The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture we began to consider aspects of mankind's post-Atlantean evolution which can provide a key to our present problems. Current events do indeed present a riddle to those who attempt to understand them merely by means of the materialistic concepts and ideas of our age. That we are in need of new ideas must be obvious from the many things we have considered. Concepts that sufficed in the past are no longer sufficient to understand present-day life which has become so much more complex. I have for years repeatedly emphasized in various lectures something which I believe to be of utmost importance for the present time.

I have repeatedly said in various places the following: If we survey the field and scope of thoughts and ideas, by means of which attempts are made to understand the world and attain a glimpse behind the scenes of external physical reality, we shall find that the most valuable of those ideas originated in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch which began in 1413 has not produced any ideas that are fundamentally new. Certainly it has produced, in admirable fashion, an enormous amount of new facts and combinations of facts. However, they are understood in the light of the old ideas. Let us take an example: What Darwin and his successors have brought together, in order to demonstrate organic relationships, has been introduced into the concept of evolution; but the concept of evolution is in itself not new; it stems from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. When concepts and ideas are taken seriously and their true nature and reality is understood, then it will be seen that this way of dealing with issues permeates all spheres of knowledge.

Only when Goethe brought the ideas from the past into movement can it be said that a step forward was made. He saw in the concept as such the possibility of transformation, of metamorphosis and thus introduced something quite new which as yet is not properly appreciated. Concepts of blossom, of fruit and so on he saw as transformations of the basic concept “leaf.”¹ To recognize a living mobility in concepts and mental pictures is something new. It enables one to transform concepts within oneself so that they follow the manifold metamorphoses taking place in the phenomena of nature. I have for many years pointed out that this is Goethe's most important discovery, a discovery whose further development is to be found only in spiritual science. Spiritual science alone brings man new concepts enabling him to penetrate true reality.

It is of special importance that the concept of history should be widened. In our recent considerations we have in fact worked with a much extended concept of history. This enabled us more particularly to recognize how the constitution and whole disposition of man's soul has changed. Just a few centuries ago man's soul was fundamentally different from what, in conformity with human evolution, it is now. I drew attention to the fact that during the first, the ancient Indian epoch, man continued his bodily development right up to the ages between 56 and 48. I tried to illustrate this by saying that whereas today in the child and youth the development of the spirit-soul being takes its course parallel to the development of the physical body, in that ancient cultural epoch this continued right into the fifties of a person's life. Today man no longer notices when his body passes beyond the 30th year. All he is aware of inwardly is that in childhood his muscles become stronger and the nerve functions change. It is during this time when changes take place in muscles, nerves and blood that he notices the soul-spiritual element following a parallel development to that of the physical organism. Then comes the time when the soul and spirit cease to be dependent on the organism. However, in the ancient Indian epoch, the dependence persisted, and this is something we must consider in more detail.

Man was at that time, just as he is now, more or less consciously aware of becoming physically stronger during childhood, aware also that at the same time his life of will, of feeling and also his mental life became different. In other words, he was aware during childhood and youth of his soul's dependence on the growing, thriving, flourishing life of the organism. Then came the time when he reached the middle of life which occurs in his thirties; the 35th year must be regarded as the middle of life. Today man is not aware of going through the middle of life the way he is aware, for example, of going through puberty from 12 to 16. But in that ancient time man was aware of this; he sensed to a certain extent, that before he reached his thirties life had welled up within him, had grown ever stronger till it reached a climax and now had begun to recede. He sensed that growth had stopped, that the formation of nerves had come to an end and that from now on he would remain as he was. Those who were particularly sensitive even felt their life forces become sluggish and recede; they felt ossification taking place and that they were becoming mineralized.

When man at that time reached his forties he felt that a decisive decline began, that the organic life was withdrawing. But he also experienced something which can be experienced no longer, namely his soul's dependence on the declining life of the body. Thus, in that ancient time man experienced going through three stages of development whereas now he experiences at most going through one.

How were the three stages experienced? Let us look quite carefully at the dependence on the thriving, flourishing life forces during the body's growth; let us establish initially that an individual felt himself to be thoroughly healthy—something very few people do today—so that he strongly experienced that the healthy, flourishing, thriving life welling up within him was carried by the spirit. After all, what grows is not the merely physical substances taken in as nourishment; it is the spiritual forces underlying the body that cause growth and development. One can look at one's origin as a human being and say: My body came into being through hereditary substances; the spirit united itself with the body and caused its growth and development. In that ancient time man's spirit-soul being felt itself within the body; its healthy dependence upon the body was felt to be brought about by God, and indeed by God the Father. Man at that time said to himself something like this: I am placed into the world with forces of growth, of thriving, and provided one pays attention and has a feeling for what takes place in the body, then the soul can sense in the growing and thriving the effect of the Father God. Man felt related to nature, that human beings grow and thrive just as plants and animals do. He felt related to natural existence and felt the Father God within himself. Thus you see that something which today can take place only under exceptional circumstances was in that ancient time experienced simply as part of life. Then began the period in the life of the individual when he passed through the middle of life and therefore through the culmination, the climax of the growing, thriving life forces, and then the time of decline began.

As we have seen, the growing, thriving life of the healthy body, upon which the spirit-soul being of man knew itself dependent, called forth the feeling “ex deo nascimur,” “from God I am born.” Man felt he originated from God, who also caused his further growth and development. When he passed beyond the middle of life, he could still detect during ordinary waking consciousness the thriving life forces. This was partly because he still remembered his spirit-soul being's earlier dependence on the bodily nature and because he could observe growth and thriving of a similar kind in external nature. However, during lowered states of consciousness, such as dream or sleep and also during the state of atavistic clairvoyance, the astral body and I withdrew from the declining life forces which remained connected with the physical body. It is during sleep that the declining life forces are particularly important to man. In that ancient time those who reached the age when their life forces were declining perceived them particularly in such states of lowered consciousness. And when the physical body began to withdraw and become sclerotic, the soul began to live within the spirit of the whole cosmic environment. Thus in that ancient epoch, when man had passed the climax of the thriving life forces and the body's decline had set in, he perceived in waking consciousness the spiritual in all natural existence; in states of dream, of sleep, or of atavistic clairvoyance he perceived the spirit that pervades the whole cosmos.

Try to imagine these experiences: Man felt his awareness of the spirit-permeated, God-ensouled nature alternate with awareness of the spirit of the cosmos; one kind he experienced as ascending, the other as descending. Thus he was directly aware of the union of the spirit of the cosmos with the spirit of nature and was conscious that the spirit of nature is on earth and the spirit of the cosmos in the earth's environment. He knew that they are related, that they weave into one another and that during his life man passes from one to the other. When his life forces began to decline after having reached their climax, he experienced becoming permeated with the spirit of the cosmos, later known as the Christ.

At that time, during their forties and beyond, people experienced their spirit-soul being's dependence on their declining life forces, especially during dream, sleep and other states of semi-consciousness. If they lived beyond their forties, they became aware of the spirit itself, the spirit which is not linked to matter, but lives as spirit. From their forties onwards they perceived the Holy Spirit. Thus when we look back to that ancient time we find that people in the course of their life perceived directly the Father-God, the Christ-God—who had not yet descended to earthly existence—and the Holy Spirit. Such direct human experiences are the basis for the ancient religious traditions, to be found everywhere, of a divine Trinity.

