The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees! The things I will talk about today and tomorrow are the object of knowledge and longing that fills every human soul. On the other hand, however, they are currently the subject of of a discussion in which the pros and cons are raised in the most forceful way, and in which just as much misunderstood scientific knowledge prevails on the one hand as disembodied, but often well-intentioned dilettantism on the other. My task today is to show you that a scientific approach to the study of the human mind and soul is entirely possible, and at the same time to point out the pitfalls of dilettantism, amateurism and the like in this particular field. We will see, my dear audience, that in the field of real spiritual research, as it is meant here, it is a matter of striving for a completely new kind of knowledge, not just another field of knowledge, a kind of knowledge that neither the ordinary science of the present nor the layman has a proper concept of, but a kind of knowledge But a way of knowing that, on the other hand, is already prepared to the furthest extent in the instincts, in the unconscious impulses of the souls of our time, and of which one will most certainly - like the one who is imbued with this kind of spiritual science - in the not too distant future have a very different view than in the present.

The subject I will be speaking about today and tomorrow is, however, often dismissed as dreamy, fantastic or even worse. Anyone who wants to work their way scientifically towards this kind of knowledge, which is what I want to talk about, must, however, have experienced two prerequisites, and I am talking about experiences. One cannot approach the science in question here in the way that, as a young person, one can approach any other science after the usual preparation. If one wants to apply this science in practice, one must strive for total human knowledge using different methods. One must have fully experienced certain experiences and events.

One experience is to be undergone with that which is rightly admired today in the widest circles and by those people who understand something of the matter, because it has been brought infinitely far by people, especially in the course of the nineteenth century and in the present day. That is the scientific realization; and anyone who wants to penetrate to the spiritual science meant here must know what can be experienced in relation to the great riddle of humanity precisely from the scientific way of knowing. One must have experienced again and again, in inner struggle, how far one can come with this scientific way of knowing in relation to the highest questions of the life of the spirit and soul. And one must not, as is the case with many people, have only reached a certain limit in this field in theory. Rather, one must have reached this limit through an inner spiritual practice. Man must have reached that limit in the same way that science is limited. In its own way and method, science has achieved its results in its field, in which it has achieved such brilliant things, precisely because it has proceeded so conscientiously and precisely, so appropriately to the objects, in its method, as is always the case.

Thus, a person must have gone through all of this: how to conduct scientific research, how to penetrate the secrets of the world through the natural sciences, and how far one can go with this scientific research. But, as Bois-Reymond, the [physiologist] who was famous in the 1870s and is unfortunately much too r forgotten, rightly emphasized, he cannot arrive at purely theoretical conclusions in the study of the soul, for he must not only go through the process of research in this field logically and exactly scientifically in his innermost being, but he must also experience in his soul what is penetrating into human consciousness in this process. He must not only work his way into the field of this science from a purely scientific point of view.

And here it becomes clear – I want to describe the matter today from the point of view of the experience – that precisely when one remains firmly on the ground of natural science, one must come to certain concepts and ideas in the face of which one is repeatedly forced to admit: There one cannot go further, one cannot get through. There people's courage fails, there one stands at the boundary of experience. But it does not have to be that way. Rather, it turns out that concepts with which one brings the forces of nature to one's understanding cannot be penetrated by the scientific mode of knowledge, but remain standing and ultimately shape themselves into a spiritual reality. This spiritual reality remains standing, it does not dissolve in the human interior, it remains as a residue with which one cannot penetrate into this human interior.

I will only hint at the fact that in wrestling with these borderline conceptions, one proceeds as if, figuratively speaking, one saw again, as in a mirror, what one does and develops in scientific learning. It is indeed such a struggle when one develops one's own concepts; but one develops them in relation to the external world, just as a person standing before a mirror develops his own image by forming it through the mirror. And if one tries to penetrate further, then it is as if – to stick with the image – one were to smash the mirror. If the mirror is smashed, you no longer see anything, and so nothing remains if one tries to add to these primary concepts in the same way.

So, if you don't proceed in the right way, it is impossible to arrive at anything other than a realization where you have to stop. This occurs precisely when you don't proceed in the right way, because then you have to break the mirror, that is, the spiritual researcher must not stop at this realization. He must go further and ask himself: What is the inner experience actually like? What is it that our scientific knowledge breaks, that it is as if we wanted to break the mirror when we push further? And when the spiritual researcher then really gets involved in looking at these scientific concepts in relation to the human soul life, when he asks himself the hypothetical question: what would the human being be like if he were to make further scientific discoveries here, if he were to succeed in achieving equally brilliant results in this field, results that he could use over others, and if he were to penetrate beyond this boundary too? - then one must say: human beings would have to be organized differently, have different kinds of cognitive abilities.

But what would that mean? This last question has no bearing on present-day science. From the standpoint of its world view, the question is not asked: What would people have to be like who would penetrate into the fields in a scientific way, into which people want to penetrate in accordance with what they feel as a serious purpose in life, as a longing? We will have to go into this matter in more detail later, but for now I will just state it from the point of view of knowledge and say, quite hypothetically: If the scientific borderline conceptions could be mastered with the means by which they cannot be mastered, then either things would be such that scientific method could penetrate them, or man would be organized in such a way that he could submerge himself in this world, and then man would not be capable of developing a certain power that is closely connected with human life as it is on earth. Man would not be capable, if he were so organized, of developing love for any being or even for his fellow human beings. A person who could see through the world scientifically would be a loveless being in whom the power of love would never take hold. Man would therefore have to be different; love in its various stages up to the highest enthusiasm would be absent at all levels of human existence if, scientifically speaking, these limits did not exist.

This is experienced by the fact that, as a spiritual researcher, one is able to observe human beings so closely that one can say what a person would be like if one or other faculty were missing, if something were to be lost from the entire human organization. Therefore, it can be said that a person who could penetrate to the highest questions in the natural sciences would be a person without love, and thus a very different being from the human being on earth. Not many people today hold this view, because it is the result of many years of scientific research, but many people have an instinct for it. If I may use a paradoxical expression, I would like to say that many people have unconscious knowledge of it. Many people today already say to themselves: That which is called science today cannot bring us satisfaction; that must be sought in other ways. And these other paths are often the stomping ground of such amateur theoretical endeavors by people who say to themselves: Science cannot give me what I am seriously looking for; and they come to make progress towards the solution of these highest human questions by the path of what is often called mysticism in life. But this ordinary mysticism and all that is hidden under different names such as occultism, transcendentalism, and so on, is just as unsuitable for penetrating into the depths of human existence in true reality.

Spiritual science must, on the one hand, have the experiences at the boundary of natural science behind it and, on the other hand, the realization of the inadequacy of ordinary mysticism. And all talk about how what cannot be achieved in the usual way, in a scientific way, must be achieved by trying to experience the spiritual, the comprehensive nature of the world through inner deepening and concentration, does not change this. The one who approaches these things without prejudice, without a ridiculous layman's attitude, will soon realize in his experience that this repeated immersion in the soul, on which mysticism pins so many hopes, contributes just as little to true reality as today's knowledge of nature.

For he who has trained his mind in the natural sciences also knows how to live through what is called mystical contemplation, and knows how to look at it in the right way. He has to go through all these self-experiments, he can do them and can also look at them by doing them, and knows that he will not get any further in this way than to the form of the image of reality. But in this image there is still a great deal of human will and so much that cannot be excluded, what one has experienced so far, and other things that the subconscious holds in the depths of the soul, that mere immersion in the inner self can never provide certainty of knowledge, so that one must say to oneself: Mysticism can help you to delve into yourself to a certain degree, but not to the point of reaching the core of your own humanity, where you can grasp being itself and no longer the mere image that you feel and live.

These two ways of experiencing must be left behind, you have to have stood at these two limits - in relation to the experience of nature and ordinary mystical contemplation - and be able to say to yourself: Outer reality never fully reveals itself, because if it did, we would smash the mirror; reality does not flow into us. And with ordinary mysticism, we do not get close to reality; we remain with the image, we remain with what appears in reality, but we do not dive into it, and an abyss opens up between what outer knowledge of nature is and what mysticism reveals. Only an image remains, only the vapor of a true reality of the soul, which wells up out of reality in the light of the soul. But we cannot cross the abyss, and when we look at reality, it remains completely foreign to us. In this area in particular, the scientific method will never be able to grasp knowledge in practical experience and lead us across this abyss.

I will prove the correctness of my assertion by means of an example taken from literature. The example shows how helpless a natural scientist feels when approaching the inner life of man. This example is described in a collection that deals with these two borderline issues, in the so-called Wiesbaden Collection, Waldstein, and from this example it is quite clear what a helpless situation a natural scientist of the present day is in when he wants to penetrate into the depths of the soul using this method. The author of this writing about the unconscious self recounts: He was once standing in front of a bookshop; he is a naturalist, there are many books in the bookshop, and his eye falls on a book entitled 'On Molluscs'. This may interest the naturalist, since in this case it touches on his area of expertise, and as he looks at the title of the book 'On Molluscs', Waldstein suddenly feels compelled to smile.

Now he is himself amazed at why he has to smile, because a serious naturalist cannot be moved to smile, and looking at something as serious as the book “On Molluscs” is no reason to smile. He wants to find out why this book about mollusks seems to make him smile, and he does so very ingeniously by closing his eyes and trying to just listen. And then he hears a very distant organ grinder that he hadn't heard while he was focusing on the book about mollusks. And the organ was playing a melody that he learned to dance to ten years ago. He also didn't pay much attention to the melody when he was learning to dance, because, as he says, he paid much more attention to his steps and to his partner, but not to the melody; so at that time he didn't pay attention to the melody , now his attention was completely diverted and only a faint sound resonates in his soul, which also only faintly sounded ten years ago, and yet - this faintly dawning experience awakened in him the impression that he begins to smile in front of the solemn mollusc beech.

You can see what the person who faces this solemn thing has to say to himself: What he brings up there and out of his soul, which cannot be explained at all. The naturalist Waldstein only noticed the matter by closing his eyes and investigating, and one must say: the person who reflects on this must realize that this human memory is something quite remarkable. We have a general grasp of our ordinary powers of recollection and we can usually say what our memories relate to – for this is based on our powers of imagination. However, we can never guarantee that unconscious extraneous elements are not mixed in. Nevertheless, what is entrusted to our memory forms part of the best of our soul life. ... [Gap]

When a spiritual researcher encounters an observation like the Waldsteins', he realizes that he needs to look again in his inner experience and ask himself: How is it that ordinary mysticism, this immersion in one's own mind, cannot possibly approach a reality? Anyone who has become acquainted with the scientific conscientiousness in contemporary natural science repeatedly and intensely asks such questions and will in many cases be able to indicate how people who believe that they can draw a mighty and powerful Being into their soul through mystical contemplation are actually unconsciously repeating the sounds of a once-heard barrel organ. They say he has immersed himself in the divine being, but that is not true; a youthful impression has emerged in him and is reflected in him.

True science must be as critical as possible; but if you force yourself to truly and truly observe yourself, you will be able to tell yourself why you cannot get to the place where our being is rooted through the path of ordinary mysticism. And you come to realize that in the ordinary life of a person, you cannot aspire to reach the point where the human soul plunges into reality, because you would lack what you need to be human in this life. If you want to penetrate into the depths of reality with your ordinary life of ideas, you do something other than penetrating into your own being, and that is that you either develop your perception and what you experience, whether it be as self-awareness or as fate, or you practice mysticism and reshape what becomes memory in the depths. We would have no memory if we could penetrate to the sources of our being. And so the work we wanted to do on our way into the depths of our souls is stopped, so that what we experience spiritually can later be brought up again through memory. We must not penetrate into our selves, otherwise we would know nothing. We cannot penetrate into what our being is because we have to stop earlier.

Therefore, it is not surprising that we do not delve into it spiritually, but are stopped by our memory, and so it comes to pass that we stand before the abyss of knowledge for two reasons: because man would have to be a completely different being if he could penetrate into the knowledge of nature; he would be a being devoid of love; and the other reason is that If a person in their normal consciousness were to delve into their own inner being and immerse themselves in their own reality, they would have no memory or recall, and you know what it would mean for a healthy human life if a person had no memory. For millennia, the health of our soul life has consisted in our ability to remember.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I had to say first, because those who want to become true spiritual researchers must have these experiences behind them. One can begin with spiritual science, but not with spiritual research, without building it on the great disappointments, on the disappointments of life, which consist in the realization that one cannot solve the riddle of life by scientific means and that one cannot cross the boundary within through ordinary mysticism... [Gap] But on the spiritual side, it – spiritual science – can only build in the same way that natural science does in the external physical realm. Spiritual science must change consciousness if it is to penetrate to the depths of human existence. Just as one does not leave water as it is when one wants to do chemical experiments, but has to change it, break it down into hydrogen and oxygen using special devices, in order to arrive at what can be scientifically investigated, so in real spiritual research one must make changes to one's inner being, one must make a make a ruthless confession of life, the earnest confession that one cannot get behind the riddles of humanity with the cognitive abilities one has in life, but that one must shape and form them until one can penetrate through them into the depths where ordinary consciousness does not penetrate.

And because that is the case, because you really don't need to develop knowledge of nature on the one hand and mystical knowledge on the other in order to penetrate the human mystery through experiments, but because you have to strive for a different knowledge, you have to make our soul different from what it usually is, this path is still widely avoided, and what this science is supposed to achieve. It is shunned just as much as Copernicanism was shunned in its time, when people still had different ways of thinking. And just as the habits of thought of that time were overcome in the course of time, and as even the opposing communities had to decide to accept Copernicanism, so the time will come when all opposition will accept what is being sought here as spiritual research, but which can only be created through the transformation of the life of the soul.

This transformation of human life is described in detail in my books, in which it is characterized in principle from a few points of view, about which those who have heard my earlier Vienna lectures are better informed. There I also said that it is not a matter of somehow transforming the ordinary everyday life of a person and making it unhealthy, but of making progress in the field of the inner experience of human existence, and that through this the soul must become something different through inner exercises and activities in a very specific direction than it reveals itself in ordinary consciousness. This can only be the case when one wants to be a spiritual researcher.

Many people believe that with this method one can transform the whole person into something else. But one cannot, one cannot be a spiritual researcher from awakening to falling asleep, because otherwise one would fill the whole person with what can lead us straight into the spiritual realm of existence. On the one hand, the human being would be shaped in such a way that his ability to remember would not function properly, and on the other hand, his ability to love would take a wrong turn. But if the soul is practised in the right way, which is what we are talking about in principle, then what I have described as a danger does not occur, but rather a strengthening of the human being occurs, because it must be emphasized again and again that everything that spiritual research can give can only be gained through spiritual research, but that one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to have the ability to understand what has been researched.

Just as not everyone can be a chemist and yet chemical knowledge rules in life, so not everyone needs to be a spiritual researcher who, through their common sense, understands how the results of spiritual research are based on truth, because it is possible for everyone to become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent and to test for themselves whether everything that spiritual research claims is possible.

The essential thing is that the soul life transforms itself in such a way that it accomplishes inner tasks that would otherwise not be possible. How to do that is explained in the books I have mentioned, but in principle I wanted to discuss it here. One can awaken the ability to detach oneself from all impressions of everyday life, an ability that one must learn, however, just as one must learn to do physical experiments, and in the same way one must be able to extinguish all impressions of the outside world for the spiritual and soul. One must be able to induce such a state of mind through inner experiments, which one otherwise induces when one is in a dreamless sleep.

But when we put ourselves in a position to sleep in this way, we must not completely abandon consciousness. Instead, our inner soul life is strengthened in such a way that when we return to our ordinary life, the full waking consciousness can be maintained, although we do not have to rely on external impressions to spark this consciousness. Supersensible awareness is a full awareness of our inner soul life, which we achieve by developing an inner activity that is purely soul-spiritual and does not play into our everyday life. The activities have to be spiritual-soul activities, and we see the inner soul life that would otherwise be used to absorb external impressions. We save the strength that would otherwise be used for perception. This is how thinking and imagining come to life, and thinking and imagining flow together.

