formation in which we stand - in which there was no such reproduction as in our time; we do not find such a connection between generations, between male and female. In the place of the interaction between male and female, we find the interaction between the spiritual soul and the living substance of the earth body. The spiritual-soul aspect had a fertilizing effect on the earthly substance and allowed that to emerge which the human being was at the origin of his earthly existence: a creature formed and developed purely out of the spiritual-soul core of his being.

If we look at present-day conditions with an open mind, this may seem like a daring hypothesis, but it is certainly not something absurd.

So we see that our earthly body is formed, as it were, out of living substance.

Something else must be said, which is also true. When the spiritual researcher refers back to epochs of the earth when it made no sense to speak of male and female, but when the heavenly and earthly fertilized each other, the views of the natural scientists get in the way, but not the facts of natural science that have emerged in recent decades. These facts have led natural scientists to particular assumptions. We see how, in recent times, which began with Ernst Haeckel's belief that he had to give a materialistic interpretation of human origin in his conception of the Darwinian theory at the [Stettin] Natural History Society [in 1863]; we see how the naturalists who hold this older point of view felt compelled to draw a straight line of development [from the monera] to man, and how they are always obliged to say that, before man came upon the earth, there lived a creature similar to the present-day ape. [But more recent research has] corrected this view. Everywhere we see that attempts have been made to bring man's ancestor closer to a physical, animal-like being, which, through the perfection of its physical organization, also produced the height of the spiritual organization.

We can no longer accept such things, that man had an ancestor who was somehow similar to a present-day animal form. We see the necessity for this. Naturalists say that there were once human ancestors that resembled today's apes. That which now lives as the animal world has arisen from decadence, so that what we have as apes is a being that has arisen from a declining formation of a higher form on the one hand, and on the other hand we have man. We see monkeys and humans as two branches leading back to a being that no longer exists, that was only in very distant geological times. This common ancestor of animal-kind and humanity, to which the facts lead the natural science worldview people, is [hypothetical], a being that is purely imagined.

Now, certain naturalists have been forced by careful results to move this being further and further up, so that many are already forced to say that even higher mammals do not resemble this hypothetical being, we would have to go back even further to a being from which the very first mammalian forms descended, and this being would have developed a branch at the same time that was always superior to animality and that finally developed into man. When one sees a monkey, one must always trace it back to an earlier stage of animal existence and then assume a purely hypothetical, purely imagined entity that developed a branch that became reptiles, while another branch was formed that became human. So we see the naturalist going to something that formed humans and animals from the same being.

How far removed are such scholars from what we have expounded from spiritual science? No further than that their habits of thought compel them to shape the conditions of the earth's development in such a way that they can only conceive of the origin of present-day life forms in a physical way, whereas the spiritual researchers put something in this place that emerged under completely different earthly conditions and from completely different conditions: the fertilization of the earthly substance by the spiritual soul.

We also find the possibility of thinking of the further progress of development up to the human being as an entity worked out of the spiritual-soul. Just as today's human being is the product of a father and a mother, so too was such a primeval human being, as I have now described him in the sense of spiritual science, joined together from two sides, from the substance of the earth and the spiritual-soul of the earth's surroundings. Thus we can say that the human being belonged to the spiritual environment. Through this primal element, the human being has lived more in the whole of the heavenly environment and felt his connection with cosmic conditions.

But we could only receive our spiritual and soul germ at a certain point on the earth. Through this, the human being is individualized, through the fact that he came [to a certain place], through this he has become a special being, a being that has become native, that has become firmly bound to the locality of the earth.

Thus in this primeval man we have at the same time: a general human and an individual, an earth-bound and a more heavenly, macrocosmic element. Strangely, we see the after-effects of what we have just characterized in today's man.

If we carefully examine everything that comes to man through heredity, it shows that, despite all the other circumstances that have been specialized through heredity, we find a general human element at the basis of man, and that every human nature is individualized into a second. We still find both today: something universally human and something specialized. If we examine present-day humanity, we find that the universal human element is inherited from the female side, while the specific, individual character is essentially inherited from the male ancestors, regardless of whether the individual as an individuality is male or female. This means that we can still see the after-effects of what manifested itself in primeval man as a general heavenly element – if the expression is not taken pedantically – and what came from the general life substance of the earth. Therefore, we need only assume that in the primeval men, who were formed out of the spirit, in the one case the macrocosmic element predominated, which had a fertilizing effect from the surrounding area, while the element that came from the earth itself receded more. As a result, some of the primeval men specialized. Where the heavenly element was more active, specialization led to the female principle, while where the earthly element predominated, where the specific earthly destiny gained the upper hand, the more individual was formed, the tendency towards the male. Thus we see how, out of these general conditions, the tendencies were formed in the original human being, consisting of soul and spirit, and how these tendencies became more and more concentrated and took shape as man and woman.

And this whole process, my esteemed audience, must be imagined in such a way that the conditions were always changing, that is to say, nothing else but that the conditions that had made it possible for the cosmic elements to fertilize from the spiritual environment were disappearing. The living earth substance released the purely mineral and chemical from itself and was therefore no longer able to release living substance. What had been brought into being through spiritual fertilization by the lower and the higher, and which could no longer shape the human being in this way, was replaced by something that emerged in a different way and became formative by being incorporated into the human being itself, so that reproduction occurred from generation to generation. We see that the forces that shape the human being lead back to each other in such a way that the female contribution leads back to a cosmic, heavenly element, and that which is given in reproduction by the male leads back to the original, organically living earth substance. We still see the general in the female and the individual in the male. No one will be able to shed light on the relationship of heredity and the contribution of male and female who does not take these things into account, even if only hypothetically. The forces that worked between the earth's environment and the earth itself had to be passed on to heredity.

We must now consider how the development of animals relates to this development of man, to this view of the origin of man. For in a certain way, the origin of man is not properly understood without considering the development of animals. It shows that man, as he stands before us today in his duality - so that on the one hand there is still a certain scope for the spiritual and soul to work, and on the other hand he receives what he has inherited - could only develop as he is today , if he retained this spiritual-soul education until a certain point in time, until the conditions on earth were such that they could no longer provide the possibility for the human being to arise from the spiritual-soul. Only then did today's form of reproduction develop. As a being formed from the spiritual-soul, the human being had to wait.

What would have happened if he had abandoned the origin of the spiritual and soul earlier and merely submitted to earthly conditions? Simple considerations can show us this. If the spiritual and soul had not remained in its original nature until the extreme moment of time, but had allowed earthly conditions to prevail, then the spiritual and soul would have become weak in the face of earthly conditions. If man had earlier adopted the mode of reproduction that is now his, his spiritual and soul forces would be weaker and that which comes from the earth would have gained the upper hand – because it was even more powerful when the earth still had organizing forces within it – and he would have descended to a lower level under the influence of the organizing forces of the earth.

This is the case with animality. The spiritual soul of the animals united with the earth at different times, descending into the spheres of the earth before man. The animal preceded man. But man does not descend from the animal, but from its spiritual archetype. Those spiritual archetypes that have become animals descended earlier than man, who remained longest at the top in the spiritual regions. Thus the lines of development do not lead to the archetype of the animal kingdom and of man. We must think of the archetype of the animal kingdom as separate from the soul-spiritual of man.

Thus we see how, in the sense of a logically developed theory of evolution, spiritual science places the human being in the context of the earth's overall development, and how this coincides with a properly considered scientific view. Spiritual science places man in such a line of development, in which the metamorphoses of the earth itself are taken into account, how then the animal forms arise and finally man arises, having waited so long in the spiritual surroundings of the earth, so that he could adapt to the conditions of the earth in such a way that the greatest scope was given for the spiritual and soul life.

Dear attendees, I have already indicated that what has been said today, especially by people who have equipped themselves with all the knowledge of today, must often be regarded as unthinkable, as absurd. And if only a few people have the inclination and the will to recognize that these things [of spiritual science] that play into cultural life should be pursued with the same seriousness as [those of] natural science, then that will be enough to show how this influence on cultural life occurs. Spiritual science starts from a different point of view, and admittedly arrives at something to which the natural scientist must still relate negatively, but those who want to can see that true natural science, based on facts, comes straight to meet what spiritual science has to give. Spiritual science starts from a different point of view from natural science, but it does arrive at something to which the natural scientist must still be hostile. If we disregard the fantasies of natural science and consider only the facts, we shall see that these everywhere substantiate and prove what has been characterized today.

But for man it is important to be aware that there is an independent spiritual element within him that is not the result of a material body, but that the physical is the result of a spiritual element that has its origin in the spiritual environment and has sunk its seeds into the now inanimate substance of the earth.

The study of the external facts in the development of the earth [does not contradict the independent significance of the spiritual and soul in human nature, but rather, through every deeper reflection, every living in its essence – like a soliloquy, like a conversation that the soul has with itself, must form itself, which, from the depths of human nature, must repeatedly shape itself in such a way that we can summarize the relationship of the human being to himself and to life in the words:

From the spirit man has sprung,

In the spirit man's whole life works and moves,

To the spirit man's whole being strives.

The lectures thus far given in this cycle should have made it abundantly clear that spiritual-scientific research reveals the Christ event as the most supremely vital one in the entire evolution of mankind, that we must recognize it as having introduced a wholly new strain into the totality of Earth evolution. We learned that something completely new entered this evolution of mankind through the Mystery of Golgotha, through the event of Palestine and everything connected with it before and after, and that human evolution must needs have taken a totally different course had the Christ event not intervened.—If we are to understand the Mystery of Golgotha we must further examine some of the intimate details of the gradual approach of the Christ Being itself; but naturally, even fourteen lectures do not suffice to tell all there is to be told about a subject embracing the whole world. The author of the John Gospel pointed this out when he said that there was much more to be told, but that the world could not produce enough books to tell it. So you will not expect fourteen lectures to mention everything connected with the Christ event and with its narration in the Gospel of St. John and in the other, related ones.

Yesterday and the day before we learned how the dwelling of the Christ Spirit, the Christ Individuality, in the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth gradually made possible all that is described in the John Gospel up to and including the chapter on the Raising of Lazarus. Thus we saw that Christ's task was the gradual development of the threefold corporeality—the physical, the etheric, and the astral body—that had been offered up to Him by the lofty initiate Jesus of Nazareth. But in order to understand exactly what Christ wrought in this threefold sheath we must first get a clear picture of the interrelationship, in man, of the three principles of his being. Hitherto we have only indicated in rough outline that in the waking state the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body, and the ego are seen by clairvoyant conciousness as interpenetrating each other, forming an interpermeating whole, and that at night the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and the ego are withdrawn. Today, in order to describe the Mystery of Golgotha more closely, we must enquire more fully into the exact nature of this inter-permeation of the four principles of the human being during day consciousness; that is, in just what manner the ego and astral body enter the etheric and physical bodies upon awakening in the morning. I can best make this clear by means of a diagram.