We see in this how one truth complements another, which is something that must be recognized more and more as a feature of science of the spirit. If it were recognized, we would not hear remarks, such as those made recently to a member of our movement, to the effect that what is said in our lectures is all very beautiful but lacks all foundation. Such a statement is just about as clever, or should I say stupid, as it would be had someone said, when Copernicus established that the earth circles the sun and consequently cannot be fixed on a base; Oh, but the earth lacks all foundation—planets and stars must be sitting on something! Just as planets and stars are self-supporting physically, so it should be recognized that the science of the spirit is an edifice whose individual aspects are mutually self-supporting.

We now come to the ancient Persian epoch during which, as described, man's natural development continued only in his forties, that is, to the ages between 48 and 42. You will realize that this meant the direct vision of the spirit in its purity faded, though there was still an awareness of it. Those who lived beyond the ages between 48 and 42 could still be aware of the Holy Spirit.

Then came the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch. Mankind's general age dropped to that between 42 and 35. Vision of the spirit in its purity clouded over. Towards the end of this epoch it was really only those initiated in the mysteries who could know about the pure spirit. In the mysteries everywhere one could, of course, learn through direct vision about the secret of the Trinity. But as far as ordinary life was concerned understanding of the spirit receded. However, in this third post-Atlantean epoch man was still strongly conscious that in the cosmos, in the heavens, an ascending and descending spirit lives. Consciousness of the cosmic Christ was general. Man was still strongly conscious of his connection with the world of the Gods.

As we come to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch all this changes. During this epoch mankind's age corresponded to that of individual man between 35 and 28. At the beginning of this epoch, which began in 747 B.C. and ended in A.D. 1413, it was still the case that when a person reached the same age as that of mankind, 35, he still had imaginative knowledge of the Christ Spirit. However, at the end of the first third of that epoch, when a third of Hellenism had run its course and modern chronology began, mankind's age was about 33. Man's dependence upon the flourishing, up-thrusting life forces no longer lasted beyond the point of their culmination though the dependence was still experienced much more strongly than was the case later in the fifth epoch. Man was still conscious of the Father God, but consciousness of the cosmic Christ gradually faded. Then came the event which replaced what was lost from consciousness. Just as mankind's age dropped to that of 33, the cosmic Christ descended to the earth and entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ force spread over the earth and, from another direction, bestowed upon man what formerly he had possessed as an immediate human experience through his spirit-soul being's dependence upon his physical-bodily nature. This is the immense significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. It explains the significance of what is understood by “the promise of the Holy Spirit.” A time had begun in which the Holy Spirit must be attained from within, independent of man's bodily development, through the impulse initiated by Christ. The connection man formerly had with the spiritual world came about purely through the way his soul and bodily natures were interrelated; this now changed. What had filled man's consciousness thanks merely to normal evolution gradually vanished.

Then came the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Mankind's age dropped to 28 and will drop to 21 during this epoch. As I have mentioned we live at the time when mankind's general age is about 27. Therefore (and this must be continually emphasized) it is now necessary that within the soul, forces are initiated which do not arise because bodily forces shoot into the soul. Now spiritual impulses, engendered independently, must be established in the soul, impulses which further the soul in its independence from the body. A healthy person leading a healthy life can sense the dependence on the Father God up to about his 30th year; that is, as long as the forces of growth are still thriving in his body, even if only those of his muscles. As you will realize, it is essential that, as the fifth epoch progresses, there should develop a healthy sense also for the divine spiritual element that withdraws from the forces of growth. A sense and feeling for this was still vivid in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch right up to the 15th century. In that epoch mankind's general age corresponded to the middle of life spanning the ages between 35 and 28. Already mankind's age is one year less; because of this, the bodily constitution of man makes him inclined toward materialism and atheism. The spread of atheism is due to man's bodily organism. It will spread ever more unless a spiritual counterbalance is created by impulses that originate purely within the soul, developed in complete independence of the body. Man becomes an atheist when he ceases to participate in the forces of growth and thriving, and therefore no longer experiences himself as a healthy, complete human being. That is why I have said that one can only be an atheist when one does not, in a healthy way, sense one's spirit-soul being's connection with the growing and developing bodily nature. Spiritual science recognizes atheism as an illness that will increasingly take hold of man in the course of his normal evolution. This is because man will more and more lack the support provided by the bodily nature which enables him to grasp reality in general.

To deny or fail to recognize Christ must be regarded as a misfortune, a tragic destiny, for Christ—from the external world—comes to meet man full of grace. To fail to recognize the spirit must be regarded as soul blindness. To be an atheist is an illness; what is meant is, of course, illness in the widest sense. It is necessary to make these distinctions.

From what has been explained you can see that if one truly wants to understand the evolution of the human race, a completely new concept of evolution is needed. The Darwinian idea of evolution is dreadfully abstract; once its crudeness has been recognized it will be realized that along that path no progress is possible. Evolution follows, as we have seen, an ascending as well as a descending line. The view of today's superficial materialism is that evolution starts from a certain form of life which then progresses to ever higher stages, thus believing that there is a continuous trend towards ever greater perfection.

During post-Atlantean epochs man's evolution goes in the direction of his soul and spirit becoming ever more independent of the body. During the earlier epochs there burst into his soul and spirit, from his bodily nature, comprehension of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The first to fade was comprehension of the Holy Spirit, next that of the Son, and we are now at the stage when, in ordinary life, comprehension of the Father is fading. This fading comprehension of the Father has its origin in man's life of feeling, for as I said, man is at present more or less conscious of his soul-spirit's connection with the bodily nature. This is related to something else. Bear in mind that in general man's spirit-soul being receives less and less from the bodily nature, with the consequence that, if man wants to approach the spirit, he must do so along paths where there is no support from the bodily organism. This accounts for the fact, clearly perceptible to those able to observe such things, that man produces ever fewer concepts and ideas. The concepts and ideas at man's disposal in ancient times bubbled forth, so to speak, from his bodily nature, for all matter contains spirit and this the body simply handed over of itself. But now the body provides man with fewer and fewer concepts and mental pictures. So, expressing it somewhat drastically, he must now rack his brain more and more or, if he is too easy-going, not rack it. Either way he no longer finds concepts welling up within him; he must turn to spiritual knowledge if he wants to acquire them. Spiritual science provides mobile concepts which, in contrast to the rigid, lifeless concepts understood by means of the physical body, must be understood by means of the ether body. Thus, in the course of normal evolution, man becomes ever poorer in concepts. The way he is naturally organized prevents him, if he refuses the path of spiritual knowledge, from delving into true reality.

This explains the present situation. It makes comprehensible what must be described, without levelling any criticism, as the cause for man becoming ever more obtuse without spiritual knowledge. These are things that must be faced in deep earnestness. The brain will gradually become more and more mineralized, it will become a blunt insensible instrument with which ideas capable of delving into reality can no longer be formulated. Only people who make no effort and feel no inclination to understand what is actually taking place in the world can pass these things by. Yet it is of utmost urgency that one should try to understand.

Provided one is not asleep, one cannot be unaware of the many curious things that occur. However, most people are asleep for they are aware only of what takes place on the surface, not of the effective impulses beneath. If one pays attention to what goes on there is much that seems inexplicable, for without spiritual insight one is helpless in face of these riddles. An event that illustrates this quite aptly took place recently in Austria. A certain Robert Scheu, a man of great idealism, has tried for decades to bring about what he visualized as a movement of a cultural-political nature.² He is concerned about the kind of issues often discussed in our circles. In his endeavour to discover new approaches to political issues, he gathered around him a group of intellectuals. His aim was that together they should discover policies that would ensure greater spiritual influence in people's lives.