It is a coming together within a life in which the inner self becomes conscious through having a picture in front of you that is formed by arbitrarily combining shapes, which cannot be interpreted in a bad mystical sense. But one must also be aware that the inner life of the soul will be strengthened in this way, that it will become more intense, that a different self-awareness will be evoked by imagining just as vividly as one perceives. One achieves this by practising one's soul, by completely grasping something new, by processing its image in the soul, which makes no claim to represent itself in energetic thinking and soul life. At first one senses only an inner strengthening of self-awareness. This is one side of the feeling that the human soul must unite with itself. But one also recognizes that which one has previously developed more or less unconsciously in one's inner depths, but it does not lead to making something permanent.

If nothing else were added, such an inner soul life would be completely forgotten; it would only be an experience in the immediate present, because it does not cling to the power of remembrance. Those who object to the methods of real spiritual research and science on the grounds that they too can only unconsciously call upon the power of remembrance should admit that it is precisely the power of remembrance that is excluded and does not participate. Everything that one experiences anew and that has so strengthened one's consciousness does not go down into the region of the powers of remembrance. It is something that forms inwardly but is not suitable for a person to keep within. What is experienced through spiritual research is not suitable for waking remembrance and lives only in that inner life that is awakened by the distant sounds of the barrel organ.

What I have explained here leads first to a strengthening of the inner life of the soul, to a strengthening of self-awareness. The person who practices this comes to say to himself: I can do it this way and I now know where it comes from. I have the high feeling that with my soul, when I have changed it, I can recognize the sources of life and the physical basis for it. I think that those are right who consider the ordinary life of the soul as bound to the body; I know that if one wants to arrive at this self-consciousness, which recognizes itself in this way, one must say: I do not recognize through my body. But one must first have gone through what I have described.

But one must go one step further. The one who practices the exercise I have been talking about for years of his life notices that he enters into a strange way of further exploring this self-transformation. He comes to a way of experiencing in which these images overwhelm him to a certain degree; he acquires in his soul a certain ability for pictorial representation. This is heightened fantasy, this is heightened imaginative experience. One attains imaginative experience, but one must continue to shape the soul through ever more advanced voluntary self-education. Through ever greater strengthening of the inner will, one must learn to master the inner images when they begin to want to master him. Otherwise, one would only ever see one's own images. But if you succeed in mastering them, you will also be able not only to shape these images, but also to remove them.

You also have to have this power, and you acquire it through the exercises I have described, through which you gain control over your inner formative activity. But then the soul feels different when you have really gone through these inner processes and increased your self-awareness by forming images, and when you can now erase these images. Then you are in a world that is different from the world of ordinary reality; now you are in a spiritual reality through the transformed soul life.

This can be compared to the natural development of the senses; one must see what one has developed like an inner, spiritual eye. But this is initially like a physical eye whose cornea is still cloudy. By erasing the image, one must first heal the eye before it is able to see the image. While in the past it was possible to strengthen self-awareness, now the imagination may look into another world, which cannot be revealed in any other way than this.

But one must have courage to go through such an experience of the soul if one wants to penetrate into the reality of the spiritual world. And then the following occurs: one feels as if awakened in a new world. This awakening in a new world is an experience, it is like waking up from dream-life into ordinary life, and one now knows: in dream-life one had no reality before one, but in waking-life one has the happenings of reality before one. Thus one can awaken out of the world of physical reality into the spiritual reality.

But there must also be something from the other side. In our ordinary life, there are not only perceptions and perceptions, but also feeling forces that have a certain direction in each person. They have perceptions and perceptions that need to be transformed, and the feeling powers must also be withdrawn from the external world. Through the inner concentration of life, man must be able to bring about his calmness towards the external world for all feelings and the willing life. The soul life must not be stimulated by anything that stimulates it from the external world. The will must not be directed towards anything external. Nothing external must be allowed to cause a change. The spirit must be uninvolved in the external world at the moment when it approaches spiritual research.

Then a remarkable transformation takes place in the soul of the human being; one makes the discovery that previously, in ordinary consciousness, all perceptions and ideas were delimited by our feelings. Now that memory is eliminated, now that we are outwardly calm, the feelings and will of life can penetrate into the soul, into that which we have developed; and as the soul has awakened, that which is formed in the inner soul through the repressed feelings that still slumber within, flows into it. Now an inner complement of thinking, feeling and willing arises, which are no longer the same as they are in ordinary consciousness. One has not only awakened, because in the awakening of the soul life, the outer mind also lives and reveals itself as it reveals itself through the senses in ordinary reality.

Through the transformation of the inner soul forces, through feeling and will, one can approach the things of the spiritual world. New abilities show up that would otherwise remain dormant in the soul. What I have described gives the soul the opportunity to develop such powers with which it can penetrate into the spiritual world, but only for the time in which it is doing spiritual research.

But these powers are different from the powers of ordinary consciousness, and misunderstandings arise because people do not distinguish between the soul's attitude when it is doing spiritual research and ordinary consciousness. To explore the realities of the spirit, the soul must apply what is described to itself. And people only resist this because they avoid seriously acquiring the powers that can only penetrate when applied in the right way. Then they would also see how different these abilities are from those we have in ordinary life and which we need for a healthy life. What the soul experiences, it experiences through these supersensible soul powers, not through the ordinary ones, as with the outer sense effects or mental images, which do not come about other than as remembering. What is experienced in the spirit is not a mere process of imagination, not mere fantasy, and what the spirit experiences in this way is not transformed into the ability to remember. One does not simply remember, but one must approach the experience again, and that is how this process differs from fantasy, that is how one recognizes it as the expression of real spiritual activity.

You will allow me to tie in with personal matters; but in this area there is much that has to tie in with personal matters, because spiritual research is tied to the person. I can look back with complete clarity to the moment in my life – it was many years ago – when I was able to see for the first time how, in the clouds and the sky, in short, in the external world, forces are at work that do not come from this life or from what we have inherited from father and mother, but such forces that one can say come from a life in a spiritual world that preceded our earthly life, before we connected with the forces generated by father and mother. During this life of the soul, powers are perceived and other powers, which come from previous lives, are active in the perception. One comes to such direct insight, but the most important thing is that one experiences this insight and knows that the spiritual world is also active in the ordinary consciousness, in the will and in all true perceptions. But it would be in vain to try to recall such an experience later, to bring it back to mind, if one has not done something quickly enough to be able to bring it back into one's memory later. What one must do must be done with complete clarity of consciousness, because remembering is impossible. Memory is excluded for the spiritual experience of the soul, and one only remembers something else when one is back in the ordinary life of the soul. And one can only see the experience with reversed memory and one can say to oneself: How did I come to have such a spiritual experience, what did I do, what did the soul think and feel before that it came about? How did this experience come about? One can remember that, not the experience itself, but how one came to it. One must remember that, one must go to this experience of the spiritual world by not recreating the experience, but recreating the conditions of the experience.

And when I speak to you about the conception of a lecture like today's, which is about spiritual matters, I must also say: You cannot do it as you would with ordinary lectures. I often give such lectures, but I have to say that it is extremely difficult for me to be able to hold on to such a lecture through ordinary memory. One can only prepare for it by creating the conditions under which one originally came to it, and that is what I want to tell the listeners. One wants to speak to the spiritual world and to do that one has to create the conditions. But because that is the case, it turns out that one can never count on retaining a spiritual experience in mere memory. But one can look into the spiritual world and then what one has to say comes to the fore. Those who want to see into the spiritual world must renounce the memory of the spiritual world.

This is indeed a disappointment for some. One can train oneself by practicing the powers to see into the experiences and processes of the spiritual world, but one does not remember them and is disappointed because the spiritual experiences dissolve into nothing, and that is precisely the disappointment of all beginners. But by re-establishing the conditions, one also awakens the memory in an artificial way, which is not imagination, and what was seen spiritually then remains, as a dream remains in the memory, and one sees what one has seen in the spiritual life. It comes to looking, one sees how that which itself seems to fade out and pass away, remains, one sees back into the past, but in a sense one cannot remember it.

Another thing comes up that also leads to certain disappointments for the beginner. It is the contrast to ordinary healthy earthly life, where one can develop powers that, like skill and habit, for example, are increased by certain repeated actions, and one can strengthen these powers in ordinary sensory life through repetition. In ordinary sensory life it is like that, but in the experience of the spirit it is the opposite. As paradoxical and absurd as it may sound, the more often one has a spiritual experience, the more difficult it is to bring it about again. And if you want to have the spiritual experience again and again, you have to make ever greater efforts to have it again. So you experience things in the opposite way to sensory experiences and realize that, in order to finally experience, you have to look at such experiences as quickly as possible. Because the experiences of the soul have the peculiarity of passing by as quickly as possible, they pass by unnoticed for those who have only done a few exercises and do not have the necessary presence of mind to really hold such experiences.

Many more people would have spiritual experiences if they had the necessary presence of mind. We live in the midst of spiritual life. But people do not have the presence of mind to really grasp them; and when they decide to turn their attention to them, the experience is over. Therefore, a thorough exercise is necessary, and in my books you will find how to prepare for this presence of mind, so that you are able to quickly decide in ordinary life situations, to quickly make these decisions. One must get into the habit of making the first decision definitively, and those people who unnecessarily turn every thing around in all directions and keep changing their minds, these loners of life, who muddle around even in ordinary life, they can never make quick decisions and observe mental experiences. They refrain from applying the intended exercises to such experiences. But they have to be there, because only then do the abilities arise in the soul that make the soul suitable for observing such processes. And then it will be able to give itself the answer as to why one cannot approach this mystery by the way of natural knowledge and ordinary mysticism, because this soul life between birth and death is bound to the living body, and one must look at something else that is not bound to ordinary life.

The moment one has acquired the ability to look at spiritual events that are not retained in memory – because this is bound to the body – the question that intrudes into human life and forms the human riddle is also answered. The first question is a philosophical issue, but we cannot get to the bottom of it because we only have it as an ordinary experience; yes, even if the sounds of a street organ suddenly play into our ordinary soul life and we , we can never be sure what drives them up. There is one thing that arises in our ordinary mental life and to which we must relate differently than to all the other ideas and thoughts present in this mental life. It is [...] logical and, so to speak, pure thinking, apart from such impressions of the sounds of the street organ; we can tell right from wrong. Logic is often written only for schools. But these questions cannot be answered with this school logic. If, however, we engage with these things with real logic, then we will also be able to tell, in a certain sense, what is right and what is wrong, quite apart from what is conscious and what is unconscious, what is sympathetic and what is antipathetic.

If we reach into the life of the soul in this way and ask ourselves why this is so, we only experience the answer when we observe with the described and transformed life of the soul, and only then do we realize that forces are at play in our soul that impel us to these considerations, forces that reach into our life from the life we led earlier, before our parents had produced us, forces that we acquired from the spiritual life before birth or before conception. But the one who cannot look into the thinking activity cannot think correctly about the eternal spirit that presents itself in him. Therefore, one can also say what many have already said: the transformation of the soul life happens in such a way that, so to speak, the whole soul life is transformed as if mystically, but this in a higher sense. For what would a musical melody be if memory did not play an effective role in the tones heard?

But it is not memory that plays a part in this soul life, but past reality itself. What has already passed lives again in the present of our soul life. And so, in our pure thinking, mixed with our ordinary soul life, lives the spiritual soul that was already there before we connected with matter. And when we then consider these perceptions and can make them transparent and look at the spirit through the powers of the soul, then we find the earlier earth life looking back, which can be perceived and experienced. We think human experiences that were previously limited in themselves; we see that we can look back to the eternal spirits through spiritual research.

These are the fundamental, the source points of human knowledge, which this kind of knowledge opens up to the one who searches for it, and therein lies the freedom of the human soul. The spiritual researcher who wants to talk about freedom has made the question of human freedom his main subject for decades. Decades ago I wrote a book about human freedom; in this book I showed that one has to ascend from physical strength to pure spiritual strength. This is the second question, which, like the first, is linked to thinking, the question of freedom, which is an experience for everyone but cannot be scientifically investigated. Whatever is bound to natural science will never be able to occur in freedom.

Yet everyone knows what actions are free. I have already said which actions in human life can be called free. Only certain types of actions are free: for example, when we have a being beside us that we love, for what is love in true reality of the soul? Love has different types; it can be selfish, an egoism because it is pleasant to love what is pleasant to love; but even this love can change, it can spiritualize, it can look at other beings, and then selfishness towards the beloved being is completely excluded.

Yes, I was right a quarter of a century ago when I contradicted the commonly held saying “love is blind”. That is completely wrong, because in reality it should be: “love gives sight”. Of course, only those who are able to exclude themselves, who merge with the being they love, who are capable of pursuing the various phases of love to the highest degree, only they can grasp what free actions are. We do many things out of selfishness in life, but it happens that we also perform actions for which we stand just as we do when we are with a beloved being who is sympathetic to us. We will not want to perform actions that we consider wrong before pure thinking and devotion; these actions must be done out of love. We ourselves will only act correctly if we love the spirit.

Freedom and love for action are concepts that cannot be separated, and one cannot ask: Is a person free or unfree? No, because a person is unfree in his will for actions out of necessity, out of instincts, out of the subconscious of his soul life, but he becomes free by being able to hate and love what he considers necessary to do for himself and the world. When one correctly reveals through the transformed soul powers what is needed in love and real freedom by people as a motive for their will, then one can penetrate not through mysticism, but through this transformation of soul powers into spiritual reality, and one discovers that a mysterious power dwells in man, like the germ in the plant for the next plant.

This germ also lives in the human soul; however, it is covered and the person does not have the opportunity to see it; but he has acquired the ability to look back at his intentions and desires. Then one also sees what is going on in a person when he performs acts out of love. In the life of the soul, spiritually and mentally conditioned free acts are at work. Just as a person is rooted in the present life and can perceive what he thinks correctly and incorrectly, so in the future one's earthly life will become something like it was in the past, as we pass through the gate of death and the seed planted for the future remains in us, covered by the life of feeling and willing. We see... [gap], how the germs that we planted in past earthly lives must come to life when we lay down our lives; and we will also glimpse the life before birth. We perceive life in the spirit before birth and after death by looking beyond what is bound to the organism through feeling and willing. We also see that spiritual research is not something mystical, not something that can be brought in comfortably, but it strives in those areas that are the longing areas of all people who want to awaken to life.

There is an unbridgeable abyss between what we call the life of memory and what natural phenomena have built up before us for the first time. By evoking such forces to destroy the image and retain the powers of memory, we plunge into that which must not be plunged into in ordinary life; but in so doing we gain the possibility of plunging into that world which is not intended for ordinary life. This leads us to real spiritual research; it will one day be a science, just as Copernicanism became a science when it broke with the old soul life.

It is understandable that this research is misunderstood from various sides and that it faces hostility. To the mystic it does not appear suitable because spiritual research does not do enough mysticism for him; and others believe that they must rely on natural science alone. But it will come one day, and they will see that spiritual research is a pure science. There is also fear that superstition will revive and that amateurism will occur in serious research. But that is not the case either.

I could only establish the principles, only describe the beginning of these things. But everyone has the opportunity to discover for themselves the areas that are important in practical life and certain human experiences, especially with regard to the present day, that confirm my explanations. I just wanted to say what spiritual research has to do to unlock such areas. It will be misunderstood from left and right, because for this spiritual research it is not necessary to penetrate into new areas, but to penetrate into these areas in a new way, to develop new concepts for the new reality, which are unfamiliar to most people today. But they are not completely foreign to them, because in this spiritual research there are forces that today lie dormant in the human soul, that today awaken in real human life in these difficult times. When they are brought into contact with many things that seem to come from ancient times, when old experiences are awakened in us from time to time, then those concerned know that they must long for something different from what people have offered so far.

The development of humanity must continue. The needs for this are present, we have advanced to a new science, but people do not yet know about it. But they are present, and also the further surroundings, who still deny them today, dream of them and strive in constant longing for this spiritual science, which is not a program and not an arbitrariness, because the spiritual science is only that what people actually want, what they long for, what lies dormant deep in the subconscious, and I am convinced that what spiritual science has to offer is nothing other than the satisfaction of what people long for. And neither people of the present nor people of the future can do without it.