Suppose that in this drawing we had, down here, the physical body, and above it, the etheric body. In the morning, when the astral body and the ego re-enter the physical bodies from the spiritual world, this comes about in such a way that in the main (I beg you to take this qualification seriously) the astral body enters the etheric body, and the ego the physical body. In this drawing, then, the horizontal lines stand for the astral and etheric bodies, the vertical lines for the ego and the physical body.

I said “in the main” because naturally everything in the human being is interpenetrative: the ego, for example, is in the etheric body as well as elsewhere, and so on; but what is referred to here is the principal, the essential interpenetration, and the manner in which the latter prevails most completely can be represented by the diagram.

Next we must enquire, What, exactly, occurred at the Baptism? We have said that the ego of Jesus of Nazareth abandoned His physical, etheric, and astral bodies, leaving this threefold sheath for the Christ Being; so what remained of Jesus of Nazareth we can show in diagram as His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. The ego abandoned the physical body, and in place of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth there entered into this threefold sheath—occupying principally the physical body, though again not exclusively—the Christ Being.

Here we indeed touch the fringe of a deep mystery; for if we consider what really took place at this point we realize that it bears on all the immense complexities of mankind which we have indicated in the last lectures. I told you that everything people have in common, the generic factor, so to speak, in man within a certain group, is to be found in the female element of heredity. I said that the outer facial resemblance among members of the same people is carried down through the generations by woman. The male element, on the other hand, passes on the distinguishing features in man: it is the factor that makes him an individual entity here on earth, that places his ego upon a footing of its own. Great minds who are in touch with the spiritual world have always felt this in the right way, and we can really learn to know and appreciate the utterances of great men who were close to the spiritual world only by penetrating to these depths of cosmic truths.

Look once more at our first diagram and reflect as follows: We have an etheric body, and in it lives the astral body. The astral body is the vehicle of our conceptions, ideas, thoughts, sensations, feelings, and it dwells in the etheric body. But we have learned that it is specifically the task of the etheric body to work upon the physical body effectively, so to say, containing as it does the forces that form it. We must therefore conclude that this etheric body, permeated as it is by the astral body, contains all that makes man a man, all that imprints in him a definite form from within, as it were, proceeding from the spiritual elements. So that whatever produces resemblance among men derives from what works within, and is not merely external; in other words, not from anything bound to his physical body, but from elements associated with his etheric and astral bodies, for these are the inner principles.

For this reason, anyone who can see into such matters will sense that what permeates his etheric and astral bodies comes from the maternal element, whereas all that gives his physical body its peculiar form, imprinted by his ego—the ego dwelling in the physical body—is a paternal heritage.

“My father gave my build to me,
Toward life my sober bearing;
From mother comes my cheerful heart,
My joy in storytelling.”¹

These words spoken by Goethe are an interpretation of what I showed you in diagram. “From my father I have my stature” refers to what develops from the ego; and the imagination, the gift of storytelling, inherited from the mother, has its being in the etheric and astral bodies. The utterances of great minds are by no means grasped by those who believe to have understood them by means of trivial human concepts.

But now we must apply all this to the Christ event; and from this point of view we must ask, What would have happened to mankind if it had not taken place? If the Christ event had not occurred, the course of human development would have continued as we saw it commence with the post-Atlantean time. We learned that in very old times civilization rested upon a form of love closely linked with tribal relationship, with consanguinity. Those whom people loved were their blood relatives. And we saw how this blood bond kept fraying as humanity progressed.

Now let us pass from the earliest days of human evolution to the time of Christ Jesus' appearance. While in most ancient epochs marriage was always consummated within one and the same tribe, you will find that during the Roman dominion—and that is the time of the Christ event—the custom of endogamy was increasingly ignored, that a great variety of peoples were thrown together as a result of the Roman expeditions, and that the “close marriage” had very largely to give way to exogamy, the “distant marriage.” It was necessary for blood ties to lose their strength in the evolution of mankind because men were destined to take their stand upon their own ego.

Assuming, now, that Christ had not come to provide new forces, to replace the old love engendered by blood ties with a new spiritual love, we ask again, what would have happened? In that case love, the factor that unites men, would gradually have vanished from the face of the earth: that which brings men together in love would have perished in man's nature. Without the Christ the human race would have lived to see the dying out of love for each other: men would have been driven back into their own segregated individualities. Looked at only from the point of view of external science, these things do not disclose the profound truths underlying them. If you were to examine—not chemically, but by the means at the disposal of spiritual research—the blood of present-day man and compare it with that of people who lived several thousand years before the appearance of Christ, you would find that it had changed, had taken on a character tending to make it less and less a vehicle capable of bearing love. Imagine, in ancient times, a man of insight who could see deep into the course of human development, who could foretell what would needs come to pass should only the one antiquated tendency persist without the intervention of the Christ event: how would the course of future evolution present itself to an initiate of that sort? What images would he have to evoke in the human soul to indicate what would happen in the future if love in the soul, the Christ love, failed to replace the love arising from blood ties in the same measure as the latter disappeared? He had to say: If men become ever more isolated, more hardened in their own ego; if the lines separating souls become ever more marked so that souls understand each other less and less, then men of the outer world will fall increasingly into discord and contention, and the war of all against all will usurp the place of love on earth.

And this is indeed what would have ensued if evolution had proceeded on the basis of blood relationship without the intervention of Christ. All men would inevitably have been involved in the war of all against all. This war will come to pass in any case, but only for those who have not become imbued in the right way with the Christ principle. That is what a prophetic seer beheld as the end of the Earth evolution, and well could it fill his soul with terror: souls no longer understand each other, hence they must rage, soul against soul.

I have explained that only gradually can men become united through the Christ principle. In Tolstoi and Solovyev I gave you an example showing how two noble spirits, each thinking to proclaim the real Christ, can hold such contradictory views that one of them considers the other the Antichrist—for that is what Solovyev believed Tolstoi to be. The conflict of beliefs at first present in the souls of men would gradually come to expression in the outer world, that is, men would rage against each other. That would be the inevitable consequence of the development of the blood principle.—It would be pointless to object here that in spite of the Christ event we still see discord and contention on all sides, that we are still far from any realization of Christian love: I have told you that we are only at the beginning of Christian evolution. The great impulse has been given which enabled the Christ to imbue ever more the souls of men in the further course of earth development, and to unite them in a spiritual way. What still exists today in the way of discord and contention—and this will lead to even greater excesses—is a result of the fact that hitherto mankind has become permeated with the real Christ principle only to the most negligible extent: conditions that have existed among men from time immemorial still hold sway and can be overcome only by degrees, inasmuch as the Christ impulse will flow into mankind but slowly and gradually.

That, then, is a picture of what would have been foreseen in pre-Christian times by one who had clairvoyantly penetrated the future course of human evolution. He could have put it this way: I have been vouchsafed a remnant of the old power of clairvoyance. In primeval times all men were able to see into the spiritual world by means of a dim, dull clairvoyance, which has gradually vanished. But the possibility still exists, like a heritage from those ancient times, to penetrate the spiritual world in an abnormal, dreamlike state. In this way there can be seen something of what lies beneath the outer surface of things.

All the old legends, fairy stories, and myths, which truly are fraught with a wisdom deeper than is to be found in modern science, tell us that in the olden times the capacity for entering exceptional states was very wide-spread. Call such states dreams, if you like: they nevertheless heralded events; but they did not provide sufficient wisdom to protect men from the conflict of all against all. The sage of old emphasized this in the strongest possible terms, saying, We are heir to a primeval wisdom which people of the Atlantean era were able to perceive in abnormal states, and even now there are isolated men who can discern it under the same conditions; and what is heralded there is the course the near future will take. But the revelations of those dreams inspired no confidence: they were deceptive and destined to become ever more so. That was the wisdom taught in pre-Christian times, and in that form did the teacher proclaim it to the people.

That is why it is significant that an appreciation of the whole intensity and power of the Christ impulse leads us to the comprehension of a certain great truth: In a world lacking the Christ impulse the isolation and segregation of men, their mutual antagonism, something like a struggle for existence, would be brought about—similar to the materialistic-Darwinistic theory foisted upon us today—a struggle for existence such as reigns in the animal kingdom, but which should have no place in the world of men. Somewhat grotesquely we might say, when the earth has run its course it will present the picture of humanity painted by certain materialists in line with a Darwinistic theory borrowed from the animal world; but today this theory, when applied to mankind, is wrong. It is true in the animal kingdom because there no impulse governs which could transform discord into love. Christ, as a spiritual force in humanity, will confound all materialistic Darwinism.

But in order to grasp this, one must understand that in the outer sense world men can eliminate the antagonistic attitude arising from their differences of opinion, feelings, and actions only by combatting and adjusting within themselves all that would otherwise flow out into the external world. No one is going to quarrel with a different opinion in the soul of another if he first fights against all that must be combatted in himself, if he establishes harmony among the various principles of his being. He will confront the outer world as one who loves, not as one who quarrels. It is all a matter of diverting the conflict from the outer world to the inner man: the forces holding sway in human nature must battle each other within man.

Two conflicting opinions must be looked at as follows: This is one opinion—it is tenable; that is the other—it is also tenable. But if I recognize only the one and consider justifiable only what I want, resisting the other, then I shall be involved in a struggle on the physical plane. To insist on my opinion is to be selfish; to consider my action the only justifiable one means being egotistical. But if I consider the other man's opinion and endeavor to create harmony within myself, my attitude toward the other will then be a very different one; and only then will I begin to understand him. Diverting external strife into another channel—the harmonizing of inner human forces—that would be another way of expressing the idea of progress in the evolution of mankind. The possibility of inner concord, of finding the way to harmonize the resisting forces within, this had to be bestowed upon man by the Christ. Christ gives man the power first of all to eliminate the discord within himself, and without Christ this could never be achieved. In respect of outer strife the ancient, pre-Christian people rightly looked upon one special form of it as the ultimate horror: the child's strife against father and mother. Also, in the days when men knew what course evolution would take lacking the Christ-Impulse, parricide was considered the most terrible and abhorrent of all crimes. That was made very clear by those wise men of old who foresaw the coming of Christ. But they also knew what the inevitable result would be in the outer world if the battle were not first waged in every man's own soul.