This start to the project would have been commendable if by bringing intellectuals together, spiritual influences in people's destinies could be ensured. But what induced Robert Scheu to start this venture in the 1890s? The impulse arose within him from an indefinite feeling that things could not go on as they were; he felt some essential ingredient was missing in life which must be discovered. Needless to say he has not found what mankind so sorely needs. Like so many others who vaguely feel something is missing, he looks upon spiritual science as fantastic superstition. Such people consider themselves far too clever to be concerned with matters of this kind. However, Robert Scheu does feel very strongly that something is lacking. He says the following: “My fundamental conviction, which I herewith repeat, is: As far as cognition, as far as mental activity is concerned, our time is far ahead of the times.”³

A curious expression—what does he mean? He says nothing about the fact that thoughts have become blunted; he is only aware that today's intellectuals are clever in the sense that they can produce abstract ideas like clockwork, and are so sure of their judgments because of the transparency of their abstract ideas. That is why he says that “as far as cognition, as mental activity is concerned, our time is far ahead of the times.” In other words, people are very capable of producing thoughts, but these thoughts are of the kind I have described, quite unrelated to reality. Thus one could also say: Our time is far behind the times. Scheu goes on to say: “As knowers we have become decadent, our thoughts are too rarefied.” That is certainly true of modern man. We need only look at our literature or observe everyday life. Just think of all the intricate thoughts people spin out, but thoughts that are quite incapable of penetrating reality. Hence Scheu is right when he says: “As knowers we have become decadent, our thoughts are too rarefied, too translucent; we are still dominated by the Middle Ages. The reason is that the furnace in which thoughts ought to be recast does not function.”

Scheu expresses himself with feeling in a strange way, but what he says is based on a true sense for what is lacking in our time. Indeed the “furnace” does not function in which thoughts, lost in nebulous abstraction, could become so inwardly strengthened, that they become able to unite with reality. He recognizes that thoughts have become abstract to the point of decadence and that a great number of people have poured our abstract ideas concerning socialism, social-democracy and liberalism with marvelous logic, especially in marxism. Combinations of such abstractions are also possible such as national liberalism, social liberalism and so on. We also have abstract ideas about conservatism. On the basis of all these abstractions—abstract because the furnace is missing that could transform them—one builds up parliamentary systems, representative systems and the network of ideas on which are based liberalism, social liberalism, social democracy, conservatism, nationalism and so on.

Robert Scheu has done what from his point of view is not a bad thing; he has attempted with the means at his disposal to replace the abstractions with reality. Instead of the abstract ideas he wants inquiries set up, maintaining that those who are knowledgeable about an issue should be the ones to judge what should be done about it. After all, whether one is a liberal or conservative is of no great moment when it is a question of organizing the sale of oil or arranging art galleries. What matters in such instances is insight into oil distribution or knowledge about art. Robert Scheu did in fact arrange inquiries into various issues and saw to it that people who made the inquiries spoke about them. A very ingenious start.

He attempts to decide where what he calls the “furnace” is, or ought to be, located. He asks, “Should it be the parliament, the congress? Or should one look for it in the administration? And do the parties uphold the system of representation?” He further points out that “the system contains programs of fundamentally conflicting interests; the parties do not grasp the real issues of life to which they have a purely deductive approach. They are only interested in what constitutes means for enhancing the power of the party.”

Here is someone who for once realizes that the rarefaction, the abstractness of thought—one could also call it dullness, obtuseness, for the thoughts have no contact with reality—have a direct effect on life. He links this problem with the problems of development in social conditions, whether under the system of representation or any other form of government. He is fully aware that no, solution is possible by treating the problems in the old manner. He ponders the possibility of discovering from life itself what could bring order into the structure of-social life; he has in fact done much in this direction. What is interesting is that he now looks back at his efforts and asks himself, “What did I actually attempt to achieve?” What he tried to do was to penetrate to the reality of the issues. However, he expresses this in today's abstract terminology by saying, “I replaced deduction with induction.” These kinds of expressions one meets with everywhere. But Robert Scheu is not altogether satisfied with the result of this endeavour; that is why at the end of the article in which he presents the whole story he says, “I have come to the conclusion that my inductive approach to cultural and political life needs to be completed by a deductive approach. I realize the problem is like a tunnel that must be excavated from both ends if a breakthrough is to be achieved. The mental work necessary must be a joint effort of all Europeans of good will.”

So you see that Robert Scheu comes to recognize that the problem must be approached from two sides. What he does not recognize is the source from which concepts and ideas, allied with reality, must be drawn. He comes to a standstill and does not really believe in his so-called inductive approach via all kinds of inquiries. In any case, to make inquiries is to approach reality from one side only. The approach to the other, the spiritual side, would be the search for the spiritual aspect by means of spiritual knowledge.

Everyday practical life demands spiritual science. This is not suggesting anything out of the way or difficult; rather, it is a thought that essentially belongs to this very moment in mankind's evolution. Just imagine how fruitful spiritual science could be if people would overcome the prejudices which blind them to its reality. Without spiritual knowledge one only arrives at absurdities which deteriorate into all kinds of ridiculous situations. This becomes very obvious when one lives within the mobile concepts of spiritual science. Robert Scheu, for example, wants inquiries set up into the various branches of social life; he wants people who are knowledgeable to speak on the issues. One such issue he wants altered through an inquiry is the system of registration of domicile; just imagine what that would mean at the present time.

However, he does represent a striking example of the fact that people are beginning to feel that something is lacking, but cannot make the decision to turn to what is necessary. Yet I have always tried from the beginning to prevent spiritual science from becoming abstruse and sectarian. I have tried to let it flow into life in response to human requirements. Whenever my advice was sought I tried to give it in accordance with each person's individual need. It must be said, though, that the present materialistic way of life creates huge difficulties in applying such advice. It is understandable that a manufacturer would find it strange if told that science of the spirit could help him run his business better. Yet one could hope that it would work at some point.

A man came to me some years ago who said he wanted his scientific work to be enhanced by spiritual science. We spoke about his scientific work. He was wonderfully erudite; he had really mastered Babylonian and Egyptian archeology to a remarkable degree. I tried to work out with him where the threads could be attached to today's knowledge which would allow spiritual science to flow into his endeavors, so that at least a part of his science could be fructified by spiritual science. He had what modern science can say about the subject; from us he found what spiritual science can reveal about it. He had both—but he could not bring forth the will to penetrate and illumine the one with the other.

If one does not develop this will, one will never understand what is actually intended with spiritual science. One will rather be inclined to make the science of the spirit into merely one more doubtful mysticism so beloved by those who belittle earthly life. There are those who have the view that this life is worth nothing; one must rise to a higher life. One must rise from this world of the senses into a reverie—then a higher life will arise. Why bring up one's children properly here when one can rather think about one's prior incarnations? That brings one into the higher regions and so forth. That is not what is at stake here. What is essential is that, in the area where one stands, one can make science of the spirit fruitful. It can be made fruitful everywhere. Life demands it.