I

There are poetic tasks¹ that any naturalism must fail to fulfill. These are the ones that relate to the struggle of eternal powers in the human soul. This struggle represents the entire development of the human inner life, from birth to death. This struggle is not exhausted in individual actions, moods or events. May the individual events that life brings to man find this or that, tragic or joyful outcome: the fundamental struggle that the eternal fights in the human breast always arises anew. Naturalistic art can only depict the individual, self-contained circles of struggle. For only these belong to the world of reality. In order to depict the primal struggles, the imagination must go beyond this reality. It must depict in a higher, ideal sphere as complete what reality never brings to a conclusion. The philosopher can do this in ideas, the artist in pictures. At a certain level of civilization, poetic imagination depicts these eternal struggles in the soul in the form of mythological and legendary figures. This divine or legendary world is nothing other than an image of what goes on at the bottom of the human mind. If the poet wants to depict the reign of the eternal, he must detach it from the contingencies of human life, from the joys and sorrows of everyday life. His figures will still be human, but human beings stripped of the contingent.

Ludwig Jacobowski has set himself such a supreme artistic task in his latest work: “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (Bruns Verlag, Minden i. W. 1899). Two powers are constantly fighting in every human breast, a hot, heavy, life-and-death struggle. The one contains: kindness, love, patience, friendliness, beauty; the other: hatred, enmity, anger, hostility and the element that, in its strength, always forgets the soft forms of beauty. The poetic spirit of an earlier cultural stage contrasted the two powers in the Nordic deities Balder and Loki. Ludwig Jacobowski has depicted them again in his novel. The ancient Nordic deities served him as models for his characters. But the characters that the Nordic saga placed in these deities are no more than a starting point for Jacobowski. For the powers fight differently in the modern soul than in that of prehistoric man. Modern man leads a more profound life than that of prehistoric man. The man of an earlier age imagined the forces that ruled within him to be similar to the forces of nature that he perceived with his senses in the outside world. For the modern man, these forces take on a more spiritual content. This change in man's consciousness of himself corresponds to the transformation that Jacobowski's imagination has carried out with the figures of the saga. Loki's battle against the gods in the Norse saga appears like a natural process, invented by the imagination that feeds on sensual reality. Jacobowski portrays him as a personification of what moves the modern human soul. The poet has thus deepened the saga. He has described a battle that arises from love. Balder and Loki love Nanna. But Balder loves as love itself loves; he loves with a passion that is free of selfishness. With the love that Goethe has in mind when he says: “No self-love, no self-interest lasts, before their coming they have shrunk away. We call it: being pious!” Loki loves like selfishness loves, which celebrates the festival of the highest self-indulgence in love. The modern poet depicts the eternal struggle between egoism and selflessness. It is the struggle that the modern soul fights out in all its depth; the struggle that forms the content of the conflicting world views of the present. Jacobowski views this struggle with the calm that comes from the objective imagination of the true poet. And from this objectivity, he has created a philosophical work of the first order. He has thus found a higher expression for the modern soul than his contemporaries, who are forever groping and experimenting, can find.

Address Given in Berlin on September 13, 1900

[ 1 ] it is strange that with the infatuation for Nietzsche in our day, someone must appear whose feelings, no less than those of many others, are drawn to the particular personality, and yet who, in spite of this, must constantly keep before him the deep contradictions which exist between this type of spirit, and the ideas and feelings of those who represent themselves as adherents of his world conception. Such a one who stands apart must, above all, beware of the contrast between the relationship of those contemporaries to Nietzsche a decade ago as the night of madness broke over the “fighter against his time” and what existed when death took him from us on the 25th of August, 1900. It seems as if the complete opposite has happened from what Nietzsche prophesied in regard to his effect on his contemporaries in the last days of his creative work. The first part of his book, in which he tried to recoin the values of thousands of years, his Antichrist, lay completed at the onset of his illness. He begins with the words, “This book belongs to the very few; perhaps not even one of these is yet living. There may be those who understand my Zarathustra; how could I confuse myself with those for whom ears are growing already today? Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some of my readers will be born posthumously.” At his death it seemed as if the “day after tomorrow” had already come. One must call into this apparent “day after tomorrow” the words of Zarathustra: “You say you believe in Zarathustra? But of what importance is Zarathustra? You are my believers, but of what importance are all believers? Now I exhort you to lose me and to find yourselves; and only when you have denied me will I return to you.” Who would dare to say whether Nietzsche, were he to live today in fresh creativity, would look with greater pleasure upon those who revere him with doubts, or upon others? But it must be permitted, especially today, to look back, beyond these present-day admirers, to the time when he felt himself alone and misunderstood in the midst of the spiritual life surrounding him, when some people lived who felt it blasphemous to be called his “believers,” because he appeared to them to be a spirit whom one could not encounter importunately with a “yes” or “no,” but like an earthquake in the realm of the spirit, which stirs up questions for which premature answers can only be like unripe fruits. But ten years ago, more moving than the news of his death today, two pieces of news which followed closely upon each other, came to the “ears” which had “grown” for the Nietzsche admirers of that time. The first concerned the cycle of lectures which Georg Brandes had held about the world conception of Nietzsche at the University of Copenhagen in the year 1888. Nietzsche felt this recognition to be one which had come forth from “single ones” which were “born posthumously.” He felt himself jerked out of his loneliness in a way which was in harmony with his spirit. He did not want to be evaluated; he wanted to be “described,” characterized. And soon upon this news followed the report that his mind, tom from its loneliness, had succumbed to the frightful destiny of spiritual darkness.

[ 2 ] And, while he himself could no longer contribute, his contemporaries had the leisure to sharpen the outlines of his picture. Through the observation of his personality, the picture of the time could imprint itself ever more clearly for them; the picture of the time, from which his spirit rises like a Böcklin figure. The worlds of his soul ideals could be illuminated by the light which the spiritstars of the second half of the nineteenth century cast upon them. In full clarity stood the points in which he was truly great. But these also overshadowed the reason why he had to wander in loneliness. The nature of his being led him over, heights of spirit life. He stepped forth like one to whom only the essentials of mankind's development are of concern. But this essential touched him as much as others are touched in their soul by only the most intimate situations. Just as the souls of others are burdened directly by only the most immediate personal experiences, so the great questions of culture, the mighty needs for knowledge of his age, decisively passed through his soul. What permeated only the heads of many of his contemporaries, became for him a personal affair of the heart.

[ 3 ] Greek culture, Schopenhauer's world conception, Wagner's music dramas, the knowledge of the more recent natural science, aroused in him such personal, deep feelings as would have been aroused in others only by the experiences of a strong, passionate love. What the entire age lived through in hopes and doubts, in temptations and joys of knowledge, Nietzsche experienced in his special way on his lonesome heights. He found no new ideas; but he suffered and rejoiced in the ideas of his time in a way different from that of his contemporaries. It was their task to give birth to the ideas; before him arose the difficult question, How can one live with these ideas?

[ 4 ] His educational path had made Nietzsche a philologist. He had penetrated so deeply into the world of Greek spiritual culture that his teacher, Ritschl, could recommend him with these words to the University of Basel, which engaged the young scholar before he had taken his doctorate: Friedrich Nietzsche is a genius and is able to do whatever he puts his mind to. He may well have achieved excellent results in the sense of the requirements made of philologists. But his relationship to Greek culture was not only that of a philologist. He did not live in ancient Greece in thought alone; with his whole heart he was deeply engrossed in Greek thinking and feeling. The bearers of Greek culture did not remain the object of his studies; they became his personal friends. During the first period of his teaching activity in Basel, he worked out a book about the philosophers of the tragic age before Socrates. It was published among his posthumus works. He does not write like a scholar about Thales, Heraclitus and Parmenides; he converses with these figures of antiquity as with personalities with whom his heart is closely connected. The passion which he feels for them makes him a stranger to the Western culture, which according to his feelings, since Socrates has taken paths other than those of ancient times. Socrates was Nietzsche's enemy because he had dulled the great tragic fundamental moods of his predecessors. The instructive mind of Socrates strove toward an understanding of reality. He desired reconciliation with life through virtue. But there is nothing, according to Nietzsche, which can degrade mankind more than the acceptance of life as it is. Life cannot reconcile itself with itself; man can only bear this life if he creates over and above it. Before Socrates, the Greeks understood this. Nietzsche believed that he found their fundamental mood expressed in these words which, according to legend, the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, gave as answer to the question, What is best for mankind: “Miserable creation of a moment, children of accident and travail, why do you force me to tell you what is not the most profitable for you to hear? What is the very best for you is not attainable by you; that is, not to be born, not to exist, to be nothing. But the second best for you is to die soon.” Ancient Greek art and wisdom sought consolation in the face of life. The servants of Dionysus did not wish to belong to this community of life, but rather to a higher one. For Nietzsche this was expressed in their culture. “In song and dance, the human being expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and how to speak, and he is about to fly, to dance into the air.” There are two paths for man which lead him over and above existence; in a blessed enchantment, as if in an opium dream, he can forget existence and, “singing and dancing,” feel himself at one with a universal soul; or he can look for his satisfaction in an ideal picture of reality as if in a dream which flutters gently above existence. Nietzsche characterizes these two paths as the Dionysian and the Apollonian soul conditions. But the more recent culture since Socrates has looked for reconciliation with existence, and thereby has lowered the value of mankind. It is no wonder that with such feelings, Nietzsche felt lonely in this more recent culture.

[ 5 ] Two personalities seemed to pull him out of this state of loneliness. On his life path he encountered Schopenhauer's conception of the worthlessness of existence, and Richard Wagner. The position he took in relation to these two clearly illuminated the being of his spirit. Toward Schopenhauer he felt a devotion more intimate than can be imagined. And yet Schopenhauer's teachings remained almost without importance for him. The wise one from Frankfurt had innumerable disciples who accepted faithfully what he had to say. But Nietzsche never was one of these believers. At the same time that he sent his pean of praise, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, into the world, he wrote secretly for himself his serious doubts about the philosopher's ideas. He did not look up to him as to a teacher; he loved him like a father. He felt the heroic quality of his thoughts even when he did not agree with them. His relationship to Schopenhauer was too intimate to necessitate an external faith in him or an outer confession. He loved his “educator” so much that he attributed his own thoughts to him in order to be able to revere them in another. He did not want to agree with a personality in his thoughts; he wanted to live in friendship with another. This desire also attracted him to Richard Wagner. What then were all those figures of pre-Socratic Greek culture with whom he had wished to live in friendship? Indeed, they were mere shadows from a far distant past. And Nietzsche aspired to life, to the direct friendship of tragic human beings. Greek culture remained dead and abstract for him, despite all the life his fantasy tried to breathe into it. The Greek intellectual heroes remained for him a yearning; for him Richard Wagner was a fulfillment which tried to re-awaken the old world of Greece within his personality, his art, his world conception. Nietzsche spent most glorious days when from Basel he was allowed to visit the Wagner couple on their Triebschen estate. What the philologist had looked for in spirit, to breathe Greek air, he believed he found here in reality. He could find a personal relationship to a world which previously he had sought in ideas. He could experience intimately what he could otherwise only have conjured before himself in thought. To him the Triebschen idyll was like home. How descriptive are the words with which he describes his feelings in regard to Wagner: “A fruitful, rich, stirring life, quite different and unheard of in more mediocre mortals! For this reason he stands there rooted deeply in his own strength, with his gaze over and above all that is ephemeral; eternal in the most beautiful sense.”

[ 6 ] In Richard Wagner's personality Nietzsche believed he had the higher worlds, which could make life as bearable for him as he imagined it to be in the sense of the ancient Greek world conception. But precisely here did he not commit the greatest error in his sense? Indeed he sought in life for what, according to his assumptions life could not offer. He wanted to be above life; and with all his strength he threw himself into the life that Wagner lived. For this reason it is understandable that his greatest experience had to be his deepest disappointment at the same time. To be able to find in Wagner what he was searching for, he had first to magnify the true personality of Wagner to an ideal picture. What Wagner could never be, Nietzsche had made out of him. He did not see and revere the true Wagner; he revered his image, which towered far above reality. Then when Wagner had achieved what he aspired, when he had reached his goal, Nietzsche felt the disharmony between his impression and the true Wagner. And he separated from Wagner. But only he interprets this separation psychologically correctly who recognizes that Nietzsche did not separate from the true Wagner, because he never was his follower; he only saw his deception clearly. What he had looked for in Wagner, he could never find in him because that had nothing to do with Wagner; it had to be freed from all reality as a higher world. Then Nietzsche later characterized the necessity of his apparent separation from Wagner. He says that what in his younger years he had heard in Wagner's music had absolutely nothing to do with Wagner. “When I described the Dionysian music, I described what I had heard; instinctively I had to translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit which I bore within me. The proof of this, as strong as proof as can be, is my book, Wagner in Bayreuth; in all psychologically decisive places one can place my name, or the name Zarathustra wherever the text uses the name Wagner. The complete picture of the dithyrambic artist is the picture of the pre-existentialist poet of Zarathustra, drawn with profound depth, and without really touching the reality of Wagner for a single moment. Wagner himself had an idea of this; he did not recognize himself in the book.”

[ 7 ] In Zarathustra Nietzsche sketches the world for which he had searched in vain in Wagner, separated from alt reality. He placed his Zarathustra ideal in a different relationship to reality than his own earlier ideals. He had had bad experiences in his direct turning away from existence. He must have done injustice to this existence, and for this reason it had avenged itself so bitterly against him; this idea gained the upper hand within him more and more. The disappointment which his idealism had caused him, drove him into a hostile mood toward all idealism. During the time following his separation from Wagner, his works become accusations against ideals. “One error after another is placed upon ice; the ideal is not refuted—it freezes to death.” Thus in 1888 he expresses himself about the goal of his book which had appeared in 1878, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too Human. After this Nietzsche looks for refuge in reality; he deepens himself in the more recent natural science, in order that through it he can gain a true guide to reality. All worlds beyond this world, which lead human beings away from reality, now become abominable, remote worlds for him, conceived out of the fantasy of weak human beings, who do not have sufficient strength to find their satisfaction in immediate, fresh existence. Natural science has placed the human being at the end of a purely natural evolution. Through the fact that the latter has conceived the human being out of itself, all that is below him has taken on a higher meaning. Therefore, man should not deny its significance and wish to make himself an image of something beyond this world. He should understand that he is not the meaning of a super-earthly power, but the “meaning of this earth.” What he wishes to attain above what exists, he should not strive for in enmity against what exists. Nietzsche looks within reality itself for the germ of the higher, which is to make reality bearable. Man should not strive toward a divine being; out of his reality he should bring forth a higher way of existence. This reality extends over and above itself. Humanity has the possibility to become superhumanity. Evolution has always been. The human being should also work at evolution. The laws of evolution are greater, more comprehensive than all that has already been developed. One should not only look upon that which exists, but one must go back to primeval forces which have engendered the real. An ancient world conception questioned how “good and evil” came into the world. It believed that it had to go behind existence in order to discover “in the eternal” the reasons for “good and evil.” But with the “eternal,” with the “beyond,” Nietzsche had also to reject the “eternal” evaluation of “good and evil.” Man has come into existence through the natural; and “good and evil” have come into existence with him. The creation of mankind is “good and evil.” And deeper than the created is the creator. The “human being” stands “beyond good and evil.” He has made the one thing to be good, the other to be evil. He may not let himself be chained through his former “good and evil.” He can follow further the path of evolution which he has taken till now. From the worm he has become a human being; from man he can develop to the superman. He can create a new good and evil. He may “reevaluate” present day values. Nietzsche was torn from his work on Umwertung aller Werte, Transvaluation of All Values, through his spiritual darkness. The evolution of the worm to the human being was the idea which he had gained from the more recent natural science. He himself did not become a scientist; he had adopted the idea of evolution from others. For them it was a matter of the intellect; for him it became a matter of the heart. The others waged a spiritual battle against all old prejudices. Nietzsche asked himself how he could live with the new idea. His battle took place entirely within his own soul. He needed the further development to the superman in order to be able to bear mankind. Thus, by itself, in lonely heights, his sensitive spirit had to overcome the natural science which he had taken into himself. During his last creative period, Nietzsche tried to attain from reality itself what earlier he thought he could gain in illusion, in an ideal realm. Life is assigned a task which is firmly rooted in life, and yet leads over and above this life. In this immediate existence one cannot remain standing in real life, or in the life illuminated by natural science. In this life there also must be suffering. This remained Nietzsche's opinion. The “superman” is also a means to make life bearable. All this points to the fact that Nietzsche was born to “suffer from existence.” His genius consisted in the searching for bases for consolation. The struggle for world conceptions has often engendered martyrs. Nietzsche has produced no new ideas for a world conception. One will always recognize that his genius does not lie in the production of new ideas. But he suffered deeply because of the thoughts surrounding him. In compensation for this suffering he found the enraptured tones of his Zarathustra. He became the poet of the new world conception; the hymns in praise of the “superman” are the personal, the poetic reply to the problems and results of the more recent natural science. All that the nineteenth century produced in ideas, would also have been produced without Nietzsche. In the eyes of the future he will not be considered an original philosopher, a founder of religions, or a prophet; for the future he will be a martyr of knowledge, who in poetry found words with which to express his suffering.