Let us examine our own inner nature. We have learned that where the etheric and astral bodies interpenetrate the mother holds sway, while the father comes to expression in the ego-permeated physical body. In other words, the mother, the female element, governs in all that pertains to the traits we share with others, to the generic, to all that constitutes our inner life in so far as it expresses itself in wisdom and in conceptions; whereas every quality arising from a union of the ego and the physical body, in the externally differentiated form—all that makes man an ego—derives from the father, the male element. What is it, then, above all things that the ancient sages who thought along these lines had to demand of men? They had to insist on a clear understanding of the relation of the physical body and the ego to the etheric and astral bodies: on a mental grasp of the maternal and paternal elements. By reason of having an etheric and an astral body man has the mother principle in him: in addition to his outer mother, the mother of the physical plane, he has, so to speak, the maternal element within him—the Mother, and besides his physical father he has within him the paternal element—the Father. The proper adjustment of the relation between this inner father and inner mother is something that was held up to men as a lofty ideal to strive for. Failure to harmonize these two elements inevitably results in spreading discord within men out into the physical world—with devastating consequences. Therefore, said the old sage: Man's task is to bring about harmony within himself between the paternal and the maternal elements. If he does not succeed, there will appear in the world what we must recognize as the ultimate horror.

What we have just expressed in anthroposophical phraseology, so to say, was proclaimed to mankind by the ancient sages somewhat as follows: In primeval times we inherited a primordial wisdom, and even today men can participate in it when in an abnormal state. But the possibility of entering this state is becoming ever more remote, and even the old initiation cannot lead beyond a certain point in human evolution.

Let us once more consider this old initiation as we described it in the last lectures: what occurred there? Out of the complex composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, the etheric and astral bodies were withdrawn, but the ego remained. Hence there could be no question of self-consciousness during the three and a half days of initiation: it was extinguished; and it was replaced by a form of consciousness from the higher spiritual world, instilled by the priest-initiator who guided the candidate throughout and placed his own ego at the latter's disposal. Now, what exactly was the result of this? Something occurred that was expressed in a formula which will strike you as strange; but when you have understood it, it will no longer seem so. It was expressed as follows: When a man was initiated in the old sense the maternal element withdrew and the paternal element remained; that is, the candidate killed the paternal element and united with the mother element. In other words, he killed his father within him and wedded his mother. So when the old initiate had lain three and a half days in the lethargic state he had united with his mother and had killed the father within himself. He had become fatherless; and that had to occur, because he had to renounce his individuality and dwell in a higher spiritual world. He became one with his people; but the factor inherent in a people was precisely that which was provided by the maternal element. He became one with the entire organism of his people; he became exactly that which Nathanael was, which was always designated by the name of the people in question—in Jewry, an “Israelite,” among Persians a “Persian.”

There can never be any wisdom in the world other than the wisdom proceeding from the Mysteries—no other is possible. Those who learn in the Mysteries what these reveal become messengers, and the outer world learns from them what is beheld in the Mysteries. One of the things acquired in line with the old wisdom was the exact knowledge of what had been achieved by uniting with the inner mother and killing the father. But this hereditary wisdom cannot help man past a certain point in evolution. Something different, something wholly new, had to replace the old wisdom. Had mankind continued indefinitely to receive the old wisdom gained in this way, it would have been driven, as already stated, into the war of all against all. Opinion would be arrayed against opinion, feeling against feeling, will against will; and that terrifying, gruesome image of the future, where man would unite with his mother and kill his father, would come true. All this was portrayed in pregnant pictures, in great and mighty images, by the old initiates who, though initiated, looked for the coming of Christ; and the imprint of this wisdom of the pre-Christian sages has been preserved in the legends and myths.

We need only recall the name of Oedipus and we are in touch with a myth expressing what the ancient sages had to say on this subject. The old Greek legend, presented in so mighty and grandiose a way by the Greek tragedians, runs as follows: There was a king in Thebes, and his name was Laios. His spouse was Iokaste. For a long time they had no progeny. Then Laios enquired of the Oracle of Delphi whether he could not be vouchsafed a son; and the Oracle gave him the answer: If thou wilt have a son it will be one who shall kill thee.—In a state of intoxication—that is, in a state of dimmed consciousness—Laios begot a son. Oedipus was born; and Laios knew that this was the son who would kill him. He therefore resolved to abandon the child; and in order to insure his complete annihilation he caused his feet to be pierced. Then he was left to die; but a shepherd found the child and took pity on him. He brought him to Corinth, and there Oedipus was reared in the royal household. When he was grown he learned of the Oracle's prophesy: that he would kill his father and wed his mother; but there was no escaping it. On account of being taken for the king's son he had to leave the place where he was reared. On his way he met his real father and, without recognizing him, killed him. He came to Thebes; and because he was able to answer the Sphinx' questions and solve the riddle of the grisly monster that led so many to their death, the Sphinx had to kill itself. Thus, for the time being, Oedipus was his country's benefactor. He was made king and received the queen's hand in marriage—his mother's hand! Without knowing it, he had killed his father and united with his mother. He now ruled as king; but by reason of having acquired his rule in this way and of all the dreadful misfortune that clung to him, he brought untold misery upon his country.—In Sophocles' drama we finally encounter him as blinded, as one who has destroyed his own eyesight.

That is a story whose imagery originated in the old temples of wisdom; and what it intended to tell was that in a certain respect Oedipus could still make contact, in the old sense, with the spiritual world. His father had consulted the Oracle. Those oracles were the last heritage of the old clairvoyance, but they were powerless to establish peace in the outer world. They could not provide that harmony of the paternal and the maternal elements which was to be striven for and achieved.

The circumstance that Oedipus solved the Sphinx' riddle indicates that he was intended to represent the sort of man who had acquired a certain old type of clairvoyance simply through heredity; that is, he knew the nature of man to the extent to which the last remnants of the old primordial wisdom could provide such cognition. But never could it suffice to stem the raging of man against man, as symbolized by the parricide and the union with the mother. Although in touch with primordial wisdom, Oedipus is unable, by its means, to see through its complexity. This old wisdom no longer induced seership—that is what the old sages wanted to proclaim. Had it been attended by clairvoyance as in the old way of consanguinity, the blood would have spoken when Oedipus confronted first his father, and later, his mother; but the blood was silent. That is a graphic presentation of the disintegration of primordial wisdom.

What had to happen in order that once and for all the inner harmonious compensation might be found between the maternal and paternal elements, between man's own ego that is of the father, and the mother principle? The Christ impulse had to come.—And now we can peer from still another angle into certain depths of the Marriage in Cana of Galilee. We are told:

The mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

Jesus—or better, Christ—was to be the great example for humanity of a being who had achieved the inner concord between himself—that is, his ego—and the mother principle. At the Marriage in Cana of Galilee He indicated:

Something passeth from me to thee.

That was a new sort of passing from one to another: it was no longer as it had been, but implied a renewal of the whole relationship. It meant the lofty and enduring ideal of inner compensation achieved without first killing the father—without withdrawing from the physical body; it meant finding agreement with the maternal principle in the ego. Now the time had come when the human being learned to combat within himself the excessive power of egotism, of the ego principle; when he learned to correlate it with the maternal principle holding sway in the etheric and astral bodies.

So we find in the Marriage in Cana a beautiful image of the relation of the ego, the paternal principle, to the mother principle: it represents the inner harmony, the love, obtained in the outer world between Christ Jesus and His Mother. It was intended as an image of the harmonious compensation between the ego and the maternal principle, achieved inwardly. Such a possibility had not existed previously: it was created by the deed of Christ Jesus. But inasmuch as it came about through the deed of Christ, it brought with it the only possible refutation—that is, through the deed—of all that would inevitably have come to pass under the influence of those remnants of the ancient wisdom which would have led to the killing of the father and the uniting of the mother with her son.

Let us see just what it is that the Christ principle combats. The old sage, contemplating the Christ and comparing the old way with the new, could put it this way: If the union with the mother is sought in the old way, no good can result for humanity. But if sought in the new way, as shown in the Marriage at Cana—if man unites with the astral and etheric bodies dwelling within him—then salvation and peace and fraternity will spread among men more and more as time passes; and the old principle of killing the father and wedding the mother will be resisted.—So the antagonistic element which the Christ had to eradicate was not the ancient wisdom: the latter did not need to be combatted, for it was gradually losing its power and would eventually dry up of itself; and we see how people like Oedipus fall victim to discord precisely by putting their faith in it. On the other hand, the evil would not cease of itself if the new wisdom were ignored; that is, if people clung rigidly to the old principle and remained insensible to the manner in which the Christ impulse acts. Not to ding to the obsolete principle, not to follow the old lines rigidly, but to learn what had come into the world through Christ—that is what was felt to be the greatest step forward.

Do we find this, too, suggested anywhere? We do: legends and myths are indeed fraught with the deepest wisdom. There is a legend you will not find in the Gospels, but it is none the less a Christian legend as well as a Christian truth. It runs this way: Once upon a time there was a married couple, and for a long time this couple had no son. Then it was revealed to the mother in a dream—note this well—that she would have a son, but that this son would first kill his father and then unite with his mother, and that he would bring frightful disaster upon his whole tribe.

Again we have a dream, corresponding to the oracle in the case of Oedipus; that is, we are again dealing with what had come down from primeval clairvoyance. What was to happen was revealed to the mother in the old way. But did this revelation suffice to make her see clearly the conditions governing in the world? to avert the disaster? Let us ask the legend, which informs us further:

Under the influence of the wisdom gleaned in her dream, the mother took the child she had borne to the island of Kariot and there abandoned him. But he was found by the queen of a neighboring realm, who being childless, reared him herself. Later the royal couple had a child of their own, and the foundling soon felt himself discriminated against; and being of a passionate temperament he slew the son of the royal pair. Now he could no longer re-main: he had to flee, and he came to the court of Pilate, the Governor, where he was soon made overseer in the household. But one day he came to blows with his neighbor; and in the struggle he killed him, knowing not that it was his own father. Circumstances later led to his wedding his neighbor's wife, who, unbeknownst to him, was his mother.

This foundling was Judas Iscariot. When he became aware of his terrible position he Red again. And nowhere did he find compassion save in Him Who had mercy for all who approached Him, Who not only sat at the table with publicans and sinners but Who, though seeing all, took unto Himself even this great sinner; for it was His mission to work not only for the righteous, but for all men, and to lead them out of sin to salvation. In this way Judas Iscariot came into the environment of Christ Jesus and to cause the calamity which had been foretold, and which was destined to be fulfilled in the sphere of Christ Jesus. Schiller says:

“An evil deed its own curse bears within:
It multiplies, begetting evil brood.”²

Judas became the betrayer of Christ Jesus. True, everything that was destined to come about through him had already been fulfilled in the murder of his father and the wedding of his mother; but he survived, so to speak, as a tool, because he was to be the evil instrument for bringing about good, thereby performing an act of supererogation.