One would wish to have something more than words today to make that comprehensible. Who feels today what lies in words? Who really feels into words? Feeling with words—that is something that humanity has almost lost, at least in that portion of humanity to which we belong. Let me use an example. [^* ] When someone says, “You did your job pretty well” (ziemlich gut), who feels much more today at these words than “You almost did your job well” (fast gut)? “Pretty” (ziemlich) is “almost” (fast). We say one instead of the other. Place your hand on your heart and say you don't feel “almost” when someone says “pretty” (ziemlich) in that way! But “pretty” (ziemlich) is a word which has referred to activities and products which were done properly or decently (geziemend). Who feels anymore the “proper” (geziemend) in the “pretty” (ziemlich) in this case?

Or, who feels in the word “Zweifel” (doubt) the fact that it carries the “Zwei” (two), that one stands before something which divides into two? Who feels indeed the “zw, z-w”?^** But wherever the “zw” appears, you have the same sensation as in doubting (Zweifel), which divides the things in two. “Zwischen” (between)—there you have the same! “Zweck” (goal), “Zweifel” (doubt), “zwar” (indeed)—try to feel it! Feeling can lie in all speech relations. But our words have today become an exceedingly worthless currency. Therefore one would really like to have something other than language to give a penetrating impression of what is necessary for today and what spiritual science could give. The way speech is used today deadens thinking even more than is happening anyway as an effect of natural evolution. The result is a chaos of obtuse thoughts written and printed everywhere.

One could sweat blood, as almost happened to me this morning when I picked up a book by Dr. Johann Plenge, professor of political science at the University of Munster in Westphalia.⁴ This man claims to have unraveled a great contradiction which developed between the ideas of 1789 and 1914. He regards himself as an extremely important fellow, but let that pass. On page 61 of his book one comes across an astonishing sentence. I shall now be somewhat pedantic, but the pedantry refers to something subtle, and those who can feel it, will do so. The sentence on page 61 slugged me—excuse the expression. It says: “Imagine you were a future historian who one day hears about the world catastrophe of 1914.” What is one to make of a sentence like that? He imagines a future historian who suddenly hears about the world war of 1914. So during his whole youth he has never heard of it, but only does so quite by chance when he is a writer of history! One really can no longer be living within living images to be able to produce something like that. He tried to characterize the nature and significance of ideas. He points to ideas that run through mankind's history, saying that ideas can emerge and again withdraw. In this way he attempts to discover the essence of ideas. He tries to show how ideas unconsciously emerge in primitive races and gradually become more conscious. During his attempts he comes up with the following: “A civilized nation in the making lives according to the example of an imagined ennobled humanity. The position of Homer in antiquity is the best example of such a formation of an idea-complex.”

So, the position of Homer in antiquity is an example of the formation of ideas! One might just as well say that the role of a court advisor is an example of how an idea-complex is formed. It is impossible to think along with something like that if one wants to connect living images with one's concepts. When one is used to doing so from youth, sentences containing such affectations in words are experienced like a slap in the face. They remind me vividly of a professor who began a course of lectures by raising 25 questions. He is a professor of literature who has become very famous indeed. I shall not name him, for you would not believe me. Having put his 25 questions he said: “Gentlemen, I have placed before you a forest of question marks!”—So one had to imagine a wood composed of rows of question marks. Ask yourselves what sort of thinking it is when thoughts remain unrelated to reality, when a person does not live in his thoughts, and they result in nothing but verbiage.

This is a situation that is not uncommon; one comes across the strangest assertions. Plenge, for example, says, “Like the astronomer, so the true historian is able to forecast events.” And then the good fellow proceeds to show how things developed in the period leading up to the catastrophe of the present war. Since he regards himself as a truly great historian, he should be well able to forecast such a catastrophe, but though he has written several books on external affairs, he has not done so. This troubles him; he therefore explains how he has done it after all. And how has he done it? He says, “Well, I have shown that because of the way things were developing one had to strive for peace with all one's strength and power; then I have shown that, as things were, only the war could come.” No one can deny that to be an accurate prophecy! It is comparable to my having two coats and saying, Provided I will not wear this one tomorrow, I shall be wearing the other one. And he continues in the same vein, for when he speaks about how he faltered between forecasting peace or war he says—or rather he quotes himself (quotations are a peculiar feature throughout the book), “To make such a forecast one must let one's fantasy play with the idea of war.” What a sentiment! To suggest that one should indulge in fantasy of war in the years leading up to the present catastrophe reveals an attitude of incredible irresponsibility.

As I said, quotations are a peculiar feature of this book by Plenge. The book is associated throughout with an article that appeared in a daily newspaper. The article is quite inoffensive, written by an unknown journalist who rebels against Plenge's “discovery” of the way ideas had changed by 1914. What makes the composition of Plenge's book peculiar is that on the first page one finds the newspaper article reproduced, or as much of it as Plenge found suitable for his purpose. He speaks about the article, quoting it again on page 21. So the article has now been read twice. He then continues and quotes part of it for a third time. Towards the end of the book, having quoted the article three times, he does so once again, So you have a book with a newspaper article quoted four times.

I chose such concrete examples in order to make clear how things really are and to show also what is necessary. I want to demonstrate that science of the spirit is what is needed, what must intervene in present affairs. The things I have spoken about may seem like trifles; nonetheless they are closely connected with the great issues with which we started our considerations. This I ask you to bear in mind during these lectures.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832; Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland) 1982. Original edition by Joseph Kiirschner, 1883–1897.
• 2. Robert Scheu, 1873–1964, Kulturpolitik, Vienna, 1901.
• 3. Ibid.
• *. This portion of Steiner's lecture used characteristics of German words unique within that language for those examples. An analogous substitution of the word “pretty” for “ziemlich” has been used in the following rendering for the English reader. The analogy is not direct, since “pretty” and “ziemlich” have diverging semantic roles and heritages; it is nevertheless imperfectly useful in grasping the speaker's train of thought.
• **. Pronounced as one would pronounce the letters “ts-v” in English. This sound has not carried over into English, although a similar combination of letters, today unpronounced, remains in the word “two” (German dialect “zwo” = “zwei” = “two”).
• 4. Dr. Johann Plenge, 1874–1963, 1789 and 1914. Die symbolischen Jahre in der Geschichte des politischen Geistes, Berlin 1916.

The tasks assigned to the humanity of the present and of the immediate future are great, significant, and peremptory; and it is really necessary to bring forth a strong soul courage in order to do something toward their accomplishment. Anyone who today examines these tasks closely, and tries to get a true insight into the needs of humanity, must often reflect how superficially so-called public affairs are treated. We might say that people today talk politics aimlessly. From a few emotions, from a few entirely egotistic points of view—personal or national—people form their opinions about life, whereas a real desire to gain the factual foundations for a sound judgment would be more in conformity with the seriousness of the present time. In the course of recent months, and even years, I have inquired into the most varied subjects, including the history and the demands of the times, and have given lectures here on such subjects, always with the purpose of furnishing facts which will enable people to form a judgment for themselves—not with the purpose of placing the ready-made judgment before them. The longing to know the realities of life, to know them more and more fundamentally, in order to have a true basis for judgment—that is the important thing today. I must say this especially because the various utterances and written statements which I have made regarding the so-called social question, and regarding the threefold structure of the social organism, are really taken much too lightly, as anyone can clearly see, for the questions asked about these things are concerned far too little with the actual, momentous, basic facts. It is so difficult for people of the present time to arrive at these basic facts, because they are really theoreticians in all realms of life, although they will not acknowledge it. The people who today most fancy themselves to be practical are the most decidedly theoretical, for the reason that they are usually satisfied to form a few concepts about life, and from these to insist upon judging life; whereas it is possible today only by means of a real, universal, and comprehensive penetration into life to form a relevant judgment about what is necessary. One can say that in a certain sense it is at least intellectually frivolous when, without a basis of facts, a man talks politics at random, or indulges in fanciful views about life. It makes one wish for a fundamentally serious attitude of soul toward life.