A lecture delivered in Dornach, on December 31st, 1915. Lecture 17 of 19 from the lecture series: The Festivals of the Seasons (1928), and lecture 6 of 13 from the lecture series: The Spiritual Union of Humanity through the Christ Impulse. Published in German as: Die Geistige Vereinigung der Menschheit Durch Den Christus-Impuls.

Much that I should like to say regarding the spiritual world has to be hinted at pictorially, or rather half pictorially for the pictures must be taken in a real and active sense.

It is necessary to indicate pictorially such things as I desire to bring before your souls to-day for further meditation, because if one were not to speak symbolically but in ideas, one would have to speak at very great length. Each one of you can himself reach the depths of that of which I shall speak to-day, if he holds and ponders over it to a certain extent within his soul.

Every year at this season we pass from one division of time to another. This may at first appear simply a matter of convenience; but it is not so. The men who had to separate time into seasons followed by profound instinct certain great laws regulating the course of time. The festival of the passing of one year into another takes place with us in the depths of winter (naturally, I speak of our part of the world) at the time when all plants have suspended their growth, their blossoming and fruit-bearing. Only certain forest trees remain what is called evergreen through winter. The power of the Sun is then at its lowest.

We know that in all events and occurrences that take place before our senses, spiritual events are interwoven. We know that when we walk through the forest, we have not only the trees about us with their green foliage, but that in the background of existence spiritual and psychic beings are everywhere active. We are already familiar with this thought, which the clever people of our time regard as a childish superstition; we realise it as a true and actual fact.

It is absolutely clear to us that behind all the things of sense, whether they be solid or whether they be happenings which our senses perceive—are spiritual activities, and spiritual life.

Now let us, to begin with, consider what people call our lifeless inorganic Earth, the mineral kingdom of our Earth. This which is apparently lifeless substance, the mineral which to the materialist is merely lifeless, is to us not only endowed with life, but with soul and spirit, so that we speak also of a soul-and-spirit part of our so-called lifeless inorganic, purely mineral Earth. True, when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we do not in the first place see in the geological-mineral substance that which may be compared to a man's muscles and blood, but we see only what may be compared to his bony system, namely, the solid earth ; so that when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we have to think of it as connected with the whole Earth, not only with its bony system, but with water, air, ether, etc., corresponding to the muscles, blood, and so on.

The whole Earth has consciousness, a consciousness belonging to the mineral kingdom. We shall not occupy ourselves with the differences in this consciousness of the Earth in special regions during the course of the year, but we shall endeavour to evoke in our souls the conception that the whole Earth has consciousness. Let us now turn from the mineral Earth, and direct our attention to all that springs forth and sprouts on Earth, to the plant world.

Looked at in accordance with Spiritual Science, we must regard the plant world, in the first place, as an independent entity in reference to the Earth. That the whole plant world is an independent entity as regards the Earth only comes clearly before us when we consider the consciousness of these two entities or beings. We can speak of a consciousness of the whole mineral Earth, but we can equally speak of a consciousness of the whole plant world which evolves on the Earth. The laws of this consciousness are certainly entirely different from the laws of human consciousness. In speaking of plant consciousness, we must always speak of it as regards certain districts only, because it changes with different regions of the Earth.

As men we are not aware that there really is a certain parallel between our consciousness and the consciousness of the whole plant world, for we are apt to look on our waking consciousness as our complete consciousness, without taking our sleeping consciousness into consideration. To simplify our subject, we say: In the daytime when awake, our ego and astral body are within our physical body. I have, however, often remarked that this in fact refers to our blood and nervous system only, not to the remaining parts of our system. When the ego and astral body withdraw from our head, for instance, they are so much the stronger within other parts of us.

A parallel thing happens on the Earth, when on one part of it there is summer and on the other winter; this also is merely a change of consciousness. The case is the same with ourselves. We are not aware of this, however, because in man the two kinds of consciousness are not of equal clearness; they are of different strength. Night consciousness is beclouded consciousness, for us practically no consciousness at all; while day consciousness is full consciousness of our other side. In the night our lower nature wakes, while with our higher nature we sleep, and it is exactly the same with the Earth, when on the one hemisphere there is winter, on the other there is summer. On one side the consciousness is awake, on the other side it sleeps and vice versa. As I have just said, and as I have often explained, this only holds good in respect to the plant world. We know that the plant world sleeps in the height of summer when there is growth on every side; while it is outwardly unfolding its physical nature—it is asleep. But it wakes to full consciousness during the time when physically, externally, it is going through no development; then the plant world is awake. Thus we speak of all plant life on Earth as a whole; and this plant life, as a whole, has a consciousness.

When speaking of this consciousness which as a second consciousness intermingles with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, we can really say that during the height of summer in our part of the Earth the plant consciousness is asleep, and in depth of winter it is awake. At this season, however, during the time at which we now are, something further takes place.

Now I beg you to note that these two states of consciousness, that is, the general consciousness belonging to the mineral earth, and the general plant consciousness—are always distinct. They are throughout the whole year two separate beings. But these are not only two distinct Beings, for at one season they unite, so that at the present time of year, the one interpenetrates the other. At the time when one year is passing over into the other, the mineral things and events of the Earth and the whole plant world have but one consciousness, which means that these two consciousnesses interpenetrate each other.

What is the nature of the mineral consciousness of the Earth, the varieties of which (as I have said) we shall not study to-day as we shall those of the plant consciousness, which we realise wakes during winter time and sleeps in summer? What is the peculiar nature of this mineral consciousness, this consciousness of the great Earth-Being?

The man who is limited in his physical senses, and limited to the understanding that he considers appertains to these physical senses, can at first know nothing of this great Earth-consciousness. Spiritual Science, however, can instruct as to what this Earth-consciousness really thinks—thinks as we think of plants, animals, air, rivers, mountains, etc. Just as with our ordinary waking consciousness, we think of the things round about us, so, in like manner does the Earth think. Let us inquire to-day: of what does the Earth consciously think?

The Earth thinks with its consciousness the whole firmament of heaven nearest to the Earth. As we look with our eyes on trees and stones, so does the Earth consciously look into space and contemplate all that takes place in the stars. The Earth is a being that meditates on the occurrences of the stars.

Thus fundamentally the mineral consciousness contains the secret of the whole Cosmos. While we men move about on the Earth in a superficial way, thinking merely of the stones against which we knock, or of the many things which our senses reveal to us, the Earth thinks with its consciousness—through which we are passing as we move through space—of the whole Cosmos. She has indeed greater, more all-embracing thoughts than we have. In truth, it is an extraordinarily exalting thought, when we realise: ‘I am not simply passing through the air; I am moving through the thoughts of the Earth.’

Now let us again consider the other consciousness, that of the plants. These are not able to think so much as the Earth can. The thinking consciousness of the plants—not of individual plants, but of the whole united plant-world—is a much more restricted consciousness, it embraces a smaller circle of the Earth throughout the year; but this is not the case at the present season. Plant consciousness is now one with the whole consciousness of the Earth, and because the plant consciousness interpenetrates the earth-consciousness, the plant-world at New Year time, knows the secrets of the stars and applies them. Plants are thus able to unfold again in spring in accordance with the secrets of the cosmos, and can bring forth their blossoms and fruit. In this unfoldment the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained, in the way plants bring forth their leaves, blossoms and fruit.

But during the time the plants are producing their leaves, flowers and fruit, they are not able to meditate upon it. It is only at this present season they can think—now—when the plant consciousness is united with the consciousness of the whole mineral world. This is why it is said in Spiritual Science: About the season of the New Year, two cycles interpenetrate each other.

This is the main secret of all existence—that two cycles penetrate each other; then parting, continue separately their further development; again intermingle, and so on. Only think how marvelous this secret of existence is! Plant-consciousness and mineral-consciousness, two streams of evolution—progress apart through the whole year, then at the time when one year passes over into another, they unite. Again they pass through the year apart, uniting once more at the festival of the New Year. The cyclic advance of history is similar to this.

We turn from this mystic event, through which we are now passing, and which fills us with a deep feeling of holy awe in respect of the passing of one year into the other—we turn to a still deeper mystery.

We know that we are now living in that cycle in which the consciousness-soul is unfolding, that this was preceded by that of the unfolding of the rational or intellectual-soul, which was again preceded by the cycle in which the sentient soul was developed, before which again we go back to the time of development of the sentient body. This takes us back 6,000 years before our Christian era, to a time when all human thought was evolved within the cycle of the sentient body—of the so-called astral body.

We have now to advance through the cycle of the spiritual or consciousness-soul, and through that of the Spirit-Self, and further still man has to develop.

The consciousness-soul (since 1923 translated by Dr. Steiner as the spiritual-soul) is principally developed at the present time because man chiefly makes use of his physical body alone as an instrument. On this account—as you know already from many lectures—this present age is the high tide of materialism. A time will come, however, when man will not only make use of his physical body, but will again learn to use his etheric body, as in earlier times he used his astral body, in the cycle of evolution when that body was the main element of consciousness.

We can therefore say: Our condition at one time on Earth was such, that our soul experienced a contact of its consciousness with the consciousness of our astral body. Just as at New Year, plant-consciousness penetrates mineral consciousness, so, thousands of years ago, did our soul intermingle with our astral body. At that time our soul was one, in its consciousness, with the astral body. The time of that type of consciousness was six thousand years before our era. When that consciousness came about man celebrated a New Year on Earth; a mighty New Year!

Just as we regard the New Year as the mingling of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so we must realise that 6,000 years before our era a great, a mighty cosmic New Year of our Earth took place. Our Soul-consciousness then united with—passed through—the astral consciousness of our body.

What was it that then took place?

At that time when our inner soul-consciousness passed through (or intermingled with) the astral consciousness of our body—then our limited human consciousness, the consciousness which we have to-day, had progressed as far as the present plant-consciousness at New Year. Just as plants gaze abroad into the heavens because their consciousness has been united to the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so did man then see and perceive a wide field of wisdom six thousand years before our era, when his soul was united with his astral body at the time of the cosmic New Year.

From this time originated the knowledge which we have now lost, since the wisdom of the Gnostics has perished. The source of this knowledge must be sought in the earthly and cosmic New Year about 6,000 B.C. This was the knowledge from which Zarathustra gave forth his teaching; the knowledge, whose last great rays still illuminated the Gnostics, but of which only a few fragments remain. It is the winter of the Earth, but the Earth's New Year to which we here look back.

If we now add four thousand years more to the years we have passed through since the founding of Christianity, we again come to a similar intermingling as that I have just indicated; to the mingling of our soul-consciousness with our astral consciousness, but at a higher stage. Man will once more experience a universal stellar consciousness. For this we endeavour to prepare ourselves through our Spiritual Science, so that there may be men ready to receive it.

We will seek to prepare for this cosmic New Year. If we prepare for it through the keeping of the Christmas Festival, as I indicated in a recent lecture, we are preparing ourselves in the right way. If the birth of spiritual knowledge within us leads to that frame of mind which is in accord with the ‘Christmas Initiation,’ we are preparing ourselves for that new cosmic New Year on which we shall enter twelve thousand years after the previous cosmic New Year.

Twelve months pass by between one union of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, and another. Twelve thousand years pass between one cosmic New Year and another: between one intermingling of the human soul with the Astral World-Soul, and another.

So at this sacred season, we turn from the little New Year to the great cosmic New Year, from the New Year's Eve of our year, to that for which we are preparing ourselves, by endeavouring—now in this winter time—to behold the light, which in a normal elemental way flows into man as inhabitant of the Earth, only at the cosmic New Year.

We really only see the world in the true light, when we grasp what is around us, not only as it is presented to our senses,—as materialists do—but when we accept all that is about us in the outer world as a symbol of the great secrets of the universe.

Then when New Year draws near, it seems as if a message from spiritual worlds approaches, and unveils for us the mysteries connected with the birth of the New Year; and declares, ‘Behold, now in the depths of the dark cold winter, the consciousness of the plant world unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be to you a sign that the Earth too has its year—the great cosmic year, of which Zarathustra spoke long ago, explaining how the world passed on from one great New Year's Eve to another; this must be understood by those who really seek to comprehend the course of human evolution.’

Zarathustra spoke of epochs of twelve thousand years. He meant the great cosmic years of which I have spoken to you to-day. He represented the course of human evolution as being divided into four divisions within the Earth year. This fact is deeply rooted in spiritual mysteries.

So, from a deeper understanding of our Spiritual Science, let us accept a true Christmas attitude of reverence. Let us develop within our hearts that inner warmth which comes, when in the frosty night of winter we receive the first intimation of the dawning of the Sun-Spirit on the Earth, and with it the mystery of the revolving year. The thirteen days are the days in which the plant-consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If a man is but able to place himself within the plant consciousness, he can dream of—can gain a conception of—the many mysteries which then crowd into his heart, such as did in the dream of Olaf Oesteson, the description and explanation of which entered into and stirred our souls here, this time last year. When we feel such a mood of initiation, we evoke the proper feelings and the perceptions for the aims and objects of our spiritual knowledge and with such warmth of heart we shall make preparations for the new cosmic New Year. Through it we can worthily expect that day which is to usher in a New Year for the world. Thus: when in succeeding incarnations our souls experience the cosmic New Year under quite new conditions on Earth, we shall be able to pass through it as those can for whom the small New Year's Eve (which recurs every twelve months instead of every twelve thousand years) becomes a symbol of the great New Year's Eve of the world.

This is the secret of our existence. Everything is in great as in small, and in small as in great. The small, the yearly cycle, can only be understood aright when it becomes for us a symbol of the mighty events of the cosmos—of the vast cycle of thousands of years. The year is an image of the aeons, and the aeons are the realities of those images which we encounter in the course of a year. When we understand this yearly course aright we are filled, in this important night in which a New Year begins, with thoughts of the great cosmic mysteries. Let our endeavour be, so to attune our souls, that they may look forward to the New Year with this conscious thought: I will accept the year as a symbol of the great cosmic year which contains all mysteries, through which pass and re-pass the Divine Beings who accompany our souls from aeon to aeon, as the lesser Gods follow the secret development of plant and mineral existence throughout the course of an Earth year.

My dear friends, many secrets of the spiritual world must first be explained symbolically or half symbolically, although the images are real and should be taken as realities. It is necessary to use an imaginative language, as I mean to do to-day, it is necessary to speak in the form of images which you can meditate in your soul, because long explanations would be needed if one were to speak: in the form of concepts and not symbolically. But those who bear in mind the things which I shall explain to you to day and who meditate upon them, will not fail to discover the deeper essence which they contain.

About this time of year we always pass over from one period into another. To be sure, this may at first appear to us a mere subdivision of time, but this is not the case. For a deeper instinct led the people, who had to fix the seasons of the year, to follow certain great laws governing the course of time. The festival which marks the transition from an old year to a new one is celebrated in our part of the world in the midst of winter, when the plants cease to grow, blossom and bear fruit. Only certain forest trees keep their so-called evergreen foliage throughout the winter. The sun unfolds its weakest power.

We know that spiritual processes are interwoven with all the processes which we perceive through our senses. We know that when we go through the woods we are not only surrounded by the trees with their green needles or leaves, but that a soul-spiritual essence weaves and works in the mysterious depths of life. We have already seen that things which in the eyes of our “clever” modern people appear as childish superstition, can be experienced as something which points to the real essence of the world.