The individuality presented to us in the figure of Oedipus loses his sight, as a result of the evil he has wrought, the moment he realizes what he has done. But the other, whose identical destiny originated in his connection with the inherited primordial wisdom, does not become blind: he was chosen to fulfill destiny, to do the deed that would lead to the Mystery of Golgotha, that would bring about the physical death of Him Who is “the Light of the World” and Who enkindles the Light of the World in healing the man born blind. Oedipus had to lose his sight; to the blind man, Christ gave sight. Yet He died at the hands of one who, like Oedipus, was chosen to exemplify the gradual extinction of the ancient wisdom in mankind, to expose its insufficiency in the matter of bringing salvation and peace and love. For these to come, the Christ-Impulse was indispensable, and the event of Golgotha had to take place. There had first to come about something whose outer reflection is shown us in the relation between the Jesus-Christ Ego and His Mother at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee.

And one thing more was needed as well. The writer of the John Gospel describes it as follows: There beneath the Cross stood the Mother, and there stood the disciple “whom the Lord loved”, Lazarus-John, whom He Himself had initiated and through whom the wisdom of Christianity was to be handed down to posterity; he through whom man's astral body was to be so powerfully influenced as to render it capable of harboring the Christ principle. There in the human astral body the Christ principle was to live, and it was John's mission to pour the Christ principle into this astral body. But in order that this might come to pass, this Christ principle, raying down from the Cross, had still to unite with the etheric principle, with the Mother. That is why from the Cross Christ called down the words:

From this hour forth, this is thy mother—and this is thy son.

That means, He unites His wisdom with the maternal principle.

Thus we see the profundity, not only of the Gospels, but of all the interrelationships in the Mysteries. Truly, the old legends are related to the prophesies and Gospels of more recent times as is presage to fulfillment. In the legends of Oedipus and of Judas we are clearly shown that once upon a time there was a divine, primordial wisdom; that this wisdom vanished; and that a new wisdom had to come. And this new wisdom will carry men forward to a point that would never have been attainable through the old wisdom. The Oedipus legend tells us what must have occurred without the intervention of the Christ impulse; and the nature of the opposition to the Christ, the rigid clinging to the ancient wisdom, is made clear in the Judas legend. But the principle which even the old legends and myths had declared inadequate is brought to us in a new light through the new revelation, through the Gospel. The Gospel gives us the answer to what the old legends expressed in images of the old wisdom. In legends we were told that nevermore can the old wisdom provide what humanity needs for the future; but the Gospel, the new wisdom, says: I bring tidings of what mankind needs, of what could never have come without the influence of the Christ principle, without the event of Golgotha.

• 1. “Vom Vater hab'ich die Satur,
  Des Lebens ernstes Führen,
  Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur,
  Und Lust am Fabulieren.”
• 2. “Das eben ist der Fluch der bösen Tat,
  Dass sie, fortzeugend, Böses muss gebären.”

My dear Friends,

The attainment of occult knowledge—it is necessary we should remind ourselves of the fact now and again—is no child's play; and if anyone approaches it with the idea that it will offer him theories to which he can either remain indifferent or, if they are not so remote as all that, still theories that require no more than the intellect to grasp them, he will find he is very much mistaken.

We have been considering the human form—to all appearances something quite external. And yet I have told you that it is this human form, as we have described it in its three members, which the student in occultism must take for his starting-point. He must—in most cases—begin with the feelings and impressions that come to him from a study of the human form, because in so doing he takes his start from something that is as independent as possible of the inner life.

There is as a matter of fact another possibility, and it is sometimes even desirable, not only for the theosophist, but also for the occultist,—namely, to start from the inner life of soul. We are, however, then brought face to face with an almost insurmountable obstacle. As you know, we have in our inner man not only what was already present there when Earth evolution began, but throughout our incarnations upon Earth spiritual beings and forces have contributed all the time to its upbuilding and development. Ever since primeval times, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have had their part in all the work that has been done upon our inner man. If you take this into consideration—and you must do so, for it is true—then you will see that were we to take our start from the inner man, there would be some uncertainty as to whether we should get free of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, or whether we should not rather remain entangled in their influences and these then find their way into our occult vision. Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces can easily penetrate into the soul without man's being aware of it. Many things that go to make up the content of our life of soul,—we may think them to be exceedingly good, and yet they may not be so at all, so mixed up are they with the influences exerted upon us by Lucifer and Ahriman.

The surest and safest way for the pupil is therefore to take his start from the human form or figure. Upon the human form Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have had least influence. Please note, I say “least” influence. They have had influence on the human form, but there least of all; a far greater influence has been exerted on the inner life of soul. The human form always remains, therefore, the most healthy starting-point if the pupil will hold firmly to the ancient occult saying that man in respect of his form is an image of the Godhead. The pupil does well to follow this course; for he links himself on to the Divine, choosing for his point of departure the picture or image of the Godhead,—and that is good and important.

Nevertheless this path has its difficulties. If you start from inner soul experiences and by means of occult development succeed in looking out from these inner soul experiences into the spiritual world, then the impressions of the spiritual world last for a comparatively long time. The consequence is that when by means of inner soul experiences alone someone succeeds in crossing the Threshold and entering the spiritual world, then he experiences spiritual vision and can as it were take time to look at the things before him; they do not pass quickly, they continue for a considerable length of time. Herein lies, we might say, the advantage, the convenience of starting from inner soul experiences. It has, however, the drawback already indicated, that one is quite unprotected and cannot recognise or estimate rightly Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences. It is, in fact, true to say that at no time are people less aware of Lucifer and the devil than when they set out on the occult path from the inner life of soul. The other starting-point has the drawback that the vision to which we attain, the Imaginations that present themselves, last only a very little while, they do not stay; so that we require to develop a certain presence of mind, if we want to catch them.

Let me now give you a picture of what happens when a pupil in occultism, taking his start from the human form, penetrates into the super-sensible world. I do not know whether any of you will have observed in himself a remarkable experience that happens every day but has to be quite consciously observed if one wants to gain knowledge from it. I mean the experience that when you have directed your gaze upon a bright object, the impression remains in the eye long after the eye has ceased to gaze upon the object. Goethe made a very special study, as he tells us repeatedly in his Theory of Colours, of these after-images that remain behind in the organism,—that is, inside the human form. When, for example, you lie down in bed and put out the light and shut your eyes, then you can have before you for a long time a picture or image of the light—as it were, echoing on. As a rule, the impression from without is exhausted when we have had this “echoing” experience. The vibration, the movement caused by the external impression has finished, and for most persons that is the end of the matter. This is, however, where the pupil must take his start, proceeding, as we said, from the human form,—that is to say, from what we know the human form to be on the physical plane in ordinary life. So long as he continues to observe only the after-images, nothing of any importance will happen. The interest begins when something is still left after the image of the object has disappeared. For what then remains does not come from the eye at all, it is a process, an experience that is given us by the ether body. Anyone who has himself carried out this experiment will not bring forward the otherwise perfectly reasonable suggestion that what we have here can still only be an after-image of the physical body. People say this who have not had the experience. Once they have had the experience, they say it no more. For what remains afterwards is something totally different from anything that has relation to an external impression.

Generally speaking, what remains, for example, after an impression of colour or of light is by no means an appearance of colour or light. Indeed, we can say that if it is colour or light, then it is illusion! It is a tone, of which one is quite certain that it has not been heard with the ear, that the ear has had no part in its reaching us. What remains can also be some other impression, but it is always different from the external impression. The occultist has to learn completely to overcome external impressions, for occultism is there for the blind, for example, who have never in their life seen an external object, never once had any external impression of light by means of the eye. Most of the ghostlike figures that people see are merely memory pictures of sense impressions that have been changed by the play of fancy. Occult experience is not dependent on whether a person can use some particular sense organ or not, it occurs quite independently of the sense organs.

Having now made himself an accurate picture of the complete human figure, the pupil must hold it firmly before him. It must live before him as an Imagination. With which of the senses or in what manner he fixes the human form is of no account. What is important is that in some way or other he fixes this human form—that is to say, through the human form a picture, an Imagination, is evoked in him, a living picture. The pupil may now take for his starting-point the external picture of the human form. It is, however, also possible for him to start from the inner feeling of the body, the feeling he has of being within the form.

When the occultist succeeds in experiencing in this way something like an after-image in respect of the human form—when, that is to say, having first comprehended this human form as he finds it in the physical world, he allows it then to “echo on” in him in the way that an after-image echoes on—when he is able to have this experience and afterwards to wait until the image of the human form is past and gone, he will obtain a picture of the human form which is no longer an image of the physical form but is experienced in the ether body.

You see, for the pupil in occultism it is a question of experiencing himself in the ether body. And when the pupil has come to the point of experiencing himself in this way in the ether body, then this experience is indeed a profound one! It falls at once into two distinct experiences. It does not remain whole and single. And these two experiences have to be expressed by two words. We have to say that the pupil experiences first, death and second, Lucifer.

Since the experiences of which we are now speaking are not of the senses, but are in their very essence and nature higher experiences, it is naturally not altogether easy to describe them. Words are for the most part taken from the world of the senses and they remind us always, in their application, of the world of the senses. But these are experiences that we feel to be inward rather than outward; and if we make use of words to describe them, it is rather for the purpose of evoking some conception, some picture only of what is in very truth experienced.

The experience of death is somewhat as follows. The pupil knows that the human form, which he has first perceived and then taken as his starting-point, has no continuance outside Earth existence. It is bound up with Earth existence. Whoever wants to go beyond Earth existence, whoever wants to reckon at all with a super-sensible life, must realise that this human figure can be experienced as such only on Earth; it must go to pieces—it does so before his eyes—the moment he passes beyond Earth existence, and show itself as death. In the ether body the human form can show itself in no other way than as given over to death.

This, then, must be the first impression, and here the pupil may easily founder; for the impression made by the shattered and destroyed human form is one that sinks very deeply into the soul. It is a fact that many who have aspired to be occultists have not been able to surmount this first impression and have said to themselves: “Fear of what may be still to come stops me from going any further.” It is necessary for the pupil to behold death, for the simple reason that only so can he know in all certainty that in the Earth body it is impossible to experience the higher world; one must come right out of the body, one must leave it.

That is actually the next impression the pupil receives. I do not mean to imply that the higher world can never be experienced while in the Earth body. But the pupil in occultism must inevitably come at this point to the experience and knowledge that I have described. It may be expressed in the words: He experiences Lucifer.

Lucifer is there before him, and directs his attention to a fact which carries with it for the pupil a very great temptation, If we had to put into words what is experienced in making the acquaintance of Lucifer, we might express it in the following way. Lucifer makes the pupil attentive to the frailty and destructibility of the human form He says: “Look at this human form. See how destructible it is; a destructible form have the Gods given you—the Gods who are my enemies.” That is what Lucifer tells him, and he points out to him that the Higher Gods were placed under the necessity of making man destructible in his form; he shows the pupil that They could not do otherwise, owing to certain conditions of which we shall speak later. And then he shows him what he, Lucifer, wanted to make of man, what man would have become if he had been given the handling of him,—alone, unhindered by his opponents.