When in the present time the practical side of our spiritual scientific effort, the Threefold Social Order, is placed before the world as the other side has been, it is a fact that the whole mode of thought and conception employed in the elaboration of this Threefold Social Order is met with prejudices and misgivings. Where do these prejudices and misgivings originate? Well, a man forms concepts about truth (I am still speaking of the social life), concepts about the good, the right, the useful, and so forth, and when he has formed them, he thinks they have absolute value everywhere and always. For example, take a man of western, middle, or eastern Europe with a socialistic bias. He has quite definite socialistically-formulated ideals; but what kind of fundamental concepts underlie these ideals? His fundamental concept is that what satisfies him must satisfy everyone everywhere, and must possess absolute validity for all future time. The man of today has little feeling for the fact that every thought that is to be of value to the social life must be born out of the fundamental character of the time and the place. Therefore he does not easily come to realize how necessary it is for the Threefold Social Order to be introduced with different nuances into our present European culture, with its American appendage. If it is adopted, then the variations suited to the peoples of the different regions will come about of themselves. And besides, when the time comes, on account of the evolution of humanity, that the ideas and thoughts mentioned by me in The Threefold Commonwealth are no longer valid, others must again be found.

It is not a question of absolute thoughts, but of thoughts for the present and the immediate future of mankind. In order, however, to comprehend in its full scope how necessary is this three-membering of the social organism in an independent spiritual life, an independent rights and political life, and an independent economic life, one must examine without prejudice the way in which the interaction of the spiritual, the political, and the economic has come about in our European-American civilization. This interweaving of the threads—the spiritual threads, those of rights or government, and the economic threads—is by no means an easy matter. Our culture, our civilization, is like a ball of yarn, something wound up, in which are entangled three strands of entirely different origins. Our spiritual life is of essentially different origin from that of our rights or political life, and entirely different again from that of our economic life; and these three strands with different origins are chaotically entangled. I can naturally give only a sketchy idea to-day, because I shall briefly follow these three streams, I might say, to their source.

First, our spiritual life, as it presents itself to one who regards as real the external things, the obvious, is acquired by people through the influence of what still persists of the ancient Greek and Latin cultural life, the Greco-Latin spiritual life, as it has flowed through what later became our high schools and universities. All the rest of our so-called humanistic culture, even down to our elementary schools, is entirely dependent upon that which, as one stream let us say, flowed in first from the Greek element (Diagram 13. orange); for our spiritual life, our European spiritual life, is of Greek origin; it merely passed through the Latin as a sort of way-station. It is true that in modern times something else has mingled with the spiritual life which originated in Greece: namely, that which is derived from what we call technique in the most varied fields, which was not yet accessible to the Greek, the technique of mechanics, the technique of commerce, etc., etc. I might say that the technical colleges, the commercial schools, and so forth, have been annexed to our universities, adding a more modern element to what flows into our souls through our humanistic schools, which reach back to Greece—and by no means flows only into the souls of the so-called educated class; for the socialistic theories which haunt the heads even of the proletariat are only a derivative of that which really had its origin in the Grecian spiritual life; it has simply gone through various metamorphoses. This spiritual life reaches back, however, to a more distant origin, far back in the Orient. What we find in Plato, what we find in Heraclitus, in Pythagoras, in Empedocles, and especially in Anaxagoras, all reaches back to the Orient. What we find in Aeschylus, in Sophocles, in Euripides, in Phidias, reaches back to the Orient. The entire Greek culture goes back to the Orient, but it underwent a significant change on its way to Greece. Yonder in the Orient this spiritual life was decidedly more spiritual than it was in ancient Greece; and in the Orient it issued from what we may call the Mysteries of the Spirit—I may also say the Mysteries of Light (Drawing). The Grecian spiritual life was already filtered and diluted as compared with that from which it had its origin: namely, the spiritual life of the Orient, which depended upon quite special spiritual experiences.

Naturally, we must go back into prehistoric times, for the Mysteries of Light, or the Mysteries of the Spirit, are entirely prehistoric phenomena. If I am to represent to you the character of this spiritual life, the manner of its development, I must do so in the following way: We know, of course, that if we go very far back in human evolution, we find increasingly that human beings of ancient times had an atavistic clairvoyance, a dream-like clairvoyance, through which the mysteries of the universe were revealed to them; and we speak with entire correctness when we say that over the whole civilized Asiatic earth, in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, there dwelt people to whom spiritual truths were revealed through clairvoyance—a clairvoyance that was completely bound to nature, to the blood, and to the bodily organization. This was true of a widely dispersed population; but this atavistic clairvoyance was in a state of decline, and became more and more decadent. This “becoming decadent” of the atavistic clairvoyance is not merely a cultural-historical phenomenon, but is at the same time a phenomenon of the social life of mankind.

Why? Because from various centers of this wide-spread population, but chiefly from a point in Asia, there arose a special kind of human being, so to speak, a human being with special faculties. Besides the atavistic clairvoyance, which still remained to these people in a certain sense—for there still arose out of their inner soul-life a dream-like comprehension of the mysteries of the world—besides this they also had what we call the thinking faculty; and indeed they were the first in the evolution of humanity to have this power. They were the first to have dawning intelligence.

That was a significant social phenomenon when the people of those ancient times, who had only dream-like visions of the mysteries of the world arising within them, saw immigrants enter their territories whom they could still understand, because they also had visions, but who had besides something which they themselves lacked: the power of thought. That was a special kind of human being. The Indians regarded that caste which they designated as Brahman as the descendants of these people who combined the thinking power with atavistic clairvoyance; and when they came down from the higher-lying regions of northern Asia into the southern regions, they were called Aryans. They formed the Aryan population, and their primal characteristic is that they combined the thinking-power with—if I may now use the expression of a later time—with the plebeian faculties of atavistic clairvoyance.

And those mysteries which are called the Mysteries of the Spirit, or particularly, the mysteries of Light, were founded by those people who combined atavistic clairvoyance with the first kindling of intelligence, the inner light of man; and our spiritual culture derives from that which entered humanity at that time as an illuminating spark—it is nothing but a derivative of it.

Much has been preserved in humanity of what was revealed at that time; but we must consider that even the Greeks—just the better educated personalities among them—had seen the ancient gift of atavistic clairvoyance gradually wane and become extinguished, and the thinking-power remained to them. Among the Romans the power of thought alone remained. Among the Greeks there was still a consciousness that this faculty comes from the same source as the ancient atavistic clairvoyance; and therefore Socrates still clearly expressed something which he knew as experience when he spoke of his Daemon as inspiring his truths, which were of course merely dialectic and intellectual.