We are therefore convinced that spiritual forces and influences lie at the foundation of everything physical, of the solid substances or of the physical phenomena which we can perceive through our senses. Let us now look upon the so-called lifeless an-organic earth, upon everything which constitutes the earth's mineral kingdom; let us look upon everything which is not endowed with life. To the materialist these lifeless substances appear devoid of life. But in every lifeless object we can see a soul-element, a spiritual element, so that we can also speak of a soul and spirit pertaining to our so-called lifeless, an-organic, purely mineral earth. When we speak of the consciousness of the earth, we cannot perceive in its geological-mineralogical substance even the trace of anything that can be compared with man's muscles and the blood; we can only see the earth's skeleton, or the earth's solid substance, so that when we speak of the earth's consciousness, we must think of it as being contained in the whole earth, which does not only consist of a skeleton, or of solid parts, but also of water, air, etc., which correspond to the muscles, the blood, etc. of man. The whole earth is endowed with consciousness, with a consciousness which forms part of the mineral kingdom. We shall not speak of the change in the earth's consciousness during the course of the year in a definite region, but shall instead enter more deeply into the idea that the whole earth is endowed with consciousness. Let us now turn away our gaze from the whole mineral earth and observe the plants which sprout and blossom out of the earth.

If we study the vegetable kingdom from the standpoint of spiritual science we must first look upon it as an independent being in respect to the earth. The fact that the vegetable kingdom as a whole is an independent being in respect to the earth, becomes clearly evident if we study the consciousness of these two beings. We can speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole mineral earth, but we can also speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole vegetable kingdom which develops upon the earth. The laws which govern this consciousness of course differ from the laws which govern human consciousness. When we speak of the consciousness of plants, we can only bear in mind a definite region of the earth, because the consciousness changes according to the various regions of the earth.

As human beings we do not notice that there is a certain parallelism between our consciousness and, for instance, the consciousness of the vegetable kingdom of the whole earth, because our daytime consciousness, not our night-consciousness, is a fully conscious state. In order to simplify matters, let us say that during our waning daytime consciousness our Ego and our astral body are within our physical body. I have already explained to you that in reality this only applies to our blood and nerve system, but not to the other systems. For when the Ego and the astral body are, as it were, outside the head, they permeate all the more the remaining parts of our organism.

Parallel to this we have the fact that when, for instance, there is winter on one side of the earth, there is summer on the other side. This too is only a transformation of consciousness. It is the same with us human beings. But we do not notice it, because these two states of consciousness are not equally clear. They have different degrees of strength. The night-consciousness is a dulled state of consciousness, practically no consciousness at all, and the daytime consciousness is a full state of consciousness pertaining to the other side of our being. Our lower nature is awake during the night, when our higher nature is asleep, and this is also the case with the earth, for when it is winter on one side, it is summer on the other side. When there is a waiting state of consciousness in one part of our being, there is a sleeping state in the other and vice-versa.

As explained just now (this has frequently been dealt with in other lectures) this only applies to the vegetable kingdom. In the height of summer the vegetable kingdom sleeps, because it sprouts and grows; it sleeps, while it unfolds its physical part to the utmost. And it is fully awake at that time of the year when it does not pass through any external physical development. The vegetable kingdom is then awake. We therefore speak of all the plants upon the earth as a whole; and this whole is endowed with consciousness.

When we speak of this consciousness, which therefore constitutes a second state of consciousness permeating the earth's mineral consciousness, when we speak of this plant-consciousness; we can really say that in our part of the world this plant-consciousness is asleep during the summer and awake during the dark winter season.

But at this time of the year something else takes place. You see, these two states of consciousness, viz. the whole earth-consciousness pertaining to the mineral kingdom and the whole plant-consciousness are distinct and separate: throughout the year they are two separate beings. Yet they are not ONLY two beings, for they permeate each other, so that one is filled by the other during that time of the year in which we are now living. When the old year passes over into the new year, the mineral objects and processes of the earth and the whole vegetable kingdom have ONE consciousness; that is to say, the two states of consciousness interpenetrate.

Of what kind is the MINERAL consciousness of the earth? To-day, however, we shall not consider its different stages in the same way in which we shall consider the consciousness of the plants, which is awake in the winter and asleep in the summer. What is the characteristic of the mineral consciousness, of the consciousness pertaining to the great being of the earth? Those who only rely upon their physical senses and upon the intellect which they think forms part of the physical senses, cannot know anything of this great consciousness of the earth. But spiritual science teaches us to observe the thoughts of the earth-consciousness, for the earth has thoughts, even as we have thoughts of minerals, plants and animals, of the air, the rivers and mountains. The earth has thoughts, in the same way in which we have thoughts concerning our environment, when we live in our ordinary daytime consciousness. What does the earth think? What thoughts live in its consciousness?

In the consciousness of the earth there are to begin with, thoughts connected with the whole heavenly space pertaining to the earth. Even as our eyes look upon the trees and stones, so the consciousness of the earth looks out into the heavenly spaces and harbours thoughts of all that goes on in the stars. The earth is a being that thinks about the stars and the events connected with them.

The mineral consciousness thus contains the secrets of the whole cosmos in the form of thought. Whereas we human beings walk over the surface of the earth and only think of the stones on our path or of many other things in our surroundings which we perceive through our senses, the earth thinks of the cosmos outside; these are the things which live in the consciousness of the earth, and as we walk through space we pass through the consciousness of the earth. The earth has a far wider consciousness and far greater thoughts than we. And it is really an uplifting thought to know: “As you walk along over the surface of the earth, you do not only pass through its atmosphere, but you pass through the thoughts of the earth.”

Let us now envisage something else—let us consider the consciousness of the plants. You see, plants cannot have great thoughts like those of the earth, for their consciousness, the thinking consciousness of the vegetable world (of the WHOLE vegetable kingdom, not of single plants) is far more limited; throughout the year it embraces a far smaller sphere pertaining to the earth—EXCEPT IN THESE DAYS, for at this time of the year (end of December/early January) the consciousness of the plants permeates the consciousness of the earth. The vegetable kingdom becomes aware of the secrets of the stars, it comprehends the mysteries of the stairs and uses them, so that in the springtime the plants may unfold again and bear blossoms and fruits in accordance with the mysteries of the cosmos. For the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained in the way in which the plants bear leaves, blossoms and fruits.

But while the plants develop their leaves, flowers and fruits they cannot develop thoughts about these processes. They can think of these processes only at this time of the year, when the consciousness of the vegetable world unites with the consciousness of the mineral world.

In spiritual science we therefore say; Two cycles interpenetrate at this time of the year, approximately around New Year's Eve.

The secret of existence consists in the fact that cycles INTERPENETRATE, continue their development separately and again interpenetrate. How wonderful is this secret of life! Two streams of development—the vegetable consciousness and the mineral consciousness, which take their course separately throughout the year, unite when one year passes over into the next. Then they develop separately until the end of the year when they unite once more. This constitutes the cyclic course of history.

Let us now pass over from this mystery, which can fill us with a deep, sacred feeling of reverence for the secret of the transition of one annual cycle into the next, let us now pass over to a still greater mystery. You know that we are living in the cycle which is connected with the development of the Consciousness-soul, which was preceded by the cycle connected with the development of the Understanding or Intellectual soul and by the cycle connected with the Sentient soul? If we go back still further, we come to the development of the Sentient Body. This leads us to the year 5000 B.C., when all human thinking developed under the influence of the sentient body, the so-called astral body.

In the course of human evolution we shall have to pass through the consciousness soul, the Spirit-Self, and still higher stages of development.

At the present time the consciousness-soul develops chiefly through the fact that the human being only uses his physical body as an instrument of perception. This brought us to the present; climax of materialism (we dealt with this in other lectures), for we use above all our physical body. But a time will come when we shall not only use the physical body, but also the etheric body, even as we once used our astral body, during the epoch of human development when the astral body supplied the chief foundation of consciousness.

We may therefore say: Once upon a time we lived upon the earth in such a way that our soul passed through a phase in which its consciousness contacted with the consciousness of our astral body. Even as at the end of the year the plants' consciousness passes through the. mineral consciousness, so thousands of years ago our soul passed through our astral body, through the consciousness pertaining to our astral body. At that time, the consciousness of our soul and the consciousness of our astral body were one. This leads us back thousands of years, to the year 6000 B.C. When this state of consciousness began, humanity on earth celebrated a new year, a great cosmic new year. Even as the new year now brings with it a union of the consciousness of the plants with the consciousness of the minerals, so 6000 years before our Christian ere marked the beginning of a new cosmic year upon the earth. It was a great cosmic new year! Our soul's consciousness then passed Through the astral consciousness. of our body.

What took place at that time? At that time, 6000 years B.C., when our inner soul-consciousness passed through the astral consciousness of our body, our limited human consciousness, such as we have it now, extended as far as the consciousness of the plants at New Year. Even as the plant looks out into the heavenly spaces, through the fact that its consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness, so 6000 years B.C. the human being saw and perceived an extensive field of wisdom, during that ancient cosmic NEW YEAR, when his soul united with the astral body.

From that time comes the lost wisdom (we spoke of this a few. days ago), the gnostic wisdom which disappeared. We must look for the origin of this wisdom in the cosmic New Year about 6000 years before our era. This, is the source from which Zarathustra drew his knowledge; it is the wisdom that illumined the Gnostics with its last rays, but as already explained, only a few traces of this gnostic wisdom have remained to us. It is the winter of the earth, but at the same time a cosmic new year of the earth, to which we go back.

Now add about 4000 years to the time which has passed since the founding of Christianity; this will bring us to a time when we shall again pass through our astral consciousness, but upon a higher stage. Our soul will again pass through our astral consciousness, through a cosmic star-consciousness. Let us prepare ourselves for this event, so that it may not find us unprepared.

Let us prepare ourselves for this Cosmic New Year! By preparing ourselves for the Christmas Festival, as explained during one of my last lectures, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the Cosmic New Year. If the birth of spiritual knowledge lives within us as a sacred Christmas feeling, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the new Cosmic New Year, which begins 12,000 years after the old cosmic year.

Twelve months of the year pass by from the union of the earth's vegetable consciousness with the mineral consciousness, to another union. Twelve thousands of years pass by from one Cosmic New Year to the other Cosmic New Year of the earth, from one passage of the human soul through the astral world to a new passage of the human soul through the astral world.

In this solemn hour, we thus look from the new year upon a small scale to the New Year upon a great cosmic scale, from the ordinary New Year's Eve to the cosmic New Year's Eve, for which we prepare ourselves if we try to perceive in the very midst of winter the light which only streams towards us, as inhabitants of the earth, during a cosmic New Year. Then it comes to us in a natural, elemental way.

We really see the world in its true light if we perceive the surrounding world not only in the way in which it appears to our senses, not only in accordance with a materialistic mentality, but if we look upon the external physical world as a symbol for the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The approach of New Year's Eve may therefore appear to us like the approach of a messenger from the spiritual world, revealing to us the mysteries connected with the end of the year and bringing us the following message:

“Behold, in the midst of the dark cold winter season the vegetable consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be a sign to you that the earth too has its own cycle, namely the great cosmic year mentioned by Zarathustra, which goes from one Cosmic New Year's Eve to the other, and which we must understand if we wish to grasp the course of human development.”

Zarathustra speaks of twelve thousands of years, the twelve thousand years mentioned just now. He described the course of one Earthly Year, and divided it into four seasons representing the course of human evolution upon the earth. This is deeply rooted in the spiritual mysteries.

Let us fill our hearts and souls with a festive, earnest feeling, born out of a deeper comprehension of our spiritual science. Let us unfold within our heart that inner warmth which can be felt when in the midst of the cold winter night we hear the message of the Sun-Spirit's descent to the earth and then learn to know the mystery of the year's course.

The thirteen days from the 24th of December to the 6th of January are the days in which the plants' consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If the human being can transfer himself into the consciousness of the plants, he can see and dream of many mysteries which pass through his heart in many forms—he can have dreams such as that of Olaf Åsteson.

If we develop such feelings and moods, we obtain the right attitude towards the aims of our spiritual knowledge; these warm feelings which stream through our heart are a preparation for the New Cosmic Year, and they enable us to await it worthily, to look forward to that cosmic New Year's Eve which brings a new cosmic year. In future incarnations, when our souls will pass through the great Cosmic New Year, we shall experience it in the right way if the end of the year which closes the small cycle of twelve months becomes a symbol for the great end of the year which closes a cycle of twelve thousand years.

This is the secret of our existence. The things which take place upon a small scale always correspond to the things which take place upon a large scale, and upon a large scale the things are the same as upon a small scale. The small scale, the course of one year, can only be grasped if it becomes a symbol for the great cosmic course, for the cycle which encompasses thousands of years.

The year is an image for the Aeons. And Aeons are the reality of symbols which we encounter in the course of one year. If we really understand the year's course, our hearts will be deeply moved toy the mysteries of the cosmos, at this time of the year which marks the beginning of a new year. Let us try to attune our soul so that it can look into the new year conscious of the fact that it can bear within it the year's course as a symbol for the great COSMIC course, which encompasses all the mysteries pursued, by spiritual Beings who surge and weave through the universe from aeon to aeon, in the same way in which the Lesser Gods pursue the mysteries connected with the development of the vegetable and mineral Kingdoms during the course of one year.

On New Year's Eve it is always fitting to remember how past and future are linked together in life and in the existence of the world, how past and future are linked in the whole life of the Cosmos of which man is a part, how past and future are linked in every fraction of that life with which our own individual existence is connected, is interwoven through all that we were able to do and to think during the past year, and through all that we are able to plan for the coming year.

The thoughts which, almost in answer to an inward need, we call up before our souls in reviewing what we have done during the past year, and what we intend to do next year, should be pervaded with adequate earnestness and dignity, in accordance with the spirit of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, so that we may illumine these thoughts with the Higher Light which we can receive from Spiritual Science, through contemplation of the great Cosmic events. How does this human life of ours stand with regard to past and future? It is like a mirror. Indeed, comparison with a mirror approaches reality far more than it may seem to do at first. Striving a little to attain self-knowledge is indeed like standing before a mirror. We stand, looking into a mirror and there in that mirror lies the past, of which we know its reflection is in the mirror. Behind the mirror lies that into which at first we cannot look, just as it is not possible to see in space, what lies behind a mirror. Perhaps the question should be raised here: What is it that corresponds in our world-mirror to the silver covering at the back which turns the transparent glass into a mirror? In the ordinary mirror the glass is coated behind so that we cannot see through it. What constitutes the coating of the world-mirror that reflects the past for us, and at first keeps the future hidden from our gaze? The world-mirror is coated with our own being, with our own human being. We have only to bear in mind that with the usual means of knowledge we are really unable to see ourselves, to see what we ourselves are. We cannot see through ourselves, we see through ourselves just as little as we see through a mirror. When we look into ourselves, many things are mirrored back to us, things which we have experienced, things which we have learnt; but our own being remains hidden from us, because we can see through ourselves at first just as little as we can see through an ordinary mirror. Looking at the matter generally, or I might say, in the abstract, we may consider this comparison with a mirror as I have just described it. But when we come to details modifications are needed. Trying to look back on our life through this mirroring process (for looking back on our life, on what our inner soul reflects, is a mirroring process), we must confess: What we see mirrored there, is only a part of our experiences. When you try to look back on your experiences, you will find that these experiences are continually subject to interruptions. You look back on what the day has brought you; but you do not look back on what the preceding night has brought you. The experiences of the night are an interruption. You look back on yesterday, you do not look back on the night before yesterday, and so on. Stretches of nighttime, not filled in by thoughts upon our experiences, are continually inserting themselves. It is an illusion to think that we survey our entire life when looking back upon it; we only piece together to some extent, what the days contain. In reality, the course of our life comes before us with continual interruptions.