There is something extraordinarily seductive in the picture Lucifer gives of what man would have become if he, Lucifer, alone had had the making of him. For Lucifer says, “Look around you and see what remains of you when your human form has gone to pieces.” When the human form has been destroyed, when man turns round, as it were, and sees himself flayed—spiritually speaking—, when his form has been taken from him, then he beholds two things. In the first place, he sees that what remains is in fact conformable to the super-sensible world, is in a certain respect immortal, whilst the body is mortal. This fact puts a powerful argument in the hands of Lucifer, wherewith he may tempt man. Man's attention has first been directed to the image of God which he has, which, however, is destructible and bound to the Earth. Then Lucifer directs him to something else in him that is immortal, not subject to death. Therein lies the temptation. But when man comes to consider and observe that which is immortal in him, when he contemplates that which shakes off the external form after it has broken up into the three parts of which we have discovered it to be composed, then man sees himself and sees at what cost Lucifer has made him immortal. For man, when he looks back upon himself, discovers he is no longer man. Threefold man, as we have described him, has always been expressed in occult symbolism in certain pictures. These pictures, these Imaginations, have throughout the ages had something to say to man. Very few, however, have understood their wonderful significance. The upper man, as man sees him when he turns back to look upon himself, is different in different people. The picture that presents itself here is also more or less transient. It gives nevertheless an approximate idea of the impression man experiences. There is no longer a human countenance; the countenance is suggestive of a bull, or else of a lion. Experiences in the super-sensible world have often a quite grotesque appearance; and it transpires that, although not always, yet generally speaking, a woman who looks back in this way perceives herself more like a lion, a man more like a bull. There is no getting away from it, it is really so! And connected with these two pictures—which are intermingled, for the man is not entirely devoid of lion, nor the woman entirely devoid of bull, the two merge into one another—blended in at the same time with these is the picture of a bird, which has always been called the eagle and which belongs in the whole picture.

Nor has the worst yet been told! Many a man might be ready to make up his mind to be a bull, a lion or an eagle as a price for immortality. That is, however, only the upper man. The continuation down below is a wild, savage dragon. Here you have the source of all the numerous sagas and stories of the dragon. Traditional religious symbolism has always given man the four pictures,—Man, Lion, Bull, Eagle; but it has given no more than indications, as, e.g., in the account of the Fall, that a wild Dragon also belongs to man. The dragon, however, has its place in the totality of man, it is to be found there; and man has to say to himself: Lucifer is indeed able to promise you immortality—it is a sure and well-founded promise—but only at the cost of your form and figure, so that you go on living in the form you have become under the influence of Lucifer. And now we can see how it has come about that we have received such an inner form; it is because of the influence of Lucifer in Earth evolution. We perceive also that this Earth evolution has under the influence of Lucifer given to man super-sensible gifts one after another. Wisdom and everything connected with wisdom comes to man by many and manifold paths from Lucifer. Lucifer can show man, when he meets him, how much man really owes to him. But what I described just now has also to be reckoned among the things man owes to Lucifer.

The question is bound to arise: “Is there then no ray of comfort in this self-knowledge?” For, when all is said, it is not exactly comforting if this new insight only leads to a description of how man is degraded to the rank of an animal. The animal is, moreover, tripartite and does not belong to the “higher” animals; rather is man debased to the animal stage that exists on the Earth in the picture of an amphibian. No, such a conception can hardly be called comforting!

This is the experience which I described to you before as being so extraordinarily fleeting and transient. One needs great presence of mind to grasp the impression at all, to get a view of it, as it were. It goes past one so swiftly. That is the disadvantage of starting from the human form. People do not as a rule have sufficient presence of mind to grasp death and Lucifer and then turn round, spiritually, and survey themselves. Nothing we see brings any comfort, for ultimately we have only two courses to choose from. We can hold to what is mortal and destructible in us and comes from the Gods, the opponents of Lucifer; or we can choose immortality and along with it the degradation of the human form.

The presence of all these things, the impression made by them, is in the first moment terrible and paralysing. For this reason a great part of the task of the occult teacher consists in warning people not to pay too much heed to such impressions, or indeed to any first super-sensible impressions, because these impressions, whether they are of a kind to occasion joy or pain, can never be trusted as guides. The right course is to wait patiently, very patiently. It may well be that when one has carried out the experiment described, a feeling of absolute hopelessness comes over one; to persevere then in calling forth the impression again and again requires courage. But this is what we must do if we would make practical progress in occultism, and a time will come when we find, as it were, ground for our feet.

What the present moment affords—on that can man most assuredly not rely. Everything he achieves in life is seen now to be destructible, impermanent. Lucifer promises something eternal. But not to that either can man hold. A moment comes, however, when there is one thing of which he can take firm hold; it is not anything of the present, but a memory that can remain with him from ordinary life on Earth. This memory must stay with him like a thought out of Earth life, and intermingle in the meeting with death and Lucifer It streams over from Earth life, and is suddenly there, this memory, this thought, which alone can give man support and stay. But it is singularly feeble, and great energy is required to hold it. This one and only thing in life which man can recall as something sure and certain is the thought of Self, of “ I.” It is the thought: Over there I have been a Self. There is, as we said, extreme difficulty in holding this thought. Many of you will know how difficult it is to bring over a dream from the other state of consciousness into the present moment. And it can happen all too easily that when man has entered the super-sensible world, this “ I” thought is like a dream that he has had in the Earth world and does not remember. Like a forgotten dream is this “ I ” thought, when he has come into the other consciousness; and the difficulty of holding it has even increased for man in the course of evolution. In ancient times, in times that lie far back in the remote past, it was comparatively easy to carry over the “ I ” picture from here on Earth to the Beyond, but in the course of the evolution of mankind it has become more and more difficult.

When I say, “The thought of the I comes,” you must think of it in the following way. For the present-day pupil in occultism, the thought often does indeed come. It does not merely remain with man as a dream picture,—no, it can flash up in him beyond as a sudden memory. For this to happen, however, help is needed. It can happen, but not without help,—an important point. When the pupil enters the super-sensible world, then under present day conditions of evolution the I would almost certainly remain behind like a forgotten dream, if help were not forthcoming.

If I am to give a name to the help that the pupil in occultism needs today in order that he may not forget the thought of the I when he ascends into the super-sensible world, there is but one expression I can use, and that is being together with the Christ Impulse on Earth. That is what helps! In present-day conditions of Earth evolution everything depends at this point on what sort of a relation man has had with the Christ Impulse during his life on Earth, and in what measure he has let It become alive in him. On this depends whether the thought of the I is lost in forgetfulness when man ascends into the super-sensible world, or whether it remains with him as the one and only sure support that he can take over with him from Earth into the super-sensible world.

The Christian of today has many remarkable and beautiful things to say about the Christ Impulse. But one who consciously in the Christian sense enters the higher worlds knows still more of the Christ Impulse. And this more that he knows is exceedingly important and significant. He knows that the Christ Impulse is the one and only thing that can come to our help when we are in danger of forgetting the I of Earth evolution. How is it that in addition to all that the Christ Impulse has already been able to be for man on Earth, in addition to the untold blessings that man has received and is still receiving from It, for his comfort, for his goodness of heart and mind, for his education and culture, there is also this,—that the Christ Impulse in the measure in which It works in man, can bring it about that the I of Earth does not need to be forgotten? Where can we look for the explanation of this?

If I am to give you an answer to this question, I must draw your attention to facts which, although you may not know them from occultism, you can yet acquaint yourselves with by an intelligent study of the Gospels. For there are two ways of coming to a knowledge of the reasons why the Christ Impulse can give this help. The first is the path of occultism,—an occultism such as rightly belongs to the stage of evolution reached by man in our times. And the second is the path of a thoroughly intelligent and deep study of the Gospels. The Gospels have one remarkable and unique feature, as compared with other religious records. People do not always notice it, but it is there, none the less. Take all that you can find in the external history of religions, take the whole content of the religions founded even in Post-Christian times, and compare with this what you read in the Christian records, the Gospels. If you look into the history of the founder of any religion and take pains to understand him, you will find you can only do so by learning to know and understand the super-sensible inspirations or intuitions which he received. Enquire of the Pre-Christian founders of religion whence came their wisdom and you will be told,—in the case of Buddha, for example, how he acquired under the Bodhi tree that great and high enlightenment which enabled him to proclaim what he called the “holy doctrine.” You are directed, that is to say, if you want to know the ground and source of Buddha's teaching, to a super-sensible enlightenment.

Nor is it any different in Post-Christian times. Take Mohammed. You must look to the visions, the revelations Mohammed received from super-sensible worlds, in order to explain why this or that was spoken in such and such a way. It is the same with all founders of religions; and not only with founders of religions, but with all who have given authentic revelations. We are directed to their divine inspiration, to the super-sensible that shone into them. We have quite exact knowledge of this in the case of Pythagoras. And in Plato's writings we can find everywhere indications that while he did not give all he knew, for what he did communicate he received inspiration through the Mysteries,—that is to say, he underwent evolution into higher worlds. Even in the case of Socrates we read of a “Daimon,” and indeed it would be absurd to leave out the Daimon in speaking of Socrates. What Socrates developed for man on the foundation of pure intelligence, he received through his Daimon. Look where you will, everywhere you will find the same.

Now let me ask; you to turn from these examples to the Gospels. Go through them carefully and you will find but one single occasion in the whole three years of His sojourn on Earth when, in the sense of initiation-experience, Christ Jesus looked into, or had to look into, the super-sensible world. The only time that you will find anything of this kind is in the scene of the Temptation, and even there you are not told that Christ had to learn to hold fast to a super-sensible good God, but only that He had a meeting with that which was for Him the “evil,”—with Satan, with Lucifer.

We are told that this Temptation was for Him from its very beginning no temptation. Read the passages through for yourselves and you will see how unique is the picture given us in the Gospels. Christ passed through what the initiators have always had to pass through, but from the beginning He holds steadfastly to His God, withstands the attacks and utters the word: “Get thee hence, Satan! For it is written, Thou shalt worship God, thy Lord, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Lucifer cannot tempt Him any further and leaves Him. In all the other scenes and events that follow the Temptation, in everything else the Gospels have to tell, we can discover nothing at all to be compared with the accounts that have to be given of the life of initiates, where we read a description of how and in what manner they learned in the course of their life to penetrate into the spiritual worlds.

We can speak of the Christ, right from the very beginning, as of an “initiate”—that is, one who has direct and immediate connection with the super-sensible world. I have done this in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact and continually in lectures. But one cannot in the case of the Christ speak of His “initiation,” one cannot speak in His case of progress through initiations. We can say that He is an “initiated” one, but we can say nothing at all about how He became “initiated.” That is a profound distinction.