In art, as well, the Greeks significantly represented the pre-eminence of the intelligent human being, or better, the development of the intelligent human being from the rest of humanity; for the Greeks have in their sculpture (one need only study it closely) three types differing sharply from one another. They have the Aryan type, to which the Apollo head, the Pallas Athene head, the Zeus head, the Hera head belong. Compare the ears of the Apollo with those of a Mercury head, the nose of the Apollo with that of a Mercury head, and you will see what a different type it is. The Greek wanted to show in the Mercury-type that the ancient clairvoyance, which still persisted as superstition and was a lower form of culture, had united with intelligence in the Greek civilization; that this existed at the bottom of Greek culture; and that towering above it was the Aryan whose artistic representation was the Zeus head, the Pallas Athene head, and so forth. And the very lowest races, those with dim remnants of ancient clairvoyance—who also still lived in Greece but were especially to be observed near the borders—are plastically preserved in another type, the Satyr-type, which in turn is quite different from the Mercury-type. Compare the Satyr nose with the Mercury nose, the Satyr ears with the Mercury ears, and so forth. The Greek merged in his art what he bore in his consciousness concerning his development.

What gradually filtered through Greece at that time, by means of the Mysteries of the Spirit or of the Light, and then appeared in modern times, had a certain peculiarity as spirit-culture. It was possessed of such inner impulsive force that it could at the same time, out of itself, establish the rights life of man. Therefore we have on the one hand the revelation of the gods in the Mysteries bringing the spirit to man, and on the other, the implanting of this spirit acquired from the gods into the external social organism, into the theocracies. Everything goes back to the theocracies; and these were able not only to permeate themselves with the legal system, the political system, out of the very nature of the Mysteries, but they were able also to regulate the economic life out of the spirit. The priests of the Mysteries of Light were at the same time the economic administrators of their domains; and they worked according to the rules of the Mysteries. They constructed houses, canals, bridges, looked after the cultivation of the soil, and so forth.

In primitive times civilization grew entirely out of the spiritual life, but it gradually became abstract. From being a spiritual life it became more and more a sum of ideas. Already in the Middle Ages it had become theology, that is, a sum of concepts, instead of the ancient spiritual life, or it had to be confined to the abstract, legalistic form, because there was no longer any relation to the spiritual life. When we look back at the old theocracies we find that the one who ruled received his commission from the gods in the Mysteries. The last derivative is the occidental ruler, but he no longer gives any evidence of having originated from the ruler of the theocracy, with his commission from the gods of the Mysteries. All that remains is crown and coronation robe, the outer insignia, which in later times became more like decorations. If one understands such things it may often be observed that titles go back to the time of the Mysteries; but everything is now externalized.

Scarcely less externalized is that which moves through our secondary schools and universities as spiritual culture, the final echo of the divine message of the Mysteries. The spiritual has flowed into our life, but this has now become utterly abstract, a life of mere ideas. It has become what the socialistically-orientated groups latterly call an ideology, that is, a sum of thoughts that are only thoughts. That is what our spiritual life has really become.

Under its influence the social chaos of our time has developed, because the spiritual life that is so diluted and abstract has lost all impulsive force. We have no choice but to place it again on its own foundation, for only so can it thrive. We must find the way again from the merely rational to the creative spirit, and we shall be able to do so only if we seek to develop out of the spiritual life prescribed by the State the free spiritual life,¹ which will then have the power to awake to life again. For neither a spiritual life controlled by the Church, nor one maintained and protected by the State, nor a spiritual life panting under economic burdens, can be fruitful for humanity, but only an independent spiritual life.

Indeed the time has come for us to find the courage in our souls to proclaim quite frankly before the world that the spiritual life must be placed on its own foundation. Many people are asking: Well, what are we to do? The first thing of importance is to inform people about what is needed: to get as many people as possible to comprehend the necessity, for example, of establishing the spiritual life on its own foundation; to comprehend that what the pedagogy of the 19th century has become can no longer suffice for the welfare of mankind, but that it must be built anew out of a free spiritual life. There is as yet little courage in souls to present this demand in a really radical way; and it can be thus presented only by trying to bring to as many people as possible a comprehension of these conditions. All other social work today is provisional. The most important task is this: to see that it is made possible for more and more people to gain insight into the social requirements, one of which has just been characterized. To provide enlightenment concerning these things through all the means at our disposal—that is now the matter of importance.

We have not yet become productive with regard to the spiritual life, and we must first become productive in this field. Beginnings have been made in this direction, of which I shall speak presently—but we have not yet become productive with regard to the spiritual life; and we must become productive by making the spiritual life independent.

Everything that comes into being on earth leaves remnants behind it. The Mysteries of Light in the present-day oriental culture, the oriental spiritual life, are less diluted than in the Occident, but of course they no longer have anything like the form they had at the time I have described. Yet if we study what the Hindus, the oriental Buddhists, still have today, we shall be much more likely to perceive the echo of that from which our own spiritual life has come; only in Asia it has remained at another stage of existence. We, however, are unproductive; we are highly unproductive. When the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha spread in the West, whence did the Greek and Latin scholars get the concepts for the understanding of it? They got them from the oriental wisdom. The West did not produce Christianity. It was taken from the Orient. And further: When in English-speaking regions the spiritual culture was felt to be very unfruitful, and people were sighing for its fructification, the Theosophists went to the subjugated Indians to seek the wellsprings for their modern Theosophy. No fruitful source existed among themselves for the means to improve their spiritual life: so they went to the Orient. In addition to this significant fact, you could find many proofs of the unfruitfulness of the spiritual life of the West; and each such proof is at the same time a proof of the necessity for making the spiritual life an independent member in the threefold social organism.

A second strand in the tangled ball is the political or rights current.

There is the crux of the cultural problem, this second current. If we look for it today in the external world, we see it when our honorable judges sit on their benches of justice with the jurors and pass judgment upon crime or offence against the law, or when the magistrates in their offices rule throughout the civilized world—to the despair of those thus ruled. All that we call jurisprudence or government, and all that results as politics from the interaction of jurisprudence and government, constitutes this current (see drawing, white). I call that (orange) the current of the spiritual life, and this (white) the current of rights, or government.

Where does this come from? As a matter of fact this too goes back to the Mystery-culture. It goes back to the Egyptian Mystery-culture, which passed through the southern European regions, then through the prosaic, unimaginative Roman life, where it united with a side branch of the oriental life, and became Roman Catholic Christianity, that is, Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism. Speaking somewhat radically, this Roman Catholic ecclesiasticism is also fundamentally a jurisprudence; for from single dogmas to that great and mighty Judgment, always represented as the Last Judgment throughout the Middle Ages, the utterly different spiritual life of the Orient, which had received the Egyptian impulse from the Mysteries of Space (see drawing), was really transformed into a society of world-magistrates with world-judgments and world-punishments, and sinners, and the good and the evil: it is a jurisprudence. That is the second element existing in our spiritual tangle which we call civilization, and it has been by no means organically combined with the other. That this is the case anyone can learn who goes to a university and hears one after the other, let us say a juridical discourse on political law, and then a theological discourse even on canonical law, if you like, for these are found side by side. Such things have shaped mankind; even in later times, when their origins have been forgotten, they are still shaping human minds. The rights life caused the later spiritual life to become abstract; but externally it influenced human customs, human habits, human systems.