We might now ask: Are these interruptions in the course of our life necessary? Yes, they are necessary. Were there no such interruptions in the course of our life, or, to speak more correctly, in the retrospection upon our life's course, then, as human beings, we should be quite unable to perceive our Ego. We should see the course of our life filled merely by the world outside, and in our life there would be no ego-consciousness at all. That we are able to experience, to feel our Ego, depends on the fact that our life's course is continually being broken up piece-wise. It is precisely with respect to this ego-perception, brought about by interruptions in the course of life, that present-day humanity faces a critical period. When a human being of today looks back on life and, as has just been explained, attains his Ego through this looking back, this Ego of present-day man is, in a certain respect, empty, we only know that we have an Ego. In earlier periods of earth evolution men knew more. Just as in ordinary daily life, the dreams of an individual dimly emerge out of his nightly experiences, so the clairvoyant-atavistic perceptions of the human beings of earlier periods emerged out of the Ego. These clairvoyant-atavistic perceptions were dreams only in their form; what they contained was reality. We may say: The Ego of present-day man has been emptied of the clairvoyant-atavistic content which was the support of men of past ages, permeating them with the conviction that they had something in common with a divine element, that they were connected with something divine. Out of these atavistic-clairvoyant visions, there arose in man's sentient life that which condensed into religious feeling and religious veneration towards those beings to whom religious cult and religious sacrifice were dedicated. How does the case stand today? Today the Ego is empty of these atavistic-clairvoyant visions, and when we look back on the Ego it is more or less only a point in our soul-life. The content of this Ego is a firm point of support, but it is nevertheless only a point. Now, however, we are living in an age in which the point must again become a circle, an age in which the Ego must again receive a content. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, the Spiritual World has made a mighty inroad into our Sense-world, in order that the Ego may again receive a content. This is why, ever since the seventies of the nineteenth century, the Spiritual World has willed to re-enter our physical existence through revelations in a new way. What we are striving for in Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is this: To receive with goodwill all that is seeking to enter through spiritual revelation from another world—from a world, however, which bears within it this world of ours—and to clothe these revelations in terms by which they can be communicated to man. These revelations are nothing less than that which definitely (in a certain respect) guarantees the future of mankind. It is not, indeed, a direct glance behind the mirror, but it is a guarantee for this, viz., that when we as human beings, hasten to meet the future i.e., hasten to step behind the mirror—which means facing the future—then that which we have to do in the future will be able to come to pass in full power, if we have first tested our forces, if we have first strengthened them through that, which, by means of Spiritual Science, reveals itself to us out of the Spiritual World.

Just as in the past, man's Ego was filled with an atavistic clairvoyant content, which guaranteed his connection with the divine, so today our Ego must be filled with a new spiritual content, received in full consciousness, a content which gives us again the link uniting our soul with the divine Soul-being. The men of the past possessed an atavistic clairvoyance. The last inheritance of this atavistic clairvoyance is abstract reflection, the abstract power of cognition possessed by modern men. It is a much diluted remnant of the early clairvoyance. The man of today can feel that this dilution, this logical dialectic dilution of a former atavistic clairvoyance, is no longer able to support his soul. Then the longing will arise within him to receive something new into his Ego. But that which has formed the end in the evolution of mankind from primeval times up to the present, must now be made the beginning. In olden times, man had clairvoyant revelations and did not understand them. Today man must first understand, must exert to the utmost his intellectual power, must exert to the utmost his reason. If he so exerts it through that which lies before him in Spiritual Science, then mankind will again develop the power of receiving the Spiritual clairvoyantly. This is certainly something that most people today wish to avoid, viz., to make use of their healthy human reason in order to understand Spiritual Science. Were it possible to avoid the use of man's reason, it would also be possible to avoid altogether the entrance of spiritual revelations into our earthly world.

Thus past and future are linked together on this New Year's Eve, this Cosmic New Year's Day. For today, what is impending is indeed a kind of Cosmic New Year's Day. The future stands before us as a formidable question, not an indefinite abstract question, but as a concrete question. How can we approach that which, as a question put to mankind, in the form of a spiritual revelation, is striving more and more since the last third of the nineteenth century, to enter our earthly world? And how are we to place it in relation to revelations of the past? These questions should be livingly experienced. Then we should feel how important it is to direct our longings towards that which is presented here as Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Then we should realize the earnestness and the dignity of the striving for Spiritual Science. It is especially needful to have this feeling at the present time. For we are not dealing with any kind of arbitrary human will (“Willkur”); we are dealing with something that as Cosmic knowledge wills to reveal itself to us from out of the world's evolution; we are dealing in very truth with what the gods will to make of man. But here we are faced with the fact that when we on the one hand turn towards the spirit, on the other hand those who wish only to worship the past, are drawn away by the Spirit of contradiction, by the Spirit of opposition. And the more we try with all our might to grasp the spirit of the future state of man, the more surely will the people of the past be possessed by the spirit of opposition. It is to be noticed among people of today that religious feeling is seeking to assume new life. Groping attempts are numerous. The attempts of Spiritual Science must not be groping. Through such attempts the real, concrete world of the Spirit ought to be grasped. Almost like a premonition of what it ought to be, we are faced by those who say: “Mere religious tradition is not enough for us; we want to have an inner religious experience, we do not only want to hear the message that, according to tradition, Christ lived and died in Palestine so many, or so many years ago—we want to experience in our souls the Christ-experience.” In many quarters we find such ideas arising among men, among people who believe that something of the Christ-experience has arisen in the depths of their souls.

These are groping attempts, often even questionable attempts, because at the same time people are content in the egoism of their soul, and then turn away from all inclination to the Spirit. These longings after inner spiritual experience are there nevertheless, and even groping attempts towards such inner spiritual experience, towards a new interest in the spiritual world, should be recognized. But the spirit of opposition will surely arise.

To judge by what he himself has printed, such a representative of the spirit of the past has recently uttered quite remarkable words at Stuttgart, contrasting attempts, groping attempts, to rouse a new religious interest, a new religious experience, with attempts to reach a really new concrete knowledge of the spiritual world, as in the case of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. In the Shepherd-Play, performed at the Waldorf School, one of the shepherds, who has had a spiritual vision, says that he very nearly lost his power of speech. When I read the last page of Gogarten's Spiritual Science and Christianity, I must say that I very nearly lost my power of speech, for it is indeed surprising that anyone should say such things in the present age. It is things such as this that, on the Cosmic New Year's Eve, should stimulate contemplation of the comparison of the past with the inevitable future. What does this representative of religion really say? I do not know if the full import has been realized. He says: “Today—I ought to say at all times—the chief task is to safeguard the elementary feeling of piety of which I have spoken. It is almost wholly lacking today. We are occupied with religious ‘interests’ with religious ‘experiences’. Since Anthroposophy provides such good material for ‘interest’, and is such a good medium for ‘experiences’, people are helpless and without power of resistance when they meet it. People know even less of that fundamental, elementary bond, the bond brought into life by piety, which drives away every religious ‘interest’, and scatters every religious ‘experience’, the bond between God and creature. And because man knows little of this bond, he knows still less of that other bond, the unconditioned direct union between God and man.”

Here in the name of religion we see every religious interest repudiated, every religious experience scattered. A wholly undefined “bond” which cannot of course be differentiated, and which the speaker does not wish to differentiate, takes the place of religious interest, and of religious experience. We do indeed lose our power of speech when a teacher of religion says: “True piety must drive away every religious interest and scatter every religious experience.” We have gone so far that we are unable to realize what it means when an official representative of religion says: “Away with religious interest! Away with religious experience!” You see, apart from the fact that Gogarten does not know that he himself would be quite unable to speak of religion at all, if in the past there had never been atavistic religious interests and religious experience; apart from the fact that he as official representative of religion, could never have stood before an audience had not religion entered into the evolution of mankind, through religious interest and religious experience; apart from all this, everything I have told you just now proves what I told you before, that in the present day the very people who consider themselves the true representatives of religious life, work for the destruction of all that is essential in religion. Have these men lost every possibility of understanding what pertains to the human soul? Can these men no longer understand that when man turns his attention to anything, attention is guided by interest, and that everything entering the consciousness of man is based on experience? It seems as if human beings no longer speak from such consciousness at all, but only from a spirit of opposition. We should bear this in mind in all seriousness when we look into the mirror which so mysteriously unveils the past and conceals the future—though in a certain way the mirror unveils the future, too, in the way I have described.

It is the aim of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science to serve religious interest, and to give a content to religious experience. With what result? In the course of this year (1919) the question was brought forward before the Holy Roman Congregation whether the teaching that is termed theosophical is in keeping with the teaching of the Catholic Church, and whether it is permissible to belong to theosophical societies, to attend theosophical meetings, and to read theosophical papers and periodicals. The answer was: “No”, in every case, No, “in omnibus”. This is the spirit of opposition, of contradiction, and the Jesuit Zimmermann interprets it more particularly by applying this veto of the Holy Roman Congregation to Anthroposophy also. I need not set Zimmermann's writings before you in detail. You all know the wind that blows from a certain quarter against Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, and that it is the breath of the Spirit of contradiction. The Spirit carried in this wind can be felt in the following words, penned by that same Zimmermann, who for years spread abroad the lie that I was a renegade priest: “Through the defection of their General Secretary, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who took along with him most of the members, the Theosophical Society picked up again to some extent in the course of years, and now owns about twenty-five lodges, one-fifth of which are certainly somewhat dormant, and publishes at Dusseldorf, as its official organ, Das Theosophische Streben (The Theosophic Endeavour). The followers of Steiner, who named his theosophy ‘Anthroposophy’ after his exit, complained recently that he was becoming unproductive, that he had no new ‘visions’, that he always lectures upon the same things, that he would soon have to throw himself into something new, etc.” This paves the way for another article dealing in the same intelligent fashion with the “Threefold Social Organism”. You see what Spirit of truth backs up this Jesuit? A Jesuit does not merely represent his personal opinion, but the opinion of the Catholic Church. He speaks only as a member of the Catholic Church. What he says represents the opinion of the Catholic Church. We must judge such things from a moral point of view. We must ask whether anyone who deals with truth as this man does—a man, moreover, held in high esteem by a particular religious community, can be held in high esteem by the true spirit of humanity.

As long as questions of this kind are not considered with due earnestness, we have not arrived at the right understanding of the Cosmic New Year's Eve. At the present moment, it is essential to reach this right understanding. It is essential for us to extend our sympathies—alas, our sympathies often arise from egoistic sources—to the great human relations, and to feel for the whole of mankind that human sympathy which impels us to make a spiritual movement like this effectively fruitful for the evolution of mankind. May you experience, my dear friends, at this very time, that it is the Spirit of the Cosmos itself, which for decades has been seeking entrance. May you experience during the coming night, that this Spirit which seeks to enter humanity, shall here so be served that the souls of those, who will to feel with and who will to think with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, may feel their union with this new Spirit which wills to enter the world—the Spirit which alone can bring to the earthly world, the world that is destroying itself—the new upbuilding impulse out of Heaven. In this hour, a symbolic hour every year, demanding that we experience it as the decisive hour between past and future—in this hour may you unite your souls with the new Spirit; may you so experience in your souls the contact of the past year with the coming year, that the Cosmic Year which is passing away, may contact itself with the dawning Cosmic Year.

But the passing Cosmic Year will still send many an after-effect into the future; destructive forces into the spheres of Spirit, of Equity, of Economics. Therefore it is all the more needful, that as many men as possible shall be seized in the innermost depths of their souls by the New Year of the Spiritual Future, and shall develop a Will which may be the foundation of a new spiritual world, a world to be built into the future evolution of mankind. Those who care for the future of mankind are not those who would kill religious interest, who would do away with religious experience, but those only, those alone who can see how, through the intellectuality of our age, the old religious interest has faded away, the old religious life has been crippled. Those only care for the future, who see how a new interest must seize mankind, how new religious experience must spring up in mankind, so that man may bring into the Cosmos new germs for a future existence.

[ 1 ] Michael's intervention in the evolution of the world and of mankind, at the end of the nineteenth century, appears in a remarkable illumination, if we consider the history of spiritual life in the centuries that went before.

[ 2 ] In the early fifteenth century lies the moment from which the epoch of the spiritual Soul first begins.

[ 3 ] Previous to this moment, a great change may be seen taking place in the spiritual life of mankind. One can trace how everywhere, previously, Imaginations played through all men's outlook on the world. Particular persons, it is true, have, before this, already arrived in their soul's life so far as bare ‘concepts.’ But the general soul-life of the majority of mankind goes on in a mutual intermingling of Imaginations and of mental conceptions drawn from the purely physical world. It is so with their conceptions about processes of nature, and also with their conceptions of events in history.

[ 4 ] What spiritual observation can discover in this direction is in every way confirmed by external testimony. A few instances may be mentioned here.

[ 5 ] The tales of historical events, which had lived in the minds and mouths of men during the preceding centuries, began to be written down just before the Age of Consciousness.^t1 And thus we have preserved from that period ‘legends’ and such things, which give a faithful portrayal of the manner in which men pictured ‘history’ to themselves in the times before.

[ 6 ] A beautiful example is the Tale of the Good Gerard, preserved in a poem by Rudolf of Ems, who lived in the first half of the thirteenth century. ‘Good Gerard’ is a rich merchant of Cologne. He sets out on a trading expedition to Russia, Livonia and Prussia, to buy sables. Thence he goes on to Damascus and Nineveh, to procure silks and similar merchandise.

[ 7 ] On the homeward journey he is driven out of his course by a tempest. He is thrown upon a strange shore, where he makes acquaintance with a man who is keeping prisoner certain English knights and also the bride of the English king. Gerard offers him everything that he has gained by trade upon his journey, and receives the prisoners in return. He takes them on board his ship and sets out on his journey home. When the ships come to where the ways part, one way to Gerard's country and the other to England, Gerard dismisses the men-prisoners and sends them on their way to their own country. The king's bride he keeps with him, in the hope that her betrothed, King William, will come and fetch her, as soon as he hears that she is free and where she is dwelling. The bride-queen and the ladies of her company are treated by Gerard with all conceivable kindness. She lives as a well-loved daughter in the house of him who has redeemed her from captivity. A long, long time goes by, without the king's appearing to fetch her. At last, in order to secure the future of his foster daughter, Gerard resolves to marry her to his own son; for it seem reasonable to believe that William is dead. The wedding feast is already in full train, when an unknown pilgrim appears amongst them. It is William. He had been long wandering about, seeking for his betrothed bride. She is restored to him, after Gerard's son has unselfishly resigned her. Both remain for a while still with Gerard; and then he fits out a ship to take them to England. Gerard is the first to be seen and welcomed in England by his former prisoners—all now attained to high dignities, and they at once want to choose him for their king. But he can tell them in reply that he is bringing them their own rightful king and queen. For they too had believed William to be dead, and were about to choose another king to rule the country, where everything had fallen to into confusion during the long time that William had been on his wanderings. The merchant of Cologne rejects everything they offer him in the way of honours and riches; and returns to Cologne, to live again as the simple merchant that he was before.

The story is couched in the form that the Saxon Emperor, Otto the First, journeys to Cologne to make the acquaintance of Good Gerard. For the powerful emperor in much that he has done, has not escaped the temptation of looking for an ‘earthly reward.’ Through acquaintance with Gerard, there is brought keenly home to him, by example, the untold good done by a plain man: The sacrifice of all the merchandise he had acquired, in order to set prisoners free; the restoration of his son's bride to William; and then all that he performs in order to bring William back to England, and so on—without coveting any earthly reward whatever in return, but looking for his reward from the hand of God alone. In the mouths of the people the man goes by the name of ‘the good Gerard.’ The Emperor feels that he has received a powerful spur, religiously and morally, through acquaintance with a man so minded as Gerard.

[ 8 ] This story—of which I have here given the bare outline, so as not merely to allude by name to something little known—shows from one aspect very distinctly what was the constitution of men's souls in the age that preceded the dawning of the Spiritual Soul in human evolution. [ 9 ] Anyone who lets the story, as told by Rudolf of Ems, work within him, can feel what a change has taken place in men's realization of the earthly world since the days when Emperor Otto lives (in the tenth century.)

[ 10 ] Looking thence to the age of the Spiritual Soul, we may see how the world has grown as it were ‘clear’ to the vision of men's souls, in respect of their grasp of physical entities and physical processes. Gerard sails with his ships, so to speak, through a mist. He only knows, each time, one little bit of the world with which he has to do. In Cologne, one learns nothing of what is happening in England; and one must go for years in search of a man who is in Cologne. The life and possessions of such a person as the man on whose shore Gerard is cast on his homeward voyage, first become known to one when Fate carries one directly to the spot. Compared to the perspicuity of the world's circumstances to-day, that of those days is like the difference between gazing over a broad, sunny landscape, and groping in a dense mist.