Compare all that is told of the life of the “initiated” with the account you have in the Gospels. Perhaps you will observe—I have shown it in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—that the writers of the Gospels needed only to take the ancient ritual in accordance with which initiation was carried out, in order to describe the life of Christ. In relating the ritual they were relating the events of the life of Christ Jesus. But they could never say that He actually underwent what they were describing. Take such a scene—pregnant with deep meaning—as the Transfiguration, or the Prayer on the Mount of Olives. These are events which if you had set out to relate them of some other initiated person you would have had to describe in quite a different way. You could not merely say that he went up to the Mount of Olives and that there drops of sweat fell from him like blood; in the case of another initiated person you would have to tell what he experienced there, how he was changed on the Mount of Olives. Christ was not changed. The meeting with His God on the Mount of Olives was not of such a character that we can feel He has anything to learn there. Similarly, what He passed through at the Transfiguration was not for Himself an enlightenment. For the others, for His companions, it was an enlightenment, but not for Him. For Him it was perfectly natural and comprehensible; He could not learn anything new from it.

What on the other hand should we expect to be told concerning any other initiated person? We must be shown how he advanced step by step on the path of knowledge. In the case of higher initiates we may expect to be told of how they brought a great deal with them from earlier incarnations and perhaps only needed still to pass through the very last stage. We find nothing of all this with the Christ. We have the story of the Temptation, and that is all. What we find in the Christ is that He was permeated through and through in the very highest degree with Divine Self-consciousness. This marks the opening scene of the three-year life of Christ. And then we have before us this wonderful picture,—the picture of highly exalted divine revelations proceeding directly and immediately from One who is Earth Man. In the case of any other initiated person we have to tell how he first attained to this or that stage of initiation and was then able to make this or that revelation. With Christ Jesus on the other hand it all wells up freely in Him from the very beginning, and we are not told that in the course of the three years of His life this or that stage of initiation was passed. If anyone were to treat the description of the Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus as though they were such stages, it would only demonstrate his failure to perceive the fact that the Resurrection took place by virtue of the power that was already there in the living Christ. The Resurrection is not an act of initiation. Christ Jesus was not awakened to life by some other initiate but by the Divine Power that comes from beyond the Earth, the Power that was communicated to Him through the Baptism. The Resurrection was given at the time of the Baptism, it was already there in that moment; whereas the act which in the case of other initiated persons is called “Resurrection” has to be brought about by the deeds and instructions of an elder initiate.

This is the reason why I had to describe the Christ Event as I did in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact,—which was written more than ten years ago and appeared shortly after. We have to see it somewhat in the following way Christ lived His life on Earth. In this life many events and processes took place. How do we describe these events and processes? We describe them best by relating what an initiated one of olden time had to pass through. What the initiated in olden time passed through in his Mystery School, that unfolded itself in the case of Christ as historical fact. Therefore, the Evangelists could use the ancient books of initiation, not in order to describe an initiation of Christ but to write a biography of Him. That is the gist of the argument in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact.

It is evidence of the very deepest misunderstanding of the life of Christ if we speak of Him not as one already initiated but as one who had during Earth evolution to undergo initiation. Anyone who wants to explain the life of Christ as an initiation is making a very great mistake in regard to the Spirit of Christianity. He would understand Christianity as though its Founder were not already an Initiated One, but had first to be initiated, as though in describing the life of Christ one were describing processes of His initiation.

It is accordingly necessary, in speaking of the life of Christ, to make it perfectly clear that the expressions which are used cannot be applied in the same sense as they are applied to the ancient—or any other—initiation, but that they are used in an absolutely physical earthly sense, that they refer to a history, to an event in history that lies outside initiation.

The importance of this cannot be over-emphasised. No graver mistake could be made than to overlook what has just been explained and speak of an “initiation of Christ,”—not in the sense that it is spoken of in my lectures “At the Gates of Theosophy” or in those on “The St. John Gospel,” but clothing the life of Christ in the garb of an account of an initiation. In doing so, one would from the very outset be placing oneself in contradiction to every reasonable interpretation of the Gospels. It would be impossible to find the way to the heart and kernel of these, or to understand what occultism has to say concerning Christ Jesus. Let us never forget that when we speak of other founders of religion, we have to speak of them as men who have become initiated and we are justified and right in understanding their life as comprising within it an initiation, but that the life of Christ has to be described differently. Although this life of Christ, as it takes its course on Earth, had indeed to make divine revelations, we are not to conceive of any process of initiation shining as it were into this life of Christ and enlightening it. No, Christ was Himself an initiator. Read in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact the passage concerning the true meaning of the miracle of the Raising of Lazarus. You will find it was an initiation that Christ then performed. He Himself was able to initiate; but we can by no means say that Christ was initiated on Earth in the same sense as we have to say Lazarus was initiated by Christ.

In the place of initiation we have the Baptism by John in Jordan. If, however, the Baptism had been the corresponding act of initiation, it would have been described differently. We would have been told how Christ stood there as one awaiting initiation while a far more exalted initiator performed the act of initiation. The other, however, who stands at His side as the instrument for the act is no higher initiator, but is John the Baptist who cannot, in accordance with the facts, be placed higher than Christ Jesus Himself.

It has frequently happened that men have made this mistake. But for a right relation to Christianity, for a true understanding of Christianity, such a mistake is always fatal. We must, therefore, beware of speaking as though Christ had passed through various stages—Birth, Childhood, or again, Baptism or Transfiguration or Resurrection—in the sense in which some initiated person may be said to pass through such stages. The moment we apply to the Christ in the same manner the expressions: Birth, Baptism, Transfiguration, Ascension, we show a complete misunderstanding of Christianity.

All this needs to be clearly understood if we would answer the question: How has it come about that the Christ Impulse is what enables man to carry the memory of his I from ordinary life on Earth into the life of the super-sensible worlds?

Let me ask you to call up a picture before you of what I have tried to show you today, how man meets with death and with Lucifer and how the pupil in occultism comes into a hopeless and desolate situation from which he can only be released if he is able to retain a memory of the thought of the I. And remember then what I said further that the greatest help for the retention of the I thought consists, for a man of the present day, in having placed himself during life on Earth in a relation to the Christ Impulse. Recall too, how in order to establish this fact I set out to explain wherein the life of Christ is different from the life of any other initiated person. Christ comes before us from the outset as One of Whom we are certainly told that He performed deeds on Earth, but of Whom we are not told that He was influenced by a Daimon—like Socrates, or that He sat under a Bodhi tree—like Buddha, or that He had visions—like Mohammed. To imagine any of these would make it impossible to understand the Christ. How the Christ Impulse becomes the means for the pupil to let the I thought live on over into the spiritual world, so that he does not instead have only thoughts that have died, and how the super-sensible world then appears to him,—of this we will speak tomorrow.

As the result of an impulse which I have lately had, let us consider one of the most important subjects in Anthroposophy. Anthroposophists are often reproached for their inclination towards the study of far-distant cosmic developments; and it is said that they lift themselves into spiritual worlds, too frequently only considering the far-distant events of the past and the far-reaching perspective of the future, disregarding a sphere which is of more immediate interest—the sphere of human morals and human ethics.

It is true that this, the realm of human morals, must be looked upon as the most essential of all. But what must be said in answer to the reproach that we are less concerned with this important field of man's soul-life and social life than with more distant spheres, is that when we realise the significance and range of anthroposophical life and feeling we are only able to approach this subject with the deepest reverence, for it concerns man very closely indeed; and we realise that, if it is to be considered in the right way, it requires the most earnest and serious preparation. The above reproach might perhaps be stated in the following words: What is the use of making deep studies of the universe? Why talk about numerous reincarnations, or the complicated conditions of karma, when surely the most important thing in life is what a certain wise man after he had attained the summit of this life, and when after a life of rich wisdom he had grown so weak and ill that he had to be carried about, repeated again and again to his followers: “Children, love one another!”

These words were uttered by John the Evangelist when he was an old man, and it has often been said that in these four words, “Children, love one another!” is contained the extract of the deepest and most practical moral wisdom. Hence many might say: “What more is wanted, provided these good, sublime and moral ideals can be so simply fulfilled as in the sense of the words of the Evangelist John?”

When to the above statement one adds that it is sufficient for people to know that they ought to love one another, one thing is lost sight of, namely, the circumstance that he who uttered these words did so at the close of a long life of wisdom, a life which included the writing of the most profound and important of the Gospels. A man is only justified in saying anything so simple at the end of a rich life of wisdom. But one who is not in that position must first, by going deeply into the foundations of the secrets of the world, earn the right to utter the highest moral truths in such a simple manner.

Trivial as is the oft-repeated assertion, “If the same thing is said by two persons it never is the same,” it is especially applicable to the words we have quoted. When someone who simply declines to know or understand anything about the mysteries of the Cosmos says: “It is quite a simple matter to describe the highest moral life,” and uses the words: “Children, love one another,” it is quite different from when the evangelist John utters these words, at the close of such a rich life of wisdom. For this reason, he who understands these words of St. John ought to draw from them quite a different conclusion from that usually drawn. The conclusion should be that one has first of all to be silent about such profoundly significant words, and that they may only be uttered when one has gone through the necessary preparation and reached the necessary maturity.

Now after we have made this statement—which it is quite certain many will take earnestly to heart—something quite different, which is of the deepest importance will come to our mind. Someone might say: ‘It may be the case that the deep significance of moral principles can only be understood when the goal of all wisdom is reached, man uses them, nevertheless, all the time. How could some moral community or social work be carried on if one had to wait for a knowledge of the highest moral principles till the end of a life of striving for wisdom? Morals are most necessary for human social life; and now it is asserted that moral principles can only be obtained at the end of long striving after wisdom.’ A person might therefore reasonably say that he would doubt the wise arrangement of the world if this were so; if that which is most necessary could only be gained after the goal of human effort had been attained.

Life itself gives us, the true answer to what has just been said. You need only compare two facts which, in one form or another, are no doubt well known to you and you will at once perceive that the one can be right as well as the other; firstly, that we attain to the, highest moral principles and their understanding only at the conclusion of the effort after wisdom, and secondly, that moral and social communities and activities cannot exist without ethics or morals. You see this at once if you bear in mind two facts with which you are most certainly acquainted in one form or another. You may have known a man who was highly developed intellectually, he may have possessed not only a clear intellectual grasp of natural science, but he may also have understood many occult and spiritual truths both theoretically and practically and yet you may have known that such a person was not particularly moral. Who has not seen people clever and highly intellectual, going morally astray? And who has not also experienced the other fact, from which much may be learned! You, doubtless have known someone with a very restricted outlook, with limited intellect and knowing but little, who being in service brought up not her own but other people's children. From their earliest days she has probably assisted with their education and development and perhaps to the day of her death sacrificed to these children all she had in a selfless loving way and with the utmost devotion; yet if one had brought to her the moral principles that one had gained from the highest sources of wisdom, she would not, in all probability, have been particularly interested; she would probably have found them useless and incomprehensible. On the other hand her moral actions had accomplished more than mere recognition of moral principles. In such cases we feel that we must bow in reverence before that which streams out of the heart into life and creates an infinite amount of good.