What is the last social offshoot in the decadent oriental spiritual current, whose origin has been forgotten? It is feudal aristocracy. You could no longer recognize that the aristocrat had his origin in the oriental, theocratic spiritual life, for he has stripped off all that; only the social configuration remains (drawing). The journalistic intelligence often has very strange nightmarish visions. One such it had recently when it invented a curious phrase of which it was especially proud: “spiritual aristocracy”—this could be heard now and then. What is that which passed through the Roman Church system, through theocratising jurisprudence, juridical theocracy, became secularized in the civic systems of the Middle Ages, and completely secularized in modern times—what is it in its ultimate derivative? It is the bourgeoisie (drawing). And thus are these spiritual forces in their ultimate derivatives actually jumbled up among men.

And now still a third stream unites itself with the other two. If you would observe it today in the external world, where does this third current appear in an especially characteristic way? Well, there actually was in Central Europe a method of demonstrating to certain people where these final remnants of something originally different were to be found. It happened when the man of Central Europe sent his son to an office in London or New York to learn the methods of the economic system. In the methods of the economic life, whose roots are to be found in the popular customs of the Anglo-American world, the final consequence is to be seen of that which has been developed as outgrowths from what I might call the Mysteries of the Earth, of which, for example, the Druid Mysteries are only a special variety. In the times of the primitive European people the Mysteries of the Earth still contained a peculiar kind of wisdom-filled life. That European population, which was quite barbaric, which knew nothing regarding the revelations of oriental wisdom, or of the Mysteries of Space, or of what later became Roman Catholicism—that population which advanced to meet the spreading Christianity possessed a strange kind of life-steeped-in-wisdom, peculiar to it, which was entirely physical wisdom. Of this one can at best study only the most external usages, which are recorded in the history of this current: namely, the festivals of those people from whom have come the customs and habits of England and America. The festivals were here brought into entirely different relations from those in Egypt, where the harvest was connected with the stars. Here the harvest as such was the festive occasion; and the highest solemn festivals of the year were connected with other things than was the case in Egypt: namely, with things that belong entirely to the economic life. We have here without doubt something which goes back to the economic life.

If we wish to comprehend the whole spirit of this matter, we must say to ourselves: Over from Asia and up from the South men transplanted a spiritual life and a rights life which they had received from above and brought down to earth. Then, in the third current, an economic life sprang up which had to develop of itself and work its way up, which really was originally so completely economic in its legal customs and in its spiritual adaptations that, for example, one of the yearly festivals consisted in the celebration of the fructification of the herds as a special festival in honor of the gods; and there were similar festivals all derived from the economic aspect of life. If we go through the regions of northern Russia, middle Russia, Sweden, Norway, or into those regions which until a short time ago were parts of Germany, or to France, at least northern France, and to what is now Great Britain—if we go through these regions, we find dispersed everywhere a population which, before the spread of Christianity in ancient times, undoubtedly had a pronounced economic life. And what ancient customs can still be found, such as festivals of legal practices and festivals in honor of the gods, are an echo of this ancient economic culture.

This economic culture met what came from the other side. At first it did not succeed in developing an independent rights life and spiritual life. The primitive legal customs were discarded because Roman law flowed in, and the primitive spiritual customs were cast aside because the Greek spiritual life had entered. And so this economic life becomes sterile at first, and only gradually works its way out of this sterility; it can succeed in this, however, only by overcoming the chaotic condition created by the introduction of the spiritual life and rights life from outside. Consider the present Anglo-American spiritual life. In this you have two things very sharply differentiated from one another. First, you have everywhere in the Anglo-American spiritual life, more than anywhere else on earth, the so-called secret societies, which have considerable influence, much more than people know. They are undoubtedly the keepers—and are proud to be the keepers—of the ancient spiritual life, of the Egyptian or oriental spiritual life, which is completely diluted and evaporated into mere symbols,—symbols no longer understood but having a certain great power among those in authority. That, however, is ancient spiritual life, not spiritual life grown in its own soil. Side by side with this there is a spiritual life which does grow entirely in economic soil, but hitherto it has produced only very small blossoms, and these in abundance.

Anyone who studies such things and is able to understand them knows very well that Locke, Hume, Mill, Spencer, Darwin, and others, are nothing but these little blossoms springing from the economic life. You can get quite exactly the thoughts of a Mill or a Spencer from the economic life. Social democracy has elevated this to a theory, and considers the spiritual life as a derivative of the economic life. That is what we encounter first: everything is brought forth from the so-called practical—actually from life's routine, not from its real practice. So that going along side by side are such things as Darwinism, Spencerism, Millism, Humeism—and the diluted Mystery teachings, which are perpetuated in the various sectarian developments, such as the Theosophical Society, the Quakers, and so forth. The economic life has the will to rise, but has not yet made much progress, having produced thus far only these small blossoms. The spiritual life and the rights life are exotic plants and—I beg you to note this well—they are more and more exotic the farther we go toward the West in the European civilization.

There has always been in Central Europe something—I might say like a resistance, a struggling against the Greek spiritual life on the one hand and against the Roman Catholic rights life on the other. An opposition has always been there. An illustration of it is the Central European philosophy, of which really nothing is known in England. Actually, Hegel cannot be translated into the English language; it is impossible. Hence, nothing is known of him in England, where German philosophy is called Germanism, by which is meant something an intelligent person cannot be bothered with. In just this German philosophy, however—with the exception of one incident, namely, when Kant was completely ruined by Hume, and there divas brought into German philosophy that abominable Kant-Hume element, which has really caused such devastation in the heads of Central European humanity—with the exception of this incident, we have later, after all, the second blossoming of this struggle in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; and we already have the search for a free spiritual life in Goethe, who would have nothing to do with the final echo of the Roman Catholic jurisprudence in what is called the law of nature. Just feel the legal element in the shabby robes and the strange caps which the judges still have from ancient times, and feel it likewise in the science of nature, the law of nature—the legal element is still there! The expression “law of nature” has no sense in connection, for example, with the Goethean science of nature, which deals only with the primordial phenomenon, the primordial fact.

There for the first time is radical protest made; but naturally it remained only a beginning. That was the first advance toward the free spiritual life: the Goethean science of nature; and in Central Europe there already exists the first impulse even toward the independent rights life, or political life. Read such a work as that of Wilhelm van Humboldt, who was even Prussian minister of public instruction—read The Sphere and Duties of Government,² and you will see the first beginning toward the construction of an independent rights life, or political life, of the independence of the true political realm. It is true it has never gone beyond beginnings, and these are found as far back as the first half of the 19th century, even at the end of the 18th century. It must be borne in mind, however, that there are nevertheless in Central Europe important impulses in this very direction, impulses which can be carried on, which must not be left unconsidered, and which may flow into the impulse of the Threefold Social Organism.

In his first book Nietzsche wrote that passage that I have quoted in my book on Nietzsche³ in the very first pages, a premonition of something tragic in the German spiritual life. Nietzsche tried at that time in the foreword to his work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, to characterize the events of 1870–71, the founding of the German Empire. Since then this strangulation of the German spirit has been thoroughly accomplished; and when in the last five or six years three-fourths of the world fell upon this former Germany (I do not wish to speak about the causes or the guilty, but only to sketch the configuration, the world situation), it was really then already the corpse of the German spiritual life. But when anyone speaks as I did yesterday, characterizing the facts without prejudice, no one should infer that there is not still in this German spiritual life much that must come forth, that must be considered, that intends to be considered, in spite of the future gypsy-like condition. For what was the real cause of the ruin of the German people? This question must also be answered without prejudice. They were ruined because they too wanted to share in materialism, and they have no talent for materialism. The others have good talents for it. The Germans have in general that quality which Herman Grimm characterized excellently when he said: The Germans as a rule retreat when it would be beneficial for them to go boldly forward, and they storm ahead with terrific energy when it would be better for them to hold back. That is a very good description of an inner quality of character of this German people; for the Germans have had propulsive force throughout the centuries, but not the ability to sustain this force. Goethe was able to present the primordial phenomenon, but he could not reach the beginnings of spiritual science. He could develop a spirituality, as, for example, in his Faust, or in his Wilhelm Meister, which could have revolutionized the world if the right means had been found; but the outer personality of this gifted man achieved nothing more than that in Weimar he put on fat and had a double chin, became a stout privy counselor, who was also uncommonly industrious as minister, but still was obliged at times to wink at certain things, especially in political life.