[ 11 ] With anything that to-day is accounted ‘historic’ the Tale of Good Gerard and the circumstances narrated in it have nothing whatever to do. But all the more do they shew the general tone of feeling and the whole state of mind of the age. And this, not the particular occurrences of the physical world, is depicted in Imaginations.

[ 12 ] The picture so drawn reflects Man's feeling that he is not merely a being who in all his life and actions is simply a link in the chain of events in the physical world, turned men's eyes to the beholding of the spiritual world. They did not see into the length and breadth of physical existence; but all the more they saw into the depths of spiritual existence.

[ 13 ] The tale of Good Gerard shews how the twilight haze which preceded the age of the Spiritual Soul as regards the perspective of the physical world, turned men's eyes to the beholding of the spiritual world. They did not see into the length and breadth of physical existence; but all the more they saw into the depths of spiritual existence.

[ 14 ] But as once it had been, when in their dim dreamlike clairvoyance men had looked into the spiritual world, it was now no more, in the age of which we are speaking. The Imaginations were there, but the apprehension they met with in the human soul was one already strongly tending towards the intellectual form of thought. The result was that people no longer knew how the world which reveals itself in Imaginations is related to the world of outer physical existence. And therefore, to people who adhered with more penetration to the intellectual form of thought, the Imaginations appeared to be free ‘fictions,’ with no actual reality.

[ 15 ] People no longer knew that through Imaginations men look into a world in which they dwell with quite another part of their being than in the physical world. And so, in the descriptions, both worlds are portrayed side by side; and both, from the style of the narration wear such a character, that one might well think that the spiritual events described had taken place alongside the physical ones, as visibly as the physical events themselves.

[ 16 ] Moreover, in many of these stories, the physical events themselves were confounded together. Persons whose lives lay hundreds of years apart appear on the scene as contemporaries. Actual events are transferred to wrong places or wrong times. [ 17 ] Facts of the physical world are looked at by the human soul in a way in which one can only look at things of the spirit, for which time and space have another meaning than they have for physical things. The physical world is described in Imaginations, instead of in thoughts. And, in return, the spiritual world is woven into the story as though one had to do, not with a quite other form of existence, but with a continuation of the physical facts.

[ 18 ] The history which holds solely to physical interpretations of everything, thinks that the old Imaginations from the East, from Greece, etc. were taken over, and woven poetically into the historical material which interested people at the time. In the writings of Isidore of Seville (7^th century A.D.) there was indeed a regular collection of old stories and legendary ‘motifs.’

[ 19 ] But this is a surface view of the matter. It can have a value only for one who has no sense of that other form of human soul-life, which knows itself and its own external existence to be in direct touch with the spiritual world, and feels impelled to express in Imaginations what thus it knows. And if then, instead of the narrator's own ‘Imagination,’ he uses one that has been handed down in history and which he has made his own by familiarity, this is not the essential feature; the essential feature is, that the soul's whole orientation is towards the spiritual world, so that the soul sees her own doings and all the proceedings of Nature interwoven with this spiritual world.

[ 20 ] There is, however, a certain confusion observable in the style of narrative in the period just before the dawn of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 21 ] In this confusion, when viewed with spiritual understandings, may be seen the actions of the Luciferic Powers. [ 22 ] The impulse which makes the soul adopt Imaginations into her personal store of life-experience, corresponds less with the faculties that she possessed in primeval times—through dream-like clairvoyance—and more with those already in existence in the eighth to the fourteenth centuries. These later faculties were already impelling the soul more towards a thinking interpretation of what was perceived through the senses. The soul is placed betwixt the two: betwixt the old orientation—where all turns upon the spiritual world, and the physical world is only seen as in a mist—and the new orientation, where all turns upon physical proceedings, and spiritual vision has grown dim.

[ 23 ] Into this unstable balance in the human soul is thrown the Luciferic influence. The Luciferic Powers want to prevent Man from coming to a complete orientation in the physical world. They want to keep him with his consciousness in spiritual regions that were suited to him in primeval times. They want to keep his dream-like, imaginative world-vision from the influence of that pure thinking which is trained to the understanding of physical existence. They are able indeed, in a wrong way, to keep back his powers of vision from the physical world; but they are not able, in a right way, to keep alive his power of realizing the old Imaginations. And so they leave him musing in Imaginations, without being able quite to transport him in soul into those worlds, where Imaginations have real validity. [ 24 ] The effect of Lucifer's influence, in the first beginning of the Age of the Spiritual Soul, is to transport Man out of the physical world into the supersensible one that lies just on its borders.

[ 25 ] This may be seen clearly illustrated in the Legend of Duke Earnest, which was one of the favourite stories of the Middle Ages, and circulated far and wide:

[ 26 ] Duke Earnest comes into conflict with the Emperor; and the emperor makes war unjustly upon him, to destroy him. To escape these impossible relations with the head of the empire, Duke Earnest sees himself obliged to join the crusade which is on its way to the East. In the various adventures that now befall him before his journey reaches its end, physical things and spiritual things are interwoven in the ‘legendary’ style above described. The duke, for instance, comes on his journey to a race of men with heads like cranes. He is cast with his vessels upon the ‘Magnetic Mountain,’ which attracts all ships by its magnetic power, so that people who come into the neighbourhood of the mountain cannot get away again, but are bound to perish miserably. Duke Earnest and his followers manage to escape by sewing themselves into skins and letting themselves be carried off by griffins, who are used to come down and prey upon the people who have been cast on the Magnetic Mountain. They are carried to a mountain top; and there, whilst the griffins are away, they cut themselves out of the skins and so escape. After further wanderings, they come to a people whose ears are so long that they can wrap them round their whole body like a coat; and then to another race of people with such big feet that when it rains they lie down on the ground and spread their feet over them like umbrellas. They come to a race of dwarfs, a race of giants, and so on. A great deal of this kind comes into the tale, as part of Duke Earnest's adventures upon his crusade. This ‘legend’ does not let one feel—in the way one should, wherever ‘Imaginations’ come in—that here the story is passing into a spiritual sphere, telling in pictures of things that are going on in the astral world and have a connection with the wills and the fate of the people upon earth.

[ 27 ] It is the same with the fine ‘Story of Roland,’ which celebrates Charlemagne's expedition against the heathens of Spain. Here it is even narrated, in analogy with the bible, that in order to enable Charlemagne to reach a desired place the sun stays its course, so that this one day is as long as an ordinary two.

[ 28 ] And, in the Saga of the Niebelung, one can see how the form of the story preserved in Northern countries has maintained the vision of the Spiritual in much greater purity; whereas in Middle Europe the Imaginations have been brought very close to physical life. The form of the Northern legends expresses clearly that the Imaginations have reference to an ‘astral world.’ In its Mid-European form, the ‘Niebelungen Lied,’ the Imaginations glide over into the views of the physical one.

[ 29 ] Those imaginations too, which come into the Legend of Duke Earnest, have in reality to do with experiences that are realised, between the adventures on the physical plane, in an ‘astral world’, to which Man as much belongs as to the physical one.

[ 30 ] All this, examined with the eye of the spirit, shows that the entrance into the Age of Consciousness means growing out of a phase of evolution in which the Luciferic Powers would be victorious over mankind, if the Spiritual Soul with its intellectual power did not bring a new strain of evolution into Mans being. That tendency to take their whole orientation from the spiritual world, by which men are confused and led astray, finds its check in the Spiritual Soul; men's gaze is drawn out into the physical world. All that takes place in this direction helps to withdraw mankind from the bewildering influence of Lucifer.

[ 31 ] In all this, Michael is already working from out of the spiritual world on Man's behalf. From the region above the senses he is preparing his work for later. He gives to mankind impulses which conserve the primeval relation to the divine-spiritual world, without this conservation assuming a Luciferic character.

[ 32 ] Then, in the last third of the nineteenth century, Michael pushes forward, and carries his action—which from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century has gone on preparatorily from the supersensible region—into the physical earth-world itself.

[ 33 ] It was necessary, for a while, that mankind should pursue their spiritual evolution in the direction of freeing themselves from a relation to the spiritual world which was threatening to become impossible. Subsequently, this evolution turned again, through Michael's mission, into paths which bring human progress upon earth once more into a relation with the spiritual world in which Man can find health and wholeness.

[ 34 ] So Michael stands, in his working, between the World-Picture of Lucifer, and the World-Understanding of Ahriman. The World-Picture turns, with Michael, to wisdom of itself as divine World-Working. And in this World-Working lives the care of Christ for mankind, which can thus disclose itself through Michael's World-Revelation to the human heart.

Leading Thoughts

[ 35 ] The dawn of the Age of Consciousness (age of the Spiritual Soul) in the 15^th century is preceded, in the evening of the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, by an enhancement of Luciferic activity, which lasts on for a while into the new period.

[ 36 ] The aim of this Luciferic activity is unrightfully to preserve old forms of mentally picturing the world, and to keep Man back from using the intellect to comprehend the physical life of the world and make himself familiar with it.

[ 37 ] Michael unites himself with Man's activity, in order that the emancipated power of the intellect may abide by its divine, spiritual parentage, not in a Luciferic but in a rightful way.

• t1. Footnote by translator. In this and in several of the following Letters, the phrase ‘Age of Consciousness’ (Bewusstseins-Zeitalter) is often used synonymously with ‘Age of the Consciousness-Soul or spiritual Soul’ (Zeitalter der Bewusstseins-Seele)—compare what is said of this in the Preface.

In Lucifer's kingdom. A space which is not enclosed by artificial walls, but by fantastic forms which resemble plants, animals, etc. All in various brilliant shades of red. In the background are arranged three transparencies showing the top of Raphael's ‘Disputa,’ Leonardo's ‘Last Supper,’ and Raphael's ‘School of Athens.’ These are illuminated from the back of the stage whenever Maria or Benedictus challenges Lucifer. At other times they are invisible. On the right, Lucifer's throne. At first only the souls of Capesius and Maria are present. After a time Lucifer appears, and later on Benedictus and Thomasius, with his etheric counterpart or ‘double,’ and lastly, Theodora.

Maria:
Thou, who within the realm of sense art named
Capesius, ...
Art thou the being whom I meet the first
In Lucifer's domain: 'tis dangerous
To feel and breathe the spirit of this place.

Capesius (in astral garb):
O speak not to me of Capesius
Who in the kingdom of the Earth erewhile
Strove through a life which he hath long since known
Was but a dream. Whilst there he bent his mind
Upon such things as ever come to pass
As time streams on. And he had set himself
In that way to discover all the powers
Through which mankind fulfils its spirit-life.
What thus he came to know about those powers
He tried to keep deep fastened in his soul.
Now only in this realm one understands
To judge aright the knowledge he pursued.
He thought the pictures he possessed were true
And could reveal to him reality;
But, viewed from here, they clearly show themselves
As naught but empty dreams, which Spirit-hands
Have woven round about weak men of Earth.
They cannot bear the cold clear light of truth.
They would be utterly afraid and stunned
If they should learn how all the course of life
Is turned by spirits after their ideas.

Maria:
Thou speakest as I've only heard those speak
Who ne'er have been incarnate on the Earth.
They tell you Earth hath no significance,
That in the universe its work is small.
But he who hath belonged to realms of Earth
And owes to it the best powers that he hath,
Will have a different tale to tell thereof.
He finds important many threads of fate
Which bind Earth's life to that of all the worlds.
E'en Lucifer who works here with such power
Must keep his gaze fixed fast upon the Earth,
And seek to turn men's deeds in such a way
That their results may ripen his own soul.
He knows he'd fall a victim to the dark
If he could find no booty on the Earth,
And so his fate is bound up with that sphere.
So too, with those who dwell in other worlds.
And when the human soul can clearly see
The cosmic goal, which Lucifer desires,
And can compare with it what those powers wish
Who have him as opponent to their aims,
Then will it know that he can be destroyed
Through conquests which it gains o'er its own self.

Capesius:
The human being who here talks with thee
Thinks that fate dreadful, which compels him now
To wear a body round him; which hath yet
The breath of life and keeps its earthly form,
Although the spirit hath no more control.
At such a time this spirit feels indeed
That worlds, he values, fall at one fierce blow.
He feels himself within a prison-house
Narrow and horrible with naught all round.
Remembrance of the life that he passed through
Seems, as it were, extinguished from his soul.
At times he feels aware of human souls,
But what they say he cannot understand;
He only catches some especial words
Which lift themselves from out the general talk,
And bring remembrance of the loveliness
Which he can gaze on in the Spirit-realms.
He's in his body then, and yet is not;
He lives within that frame a life he fears
When he beholds it from this region here:
And he is longing for the time to come
When from the body he will be set free.

Maria:
The body which is proper to Earth-souls
Bears in itself the means to recreate
In lofty pictures loveliness sublime:
Which pictures, even if their substance now
Seems but a shadow in the human soul,
Are yet the buds which in the future worlds
Will open out to blossom and to fruit.
So through his body man may serve the gods.
And his soul's life doth show in its true light
Only when in his body he doth find
The power to give his “I” reality.

Capesius:
Ah, utter not that word in front of him
Who stands before thee now in Spirit-realms
And on the Earth is called Capesius.
He fain would flee away when that word sounds,
So fierce it burns him here.

Maria:
So thou dost hate
That which first gives true being unto men?
How canst thou come to live within this realm
If so appalling seems that word to thee?
For no one can arrive as far as this
Who hath not faced the nature of that word.

Capesius:
He who appears to thee hath often stood
Before great Lucifer who rules this realm.
And Lucifer hath made it clear to him
That only souls, who consciously make use
Of powers that from their earthly bodies come,
Can harm the realm which doth obey his will.
Those souls however who go through their life
Within the body, as it were in swoon,
And yet already have clairvoyant power,
These only learn in Lucifer's domain,
And cannot cause it harm in any way.

Maria:
I know that in these realms of Spirit-life
'Tis not by words, but sight, that one doth learn.
What in this moment I have come to see
Because of thine appearance to me here,
Will later show itself within my soul
As progress in my spirit-pupilship.

Capesius:
Here 'tis not only teaching that one gains;
Duties are also shown one in this place.
Thou hast here spoken with the soul of him
Who calls himself Capesius on earth.
The spirit-glances into former lives
That are accorded thee, will show to thee
Thou owest much through Karma unto him.
Therefore thou shouldst petition Lucifer
That he, great Light-Bearer, give thee the means
Capesius to shield, in life on Earth.
Thou knowest through thy wisdom well enough
What thou canst do for him, so that he may
Be led again to thee in later lives
So that through thee the debt may be wiped out.

Maria:
And so this duty which I hold so dear
Must be fulfilled through power from Lucifer?

Capesius:
Thou dost desire this duty to fulfil,
And that can only be through Lucifer.
Look! Here he comes, the Spirit of the Light.

(Lucifer appears and, in the course of his speech, Benedictus.)

Lucifer:
Maria, thou art asking at my throne
Self-knowledge for that very human soul
Who standeth near thee in the life on Earth.
It cannot learn to know itself aright
Except by gazing deep into myself;
And that it will achieve without thine aid.
How canst thou think that I would grant to thee
All that thou mayst desire for this thy friend?
Thou vainest Benedictus as thy guide,
Who is my strong opponent on the Earth,
Lending unto mine enemies his strength.
Already hath he stolen much from me.
Johannes cut himself adrift from him
And placed himself beneath my guiding hand.
He cannot yet indeed see my true self
Because he hath not yet the seer's full power.
He will attain it later through myself,
And then he will entirely be mine own.
But I command thee not to speak a word
That might apply to him in any way
So long as thou dost stand before my throne.
Any such word would burn me in this place.
Here words are deeds, and deeds must follow them;
But what might follow—from such words of thine—
It must not be—

Benedictus:
Thou must give ear to her.
For where words have an equal power with deeds
They come in consequence of former deeds.
The deed is done that conquers Lucifer:
Maria is my spirit-pupil true:
I could direct her to that point, whence she
Could recognize the highest spirit-task,
Which same she will most certainly fulfil.
And in fulfilling it she will for sure
Build in Johannes, power and balm to heal,
Which will release him from thy kingdom's grip.
Maria carries deep within her soul
A solemn holy vow which doth awake
Such healing powers in progress of the worlds.
Soon wilt thou hear all this put into words;
But if with powerful thought thou wouldst suppress
And veil the rays of light through which thou hast
The magic power to strive against, and win
The victory o'er all that selfhood means,
I think that then thou'lt glimpse the healing rays,
Which will in future shine with such a strength
That they will draw Johannes to their realm,
By their all-powerful love.