Facts of such a nature often answer the riddles of life far more clearly than theoretical explanations, for we say to ourselves that a wise Providence, in order to impart to the world moral actions, moral activities, has not waited until people have discovered moral principles. There is in fact, to begin with—if we disregard immoral actions, the basis of which we shall get to know in these lectures—something contained in the human soul as a divine heritage, something given to us as original morality which may be called “instinctive morality” and it is this which makes it possible for humanity to wait until it can fathom moral principles.

But perhaps it is quite unnecessary to trouble much about investigating moral principles! Might it not be said that it is best if people trust to their original moral instincts and do not perplex themselves with theoretical explanations about morals? These lectures are to show that this is not the case. They are to show that, at least in the present epoch of humanity, we must seek for anthroposophical morals and that these morals must be exercised as a duty which comes as the fruit of all our anthroposophical science and practice.

The philosopher, Schopenhauer, in spite of much that is entirely erroneous in his philosophy, made this very true statement regarding the principles of morality. “To preach morals is easy, but to give them a foundation is difficult.” This statement is very true, for there is scarcely anything easier than to pronounce in a manner appealing to the commonest principles of human feeling and perception, what a person ought to do or leave undone in order that he may be a good man. Many people no doubt are offended when it is asserted that this is easy, but it is easy, and one who knows life, and knows the world, will not doubt that scarcely anything has been spoken about so much as the right principles of ethical action, and the man who speaks upon general ethical principles meets with almost universal approval. One might say it pleases listening minds, for they feel they can agree in an unqualified manner with what the speaker says when he discourses on the very commonest principles of human morality.

Notwithstanding this, morals are certainly not established by ethical teachings or moral sermons. Truly not. If morals could thus be founded there would be no immorality at the present day, for one might say that the whole of humanity would be overflowing with moral activities. For undoubtedly everyone has the opportunity of hearing the finest moral principles, since people are so fond of preaching them. But to know what one ought to do and what is morally right is of least importance compared with the fact that there should be within us impulses which, through their inward strength, their inward power, are themselves converted into moral actions, and thus express themselves externally. It is well known that ethical sermons do not produce this result. A moral foundation is laid when a man is guided to the source whence he must draw the impulses which shall supply him with forces leading to ethical activity.

How difficult these forces are to find, is shown by the simple fact that innumerable attempts have been made, for example, from the philosophic side, to found a system of ethics, a code of morals. How many different answers exist in the world to the questions: “What is goodness?” -- “What is virtue?” Put together what the philosophers have said, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, and passing on through the Epicureans, the Stoics, the NeoPlatonists, the whole series down to modern philosophical opinions; put together all that has been said from Plato to Herbert Spencer upon the nature of Goodness and Virtue and you will see how many different attempts have been made to penetrate to the sources of moral life and impulse.

I hope in these lectures to show that it is only by delving into the occult secrets of life that it becomes possible, to penetrate not only to moral teachings, but to moral impulses, to the moral sources of life itself.

A single glance will show us that this moral principle in the world is by no means such a simple matter as might be supposed from a certain convenient standpoint. Let us for the moment take no notice of what is usually spoken of as “moral,” but consider certain spheres of human life from which we may perhaps be able to obtain a great deal towards a moral conception of life.

Not the least among the many things learned from spiritual science is the knowledge that most manifold conceptions and impulses have held good among various peoples in different parts of the earth. In comparing two sections of humanity which at first seem separated, one can consider the sacred life of ancient India, and observe how it has gradually developed up to the present day. One knows that what was characteristic of the India of primeval times is still true at the present day. The feelings, the thoughts and conceptions have been maintained that we find in this region in ancient times. It is remarkable that in these civilisations there has been preserved an image of primeval times, and when we consider what has been maintained up to our own day we are looking, so to say, at the same time into the remote past.

Now we do not progress very far in our understanding of the different peoples on earth if we begin by only applying our own moral standards. For this reason let us for the moment exclude what might be said about the moral things of those times and only inquire: What has developed from these characteristics of venerable ancient Indian civilisation?

We find, to begin with, that what was most highly honoured and held sacred may be described as “devotion to the spiritual”. This devotion to the spiritual was the more highly valued and counted sacred, the more the human being was able to sink into himself, to live quietly within himself, and, apart from all that man can attain on the physical plane—to direct the best in him to the spiritual worlds. We find this cultivation, this dedication of the soul to the foundations of existence as the highest duty of those who belonged or belong to the highest caste of Indian life, the Brahmins.

Nothing impresses the moral feelings of the Indian people more than this turning to the Divine-Spiritual with a devotion which forgets everything physical; an intensely deep introspection and renunciation of self. The moral life of this people is permeated by a devotion which controls every thought and action. This is apparent from the fact that those who belonged to other castes looked upon it as natural, especially in ancient times, that the caste of religious life and devotion and the life of ritual should be considered as something apart and worthy of reverence. That which underlies this cannot be understood by means of the common principles of morality laid down by philosophy, for at the period when these feelings and impulses developed in ancient India they were impossible among other peoples. In order that these tendencies could develop with such intensity both the temperament and fundamental character of the Indian people were required. As civilisation proceeded, emanating from India they spread abroad over the rest of the earth. If we wish to understand what is meant by the Divine-Spiritual we must go to this original source.

Let us now turn our attention away from this people and direct it towards Europe. Let us consider the peoples of Europe before Christianity had affected European culture very much, when it had only begun to spread in the West. You all know that Christianity spreading into Europe from the East and South was confronted by the peoples of Europe, who possessed certain tendencies, a definite inner worth and definite forces. One who studies with spiritual means the history of the introduction of Christianity into Central Europe and also here in the North, knows at what cost the balance was struck between this or that Christian impulse and what was brought to meet it from Northern and Central Europe.

And now let us inquire—as we have already done in the case of the Indian people—“What were the most characteristic moral forces brought to Christianity as a moral possession, a moral heritage, by the peoples whose successors form the present European population, especially the population of the North, Central Europe and England?” We need only mention a single one of the principal virtues, and we know at once that we are expressing something which is truly characteristic of these Northern and Mid-European peoples.—With the word “valour,” or “bravery,” we have named the chief virtue brought by the Europeans to Christianity; and the whole of the personal human force was exercised in order to actualise in the physical world what the human being intends from his innermost impulse. Intrinsically the further we go back to ancient times the more we find this to be the case—the other virtues are consequent upon this.

If we examine real valour in its fundamental quality, we find that it consists of an inner fullness of life which is practically inexhaustible, and this fullness of life was the most salient characteristic among the ancient peoples of Europe. Ancient Europeans possessed within them more valour than they could use for themselves. Quite instinctively, they followed the impulse to spend that of which they had a superabundance. One might even say that they were wasteful in pouring out their moral wealth, their fitness, and ability into the physical world. It was really as if among the ancient people of Northern Europe each one had brought with him a superfluity of force which was more than he needed for his own personal use; this he was therefore able to pour forth in an excess of prodigality and to use it for his warlike deeds. Modern ideas now consider these self-same warlike deeds, which were the outcome of ancient virtue, to be a relic of the past, and in fact they are classed as vices; but the man of ancient Europe used them in a chivalrous, magnanimous manner. Generous actions were characteristic of the peoples of ancient Europe, just as actions springing from devotion were characteristic of the people of ancient India.

Principles, theoretical moral axioms, would have been useless to the peoples of ancient Europe, for they would have evinced little understanding for them. Preaching moral sermons to a man of ancient Europe would have been like giving one who does not like reckoning, the advice that he ought to write down his receipts and expenditures with great accuracy. If he does not like this, the simple fact remains that he need not keep accounts, for he possesses enough for his expenditure, and can do without careful book-keeping if he has an inexhaustible supply. This circumstance is not unimportant. Theoretically it holds good with regard to what the human being considers of value in life, regarding personal energy and ability, and it also applies to the moral feelings of the inhabitants of ancient Europe. Each one had brought with him a divine legacy, as it were; he felt himself to be full of it, and spent it in the service of his family, his clan or his people. That was their mode of active trading and working.

We have now characterised two great sections of humanity which, were quite different from one another, for the feeling of contemplation natural to the Indians did not exist among Europeans. For, this reason it was difficult for Christianity to bring a feeling of devotion to the latter people, for their character and predispositions were entirely different. And now after considering these things—putting aside all the objections which might be raised from the standpoint of a moral concept—let us enquire into the moral effect. It does not require much reflection to know that this moral effect was extremely great when these two ways of looking at the world, these two trends of feeling met in their purest form. The world has gained infinitely much by that which could only be obtained through the existence of a people like the ancient Indians, among whom all feeling was directed to devotion to the Highest. Infinitely much it has also gained from the valiant deeds, of the European peoples of early pre-Christian times. Both these qualities had to co-operate, and together they yielded a certain moral effect. We shall see how the effect of the ancient Indian virtue as well as that of the ancient Germanic peoples can still be found to-day; how it has benefited not only a part but the whole of humanity, and we shall see how it still exists in all that men look up to as the highest.

So without further discussion, we may assert that something which produces this moral effect for humanity is good. Doubtless, in both streams of civilisation it must be so. But if, we were to ask: what is “goodness”? we are confronted once more by a puzzling question. What is the “good” which has been active in each of these cases? I do not wish to give you moral sermons, for this I do not consider my task. It is much more my task to bring before you the facts which lead us to an anthroposophical morality. For this reason I have thus far brought before you two systems of known facts, concerning which I ask nothing except that you should note that the fact of devotion and the fact of bravery produce definite moral effects in the evolution of humanity.

Let us now turn our attention to other ages. If you look at the life of the present day with its moral impulses you will naturally say: “We cannot practise to-day—at least not in Europe—what the purest ideal of India demands, for European civilisation cannot be carried on with Indian devotionalism”; but just as 1ittle would it be possible to attain to our present civilisation, with the ancient praiseworthy valour of the people of Europe. It at once becomes evident that deep in the innermost part of the ethical, feelings of the European peoples there is something else. We must therefore search out that something more in order to be able to answer the question: What is goodness? What is virtue?

I have often pointed out that we have to distinguish between the period we call the Graeco-Latin or fourth post-Atlantean age of civilisation and the one we call the fifth, in which we live at the present time. What I have now to say regarding the nature of morality is really intended to characterise the origin of the fifth post-Atlantean age. Let us begin with something which, as it is taken from poetry and legend you may consider open to dispute; but still it is significant of the way in which fresh moral impulses became active and how they flowed into mankind when the development of the fifth age gradually set in.