Maria:
Johannes soon
Will here appear; yet side by side
With his own wonted form, which on the earth
His soul would recognise, there will emerge
The being whom as his more potent double
Man carries hidden in his nature's depth.
And if Johannes could but recognize
Thee as thou seemest to his earthly form
It could not bring to him all he requires
To help him in the progress of his soul.
But to his double thou shalt now vouchsafe
What he requires upon those spirit paths,
O'er which I shall in future guide his steps.

Lucifer:
Johannes then must stand before me now.
I feel full well the power which comes from thee;
It hath opposed me since the Earth began.

(Enter Johannes Thomasius and his Etheric Counterpart from different sides of the stage at the same moment, and meet face to face.)

Thomasius:
O mine own Likeness, up till now thou hast
Shown thyself to me only that I might
Be frightened at the sight of mine own self.
I cannot understand thee much as yet;
I only know that thou dost guide my soul.
'Tis thou then who dost baulk me of free life
And dost prevent me from due cognizance
Of what I really am. Now must I hear
Thee speak in front of Lucifer, to see
What I in future years shall yet achieve.

Thomasius' Double:
'Tis true I often was allowed to come
And bring Johannes knowledge of himself.
But I could only work in those soul depths,
Which still are hidden from his consciousness.
My life within him hath for some long time
Been subject to considerable change.
Maria used to stand close to his side.
He thought her bound in spirit to himself;
I showed him that the true guides of his soul
Were only passion and impulsiveness.
He could but think of this as some reproach,
But thou couldst show, 0 Light-Bearer sublime,
To sensual tendencies the way by which
They best might serve the spirit-purposes.
Johannes from Maria had to part,
And give himself forthwith to earnest thought
Which hath the power to purify men's souls.
What from his purity of thought streamed forth
Flowed also unto me, and I was changed.
I feel his purity within myself.
Nought need he fear from me, if he should now
Feel once more drawn towards Maria's soul.
But he belongs, as yet, to thy domain,
And at this moment I demand him back.
For he shall now experience my being,
Without thy guidance and directing will.
He needs me now, that from me there may flow
Into his thought with mighty conscious strength
Both warmth of soul and also power of heart.
Then once more shall he find himself as man.

Lucifer:
I count thy striving good. Yet can I not
Grant to thee all that thou dost ask of me.
For should I give thee to Johannes now
In that same form wherein in former years
Thou didst appear before his mind and soul,
He would at present only give his love
To thinking and to knowledge cold and bare,
And all warm individuality
Would seem unfeeling, meaningless and dead.
It is not thus my power must fashion him.
Through me he must discover in himself
His living personality and self.
I must transform thee, if the thing that's right
Shall come forth for his health and progress now.
I have a long time since prepared for all
That now shall clearly show itself in thee.
Henceforth thou shalt appear in different guise:
Johannes will no more Maria love,
As he hath loved her in the days gone by.
Yet none the less he'll love, with all the strength
And all the passion he once gave to her.

Benedictus:
The glorious work in which we've gained success
Thou wouldst now turn unto thine own account.
Thou hast Johannes through his power of heart
Marked for thine own one day; and yet thou seest
That thou must make the fetters stronger still
If thou wouldst keep his being for thyself.
His heart will be beneath his spirit's rule—
If that is so then all the knowledge-work
Which he on Earth accomplished, must be giv'n
In future, for their own, to those great Powers
Which thou, since Time began, hast combated.
If thou succeed'st in capturing that love
Which now Johannes for Maria feels
And changing it by cunning to the lust
Which thou dost now require for thine own ends,
Then will he turn the good he did on Earth,
To evil ends from out the Spirit-worlds.

Maria:
Then he may yet be saved? 'Tis not decreed
That he must fall a victim to the Powers
That want to gain his work now for themselves?

Benedictus:
It would be so if all the Powers remained
Just as at present they have formed themselves;
But if at the right hour thou dost allow
Thy vow to take effect in thine own soul
Those Powers must change their course in future times.

Lucifer:
So work, compelling forces;
Ye elemental sprites,
Feel now your Master's power;
Smooth now for me the way,
That leads from realms of Earth
That so there may draw near
To Lucifer's domain
Whate'er my wish desires,
Whate'er obeys my will.

(Theodora appears.)

Theodora:
Who calleth me to realms so strange to me?
I like it not, unless the world of gods
Reveals itself in love unto my soul,
And glowing warmth entwining round my heart
Draws spirit-speech from out mine inmost soul.

Thomasius' Double:
Ah, how thou dost transform my very life!
Thou hast appeared, and here am I, a man
Who now can only work when filled by thee.
Johannes shall, through me, be now thine own,
And from henceforward thou shalt have the love
Which once so fearful and so radiant
Was wrested for Maria from his heart.
He saw thee years ago, but did not then
Feel all the warmth of love which was to grow
In secret in the depths of his own soul.
Now it will rise, and fill him full of power,
And turn his thoughts entirely to thyself.

Benedictus:
The crucial moment is arriving now,
His strongest power hath Lucifer let loose:
Maria, all the training of thy soul
Thou must put forth in strength to vanquish him.

Maria:
O Bearer of that Light, which would confine
Love only to the service of the self;
Thou hast from Earth's beginning granted men
Knowledge, when they, still guided by the gods,
Obeyed the spirit, knowing nought of self.
But since that time each soul of man hath been
The place in which thou fightest 'gainst the gods.
Yet now the times are coming, which must bring
Destruction on thyself and on thy realms.
A thinker bold was able to release
Science from all thy gifts in such a way
That unto mankind's gods it gave itself.
But thou dost try once more to get the powers,
Which for the gods are destined, for thyself.
Because Johannes through his work hath now
Deprived thee of that knowledge, with whose fruit
Thou from the first deceived'st all mankind,
So now thou would'st deceive him, through that love
Which, should he follow out his destined path
For Theodora he should never feel.
Thou fain wouldst conquer Wisdom now by Love,
As once 'gainst Love thou didst by Wisdom fight.
But know full well that in Maria's heart,
With which she now opposeth thy designs,
The spirit-pupilship hath planted powers
To keep far off, for ever, all self-love
From Knowledge. Never from this hour will I
Allow myself to be possessed by joy
Such as men feel when thoughts grow ripe within.
I'll steel my heart to serve as sacrifice
So that my mind can always only think
In such a way that through my thoughts I may
Offer the fruits of Knowledge to the gods.
My sacred service shall such Knowledge be,
And what I thus effect within myself
Shall o'er Johannes powerfully outstream,
And oft, in future, when within his heart
These words are whispered from thyself to him:
‘Man's human nature shall through love find out
What gives strength to his personality.’
Then shall my heart this powerful answer give:
‘Once thou wert listened to, when Earth began,
And there didst show forth signs of Wisdom's fruit;
The fruits of Love can only come to man
When they are brought to him from realms divine.’

Lucifer:
I mean to fight.

Benedictus:
And fighting, serve the gods.

Curtain

[ 1 ] The inner nature of man demands that he experience his relation with ultimate reality. Among thinkers who pursue this goal with untiring energy we find a large number discoursing on certain “boundaries” of knowledge. And, if we listen attentively, we cannot help noticing how collision with these boundaries, when it is experienced by a candid mind, tends in the direction of an inner psychic apprehension, a “purely noetic experience” such as was indicated in the first paragraph of this book. Consider how the profoundly able mind of Friedrich Theodor Vischer, in the packed essay he wrote on Johannes Volkelt’s book Dream-Phantasy (Traumphantasie), reports its own reaction to one such limit of cognition:

“No mind where no nerve-centre, where no brain”, say our opponents. No nerve-centre, we say, no brain unless it had been first prepared for by innumerable stages from below upwards. It is easy to babble, with a sneer, about Mind careering through granite and chalk—just as easy as it is for us to ask, with a sneer, how the albumen in the brain flies up aloft into ideas. Human knowledge is extinguished at any attempt to span the distance from one step to the other.

It will remain a secret how it comes about that nature—beneath which spirit must somehow or other be slumbering—presents itself as such a backlash of spirit that we bruise ourselves on it. The direction appears so absolute that Hegel’s formulation of it as “Being other” and “Being outside itself”, brilliant as it is, says almost nothing; it simply drapes the abruptness of the party wall. We may look to Fichte for a really adequate acknowledgment of the abruption and of the shock of the backlash, but we still find no explanation of it.

(Compare F. T. Vischer: Old and New (Altes und Neues), 1881, Part I, p. 229 f.)

Vischer lays his finger on the kind of issue with which anthroposophy too engages. But he fails to realise that, precisely at such a frontier of knowledge as this, another mode of knowledge can begin. He desires to go on living on these frontiers with the same brand of cognition that sufficed until he reached them. Anthroposophy seeks to demonstrate that the possibility of systematic knowledge (science) does not cease at the point where ordinary cognition “bruises” itself, at the point where this “abruption” and these “shocks” from the backlash make themselves felt; but that, on the contrary, the experiences that ensue from them lead naturally towards the development of another type of cognition, which transforms the backlash into perception of spirit—a perception which at the outset, in its initial stage, may be compared with tactile perception in the realm of the senses.

In Part III of Altes und Neues Vischer says: “Very well: there is no soul alongside of the body (he means, for the materialists); what we call matter simply becomes soul at the highest level of organisation known to us, in the brain, and soul evolves to mind or spirit. In other words, we are to be satisfied with a half-baked concept, which for the divisive understanding is a simple contradiction.” Anthroposophy echoes and supplements this with: Very well: for the divisive understanding there is a contradiction. But for the soul, the contradiction becomes the point of departure of a knowledge before which the divisive understanding is pulled up short, because it encounters the backlash of actual spirit.

[ 2 ] Again, Gideon Spicker, the author of a series of discerning publications, who also wrote Philosophical Confession of a Former Capuchin (Philosophische Bekenntnis eines ehemaligen Kapuziners, 1910) identifies incisively enough one of the confining limits of ordinary cognition:

Whatever philosophy a man confesses, whether it is dogmatic or sceptical, empirical or transcendental, critical or eclectic, every one, without exception, starts from an unproven and unprovable premise, namely the necessity of thinking. No investigation ever gets behind this necessity, however deep it may dig. It has to be simply, and groundlessly, accepted; every attempt to prove its validity already presupposes it. Beneath it yawns a bottomless abyss, a ghastly darkness, illuminated by no ray of light. We know not whence that necessity comes, nor whither it leads. As to whether a gracious God or whether an evil demon implanted it in the reason, we are equally uncertain. (p. 30.)

Reflection on the nature of thought, then, leads of itself to one of the frontiers of normal cognition. Anthroposophy occupies this frontier; it knows how necessity confronts and blocks discursive thought like an impenetrable wall. But when the act of thinking is experienced as such, the wall becomes penetrable. This experienced thinking finds a light of contemplation wherewith to illuminate the “darkness illuminated by no ray of light” of merely discursive thought. It is only for the dominion of the senses that the abyss is bottomless; if we do not halt before it, but make up our minds to risk going ahead with thought, beyond the point at which it has to jettison all that the senses have furnished to it, then in that “bottomless abyss” we find the realities of the spirit …*”

[ 3 ] One could continue almost indefinitely exemplifying the reaction of serious minds before the “frontiers of knowledge”. And it would serve to show that anthroposophy has its proper place as the inevitable product of mental evolution in the modern age. There are plenty of prophetic signs, if we know how to read them.

[ 1 ] Thinkers who strive with all their strength to gain the kind of relation to true reality that is demanded by the inner nature of the human being discuss a great number of the limits to knowledge referred to on page 16ff.; and if one looks at the nature of these discussions, one can see quite clearly that the thrust experienced by genuine thinkers in their encounter with such "limits" is in the direction of that inner soul experience which is the subject of this first essay. Take a look, for example, at the way the gifted thinker Friedrich Theodore Vischer, in the important essay he wrote on Johannes Volkelt's book Dream Fantasy, describes the cognitive experience he had in the encounter with one such limit:

“No spirit where there is no nerve center, where there is no brain,” declare our opponents. “No nerve center, no brain,” we reply, “if not evolved from below upward, through innumerable levels.” It is easy to speak scornfully of mind (spirit) hovering about in granite and limestone, no more difficult than it would be for us to ask scornfully how protein in the brain can wing its way up to ideas. Measuring the different levels defies human knowledge. It will forever remain a secret how it happens that nature—beneath whose surface, after all, the spirit must be slumbering—stands there as so complete a counterstroke of the spirit that we bruise ourselves against it; this separation seems so absolute that Hegel's formulation, as brilliant as it is, of something “other than,” or “outside of,” oneself is as good as meaningless and only hides the extreme nature of this wall of seeming separation. One does find in Fichte's work a true recognition of the cutting edge and blows of this counterstroke, but no explanation for it.

(See Friedrich Theodore Vischer, Views Old and New, 1881.) Friedrich Theodore Vischer points vigorously to one of the places to which anthroposophy must also point. But the fact does not enter his consciousness that at such a borderland of knowledge a different form of knowing activity can enter. He wishes to live at these borderlands in the same kind of knowing activity which sufficed for him before he arrived at them. Anthroposophy attempts to show that science does not end where our ordinary knowing activity gets “bruised,” where these “cuts and blows” occur in the counterstroke of reality; anthroposophy tries to show that the experiences resulting from these “bruises, cuts, and blows” lead to the development of a different kind of knowing activity, which transforms the counterthrust of reality into a spiritual perception that, to begin with, on its first level, is comparable to tactile perception in the sense world.

In the third section of Views Old and New, Friedrich Theodore Vischer states: “Good, there is no soul alongside of the body (Vischer means for the materialist); thus, precisely what we make a point of calling ‘matter’—at the highest level of its formation known to us: in the brain—becomes soul, and the soul evolves into spirit. We are supposed to form a concept [of matter], which to the analyzing intellect is in complete contradiction with itself.” Again anthroposophy must reply to Vischer's presentation: Good, for the intellect that breaks things down into their component parts, there is a contradiction here; but for the soul, this contradiction becomes the point of departure for an activity of knowing at which the analyzing intellect halts because this intellect experiences the “counterstroke” of spiritual reality.

[ 2 ] Gideon Spicker, who, besides a number of other astute books, has also written Philosophical Confessions of a Former Capuchin Monk (1910), points to one of the borderlands of our ordinary knowing activity (using words that are certainly vivid enough):

No matter what one's philosophy is, whether dogmatic or skeptical, empirical or transcendental, critical or eclectic, they all, without exception, take their start from an unproven and improvable premise: the essentiality of thinking. No investigation will ever get behind this essentiality, no matter how deep it may dig. This essentiality must be accepted unconditionally and cannot be substantiated by anything; any attempt to prove its validity only presupposes this essentiality. Under it there gapes a bottomless abyss, a frightful darkness unlit by any ray of light. We do not know, therefore, where it comes from or where it is leading. Whether a merciful God or an evil demon has laid this essentiality into our reason is equally uncertain.

Thus, even the contemplation of thinking itself leads the thinker to the limits of ordinary knowledge. Anthroposophy sets in with its knowing activity at these Emits; it knows that essentiality confronts the abilities (art) of intellectual thinking like an impenetrable wall. For a thinking that the thinker experiences, however, the impenetrability of this wall disappears; this experienced thinking finds a light with which to illuminate and look into the “darkness unlit by any ray of light” of a merely intellectual thinking; and the “bottomless abyss” is so only for the realm of sense perception; anyone who does not halt at this abyss but dares to proceed with thinking even when this thinking must set aside what the sense world has inserted into it, such a person finds a spiritual reality in this “bottomless abyss.”

[ 3 ] We could continue indefinitely like this, presenting the experiences that serious thinkers have at the limits of knowledge.

Such examples would show that anthroposophy is the natural result of the evolution of present-day thought. Many things point to anthroposophy if these many things are seen in the right light.