There was a poet who lived at the end of the 12th century and beginning of 13th century. He died in the year 1213, and was called Hartmann von Aue. He wrote his most important poem, entitled “Poor Henry,” in accordance with the way of thinking and feeling prevalent in his day. This poem particularly addresses what was thought about certain moral impulses among certain peoples in certain circles. Its substance is as follows:—Poor Henry once lived as a rich knight—for originally he was not poor Henry but a duly installed knight—who did not take into account that the things of the physical world decay and are temporary; he lived only for the day and thereby rapidly produced bad karma. He was thus stricken with a form of leprosy; he went to the most celebrated physicians in the world but none of them could help him, so considering his life at an end he sold all his worldly possessions; His disease preventing intercourse with his fellows he lived apart on a solitary farm, well taken care of by an old devoted servant and daughter. One day the daughter and the whole household heard that one thing alone could help the knight who had this destiny. No physician, no medicines could help him, only when a pure virgin out of pure love sacrificed her life for him would his health be restored. In spite of all the exhortations of her parents and of the knight Henry himself, something came over the daughter which made her feel that it was imperative she should sacrifice herself. She went with the knight to Salerno, the most celebrated school of medicine of the day. She did not fear what the physicians required of her; she was ready to sacrifice her life. But at the last moment the knight refused to allow it, he prevented it and returned home with her. The poem then tells us that when the knight returned home, he actually began. to recover and that he lived for a long time and spent a happy old age with the one who had determined to save him.

Well, to begin with, you may say that this is a poem, and we need not take literally the things here spoken of. But the matter becomes different when we compare what Hartmann von Aue, the poet of the Middle Ages, wrote at that time in his Poor Henry" with something that really happened, as is well known. We may compare what Hartmann wrote with the life of Francis of Assisi, who was born in the year 1182 and lived in Italy.

In order to describe, the moral nature contained in the personality of Francis of Assisi, let us consider the matter as it appears to the spiritual investigator or occultist, even though we may be looked upon as foolish and superstitious. These things must be taken seriously, because at that period of transition they were producing such momentous effects.

We know that Francis of Assisi was the son of the Italian merchant Bernardone, and his wife. Bernardone travelled a great deal in France, where he carried on his business. We also know that the father of Francis of Assisi was a man who set great store on outer appearances. His mother was a woman possessing the virtue of piety, having fine qualities of heart, and living devoutly according to her religious feelings. Now the things recounted in the form of legends about the birth and life of Francis of Assisi are entirely in agreement with occult facts. Although occult facts are frequently hidden by history in pictures and legends, these legends still correspond with them. Thus it is quite true that before the birth of Francis of Assisi quite a number of persons knew through revelation that an important personality was about to be born. Historical records show that one of the many people who dreamt—that is, who saw in prophetic vision—that an important personality was about to be born, was Saint Hildegarde. At this point I must emphasise once more the truth of these facts, which can be corroborated by investigations into the Akashic Record. She dreamt that there appeared to her a woman whose face was smeared and covered with blood, and this woman said to her: “The birds have their nests here upon earth, the foxes too have their holes, but at the present time I have nothing, not even a stick upon which I can lean.” When Hildegarde awakened from this dream, she knew this personality represented the true form of Christianity. And many other persons dreamt in a similar manner. From the knowledge at their disposal they saw that the outer order and institution of the church was unfitted to be a receptacle, a covering, for the true Christianity.

One day, while Francis of Assisi's father was on business in France—this, again, is a fact—a pilgrim went to Pica's house, to the mother of Francis of Assisi, and said to her: “The child you are expecting must not be brought into the world in this house, where there is abundance; you must bring him to birth in the stable, for he must lie upon straw and so follow after his Master!” This was actually said to the mother of Francis of Assisi; and it is not legend but truth that as the father was in France on business the mother was able to carry this out, so that the birth of Francis of Assisi actually took place in a stable and upon straw.

Another thing is also true: Some time after the child was born a remarkable man came into the little town, a man who had never been seen in that neighbourhood before and was never seen there again. He went through the streets again and again saying “An important person has been born in this town.” And those whose visionary life was still active also heard the ringing of bells at the time of the birth of Francis of Assisi.

Besides these few details a whole series of phenomena might be adduced, but we shall content ourselves with the above, which are only mentioned in order to show how significantly everything was concentrated from the spiritual world, regarding the advent of a single personality in that age.

All this becomes especially interesting when in addition we consider something else. The mother had the peculiar impression that the child ought to be called “John” and he was therefore given this name. However, when the father returned from France where he had done good business, he changed it and gave his son the name of Francis, as he wished to commemorate his successful journey. But originally the child was called John.

Now we need only draw attention to a few details from the life of this, remarkable man, especially from his youth. What sort of a person was Francis of Assisi as a youth? He was one who conducted himself like a descendant of the old Germanic knights, and this need not appear remarkable when we consider how peoples had intermingled after the immigrations from the North. Brave, warlike, filled with the ideal of winning honour and fame with the weapons of war; it was this which existed as a heritage, as a racial characteristic in the personality of Francis of Assisi.

There appeared in him more externally, one might say, the qualities which existed more as an inward quality of soul in the ancient Germans, for Francis of Assisi was a “spendthrift.” He squandered the possessions of his father, who was at that time a rich man. He gave freely to all his comrades and playfellows. No wonder that on all the childish warlike expeditions he was chosen as leader by his comrades, and that he was looked upon as a truly warlike boy, for he was known as such throughout the whole town. Now there were all sorts of quarrels between the youths of the towns of Assisi and Perugia; he also took part in these and it came about that on one occasion he and his comrades were taken prisoners. He not only bore his captivity patiently and in a knightly way, but he encouraged all the others to do the same until a year later they were able to return home.

Afterwards, when in the service of chivalry, a necessary expedition was going to be undertaken against Naples, he had a vision in a dream. He saw a great palace and everywhere weapons and shields. Up to the time of his dream he had only seen all kinds of cloth in his father's house and place of business. So he said to himself, this is a summons for me to become a soldier, and he thereupon decided to join the expedition. On the way there and still more distinctly after he had joined the expedition, he had spiritual impressions. He heard something like a voice which said “Go no further, you have wrongly interpreted the dream picture which is very important to you. Go back to Assisi and you shall there hear the right interpretation!”

He obeyed these words, went back to Assisi, and behold, he had something like an inner dialogue with a being who spoke to him spiritually and said, “Not in external service have you to seek your knighthood. You are destined to transform all the forces at your disposal into powers of the soul, into weapons forged for your use. All the weapons you saw in the palace signify the spiritual weapons of mercy, compassion and love. The shields signify the reasoning powers which you have to exercise to stand firmly in the trials of a life spent in deeds of mercy, compassion and love.” Then followed a short though dangerous illness, from which, however, he recovered. After that he passed through something like a retrospection of the whole of his life and in this he lived, for several days. The young knight who in his boldest dreams had only longed to become a great warrior was transformed into a man who now most earnestly sought all the impulses of mercy, compassion and love. All the forces he had thought of using in the service of the physical world were transformed into moral impulses of the inner life.

Here we see how a moral impulse evolves in a single personality. It is important that we should study a great moral impulse, for though the individual cannot always raise himself to the greatest ethical heights, yet he can only learn of them where he sees them most radically expressed and acting with the greatest forcefulness. It is precisely by turning our attention to the greatest and most characteristic manifestations of moral impulses, and then by considering the lesser ones in their light that we can attain to a correct view of moral impulses active in life.

But what happened next to Francis of Assisi? It is not necessary to describe the disputes with his father when he became prodigal in an entirely different manner. His father's home was well known for its lavish hospitality and wastefulness—for that reason his father could understand his son's extravagance, but he could not understand him after the radical change he had undergone, when he laid aside his best clothes and even his necessities and gave them to those in need. Nor could he understand his son's frame of mind, when he said, “How remarkable it is that those through whom in the West Christianity has received so much are so little respected,” and then Francis of Assisi made a pilgrimage to Rome and laid a large sum of money on the graves of the Apostles Peter and Paul. These things his father did not understand. I need not describe the discussions which then took place; I need only point out that in them were concentrated all the moral impulses of Francis of Assisi. These concentrated impulses had then transformed his bravery into soul-forces, they had developed in such a manner that in his meditations they produced a special conception, and appeared to him as the Cross and upon it the Saviour. Under these conditions he felt an inner personal relationship to the Cross and the Christ, and from this there came to him the forces through which he could immeasurably increase the moral impulses which now flowed through him.

He found a remarkable use for that which now developed in him. At that time the horrors of leprosy had invaded many parts of Europe. The church had discovered a strange cure for these lepers who were then so numerous. The priests would call the lepers and say to them: “ You are stricken with this disease in this life, but inasmuch as you are lost to this life, you have been won for God, you are dedicated to God.” And the lepers were then sent away to places far removed from mankind, where, lonely and shunned, they had to spend the remainder of their lives.

I do not blame this kind of cure. They knew no better. But Francis of Assisi knew a better one. I mention this, because from actual experience it will lead us to moral sources. You will see in our next lectures why we are now mentioning these things. These moral impulses led Francis of Assisi to search out lepers everywhere, and not to be afraid of going about among them. And actually the leprosy which none of the remedial agents at that time could cure, which made it necessary that these people should be thrust out of human society, this leprosy was healed in numberless cases by Francis of Assisi, because he went to these people with the power which he possessed through moral impulses, which made him fear nothing; it rather gave him courage not only carefully to cleanse their wounds, but to live with the lepers, to nurse them conscientiously, yea, to kiss them and permeate them with his love.

The healing of Poor Henry by the daughter of his faithful servant, is not merely a poetic story, it expresses what actually occurred in a great number of cases at that time through the historically well-known personality of Francis of Assisi. Observe what really took place. In a human being, in Francis of Assisi, there was a tremendous store of psychic life, in the shape of something which we have found in the ancient peoples of Europe as bravery and valour, which had been transformed into soul and spirit, and afterwards acted psychically and spiritually. Just as in ancient times that which had expressed itself as courage and valour led to personal expenditure of force, and manifested itself in Francis of Assisi in his younger days as extravagance, so it now led him to become prodigal of moral forces. He was full to overflowing with moral force, and this actually passed over to those to whom he turned his love.

Now try to realise that this moral force is a reality, just as much a reality as the air we breathe and without which we cannot live. It is a reality which flooded the whole being of Francis of Assisi, and streamed from him into all hearts to which he dedicated himself, for Francis of Assisi was prodigal of abundance of force which streamed forth from him, and this is something which has streamed into and intermingled with the whole of the mature life of Europe, which has changed into a soul force, and thus worked, as it were, in the world of external reality.

Try to reflect upon these facts which at first may apparently have nothing to do with the actual question of morality; try to grasp what is contained in the devotion of the Indian and the valour of the Norseman; reflect upon the healing effect of such moral forces as were exercised by Francis of Assisi and then in our next lecture we shall be able to speak about real, moral impulses and we shall see that it is not merely words which give rise to morality, but realities working in the soul.