The world ought to understand that such phenomena as Goethe and Humboldt represent everywhere beginnings, and that it would really be a loss to the world and not a profit, to fail to take into account what lives in the German evolution in an unfinished state, but to which must come forth. For after all, the Germans do not have the predisposition which the others have in such remarkable degree the farther we go toward the West: namely, to rise on all occasions to ultimate abstractions. What the Germans have in their spiritual life is called “abstractions” only by those who are unable to experience it; and because they themselves have squeezed out the life, they believe others lack it too. The Germans have not the talent for pressing on to ultimate abstractions. This was shown in their political life, in their most unfortunate political life! If the Germans had had from the beginning the great talent for monarchy which the French have preserved so brilliantly to this day, they would never have become the victims of “Wilhelmism”; they would neither have countenanced this strange caricature of a monarch, nor have needed him. It is true that the French call themselves republicans, but they have among them a secret monarch who firmly holds together the structure of the state, who keeps a terribly tight rein on the people's minds; for in reality the spirit of Louis XIV is everywhere present. Naturally, only a decadent form remains, but it is there. There is no doubt that a secret monarch is there among the French people; for it is really shown in every one of their cultural manifestations. And the talent for abstraction demonstrated in Woodrow Wilson is the ultimate talent for abstraction in the political field. Those fourteen points of the world's schoolmaster, which in every word bear the stamp of the impractical and unachievable, could only originate in a mind wholly formed for the abstract, with no discernment whatever for true realities.

There are two things which the cultural history of civilization will doubtless find it difficult to understand. One I have often characterized in the words of Herman Grimm—the Kant-Laplace theory, in which many people still believe. Herman Grimm said so finely in his Goethe: People will some day have difficulty in comprehending that malady now called science, which makes its appearance in the Kant-Laplace theory, according to which all that we have around us today arose through agglomeration, out of a universal world-mist; and this is supposed to continue until the whole thing falls back again into the sun. A putrid bone around which a hungry dog circles is a more appetizing morsel than these fanciful ideas, this fantastic concept of world-evolution. So thinks Herman Grimm. Naturally, there will some day be great difficulty in explaining this Kant-Laplace theory from the standpoint of the scientific insanity of the 19th and 20th centuries!

The second thing will be the explanation of the unbelievable fact that there ever could be a large number of people to take seriously the humbug of the fourteen points of Woodrow Wilson—in an age that is socially so serious.

If we study the things that stand side by side in the world we find in what a peculiar way the economic life, the political rights life, and the spiritual life are entangled. If we do not wish to perish because of the extreme degeneration which has come into the spiritual life and the rights life, we must turn to the Threefold Social Order, which from independent roots will build an economic life now struggling to emerge, but unable to do so unless a rights life and a spiritual life, developed in freedom, come to meet it. These things have their deep roots in the whole of humanity's evolution and in human social life; and these roots must be sought. People must now be made to realize that way down at the bottom, on the ground I might say, crawls the economic life, managed by Anglo-American habits of thought; and that it will be able to climb up only when it works in harmony with the whole world, with that for which others also are qualified, for which others also are gifted. Otherwise the gaining of world dominion will become a fatality for it.

If the world continues in the course it has been taking under the influence of the degenerating spiritual life derived from the Orient, then this spiritual life, although at one end it was the most sublime truth, will at the other rush into the most fearful lies. Nietzsche was impelled to describe how even the Greeks had to guard themselves from the lies of life through their art. And in reality art is the divine child which keeps men from being swallowed up in lies. If this first branch of civilization is pursued only one-sidedly, then this stream empties into lies. In the last five or six years more lies have been told among civilized humanity than in any other period of world history; in public life the truth has scarcely been spoken at all; hardly a word that has passed through the world was true. While this stream empties into lies (see drawing), the middle stream empties into self-seeking; and an economic life like the Anglo-American, which should end in world-dominion—if the effort is not made to bring about its permeation by the independent spiritual life and the independent political life, it will flow into the third of the abysses of human life, into the third of these three. The first abyss is lies, the degeneration of humanity through Ahriman; the second is self-seeking, the degeneration of humanity through Lucifer; the third is, in the physical realm, illness and death; in the cultural realm, the illness and death of culture.

The Anglo-American world may gain world dominion; but without the Threefold Social Order it will, through this dominion, pour out cultural death and cultural illness over the whole earth; for these are just as much a gift of the Azuras as lies are a gift of Ahriman, and self-seeking, of Lucifer. So the third, a worthy companion of the other two, is a gift of the Azuric powers!

We must get the enthusiasm from these things which will fire us now really to seek ways of enlightening as many people as possible. Today the mission of those with insight is the enlightenment of humanity. We must do as much as possible to oppose to that foolishness which fancies itself to be wisdom, and which thinks it has made such marvellous progress—to oppose to that foolishness what we can gain from the practical aspect of anthroposophically-orientated spiritual science.

My dear friends, if I have been able to arouse in you in some measure the feeling that these things must be taken with profound seriousness, then I have attained a part of what I should very much like to have attained through these words.

When we meet again in a week or two, we shall speak further of similar things. Today I wished only to call forth in you a feeling that at the present time the really most important work is to enlighten people in the widest circles.

• 1. The human being is essentially a spiritual being. When he is engaged in art, science, and religion, he is active spiritually; this activity is his spiritual life.—Editor.
• 2. Translated by Joseph Coulthard, London, 1845.
• 3. “Extirpation des deutschen Geistes zu Gunsten des deutschen Reiches,” Extirpation of the German Spirit in favor of the German Empire—quoted in Friedrich Nietzsche, ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit (not translated).

The two previous lectures dealt with important questions relating to the nature and destiny of man. We heard that the human physical body and ether-body are not connected merely with the external world perceived by the senses and that this bodily nature of man can only be understood aright when we also recognise its relation with the Zodiac. And we then tried to understand how the heaven of the fixed stars and the planetary spheres work upon what lies within the outer covering of man, shaping and imbuing it with life. In the last lecture we also heard how the inner, spiritual core of man's being is related to the world of the higher Hierarchies. It was indicated that this connection with the world of the higher Hierarchies becomes especially noticeable when we observe how in his physical life on Earth, man can achieve union with the spiritual world through morality, religious devotion and love for his fellow-men; in this way he enables his Guardian Angel so to order his descent at the end of his life between death and a new birth that he again acquires the full power of individuality and is able, as a free individual, to take hold of his human nature. We also heard that if a man has not established this relation to the spiritual world in some incarnation, his link with his nation, for example, is of a purely external kind, and that this, in its extreme form, leads to chauvinism.

Such studies show us that man's life can only be truly understood when the other side, too, is considered, that is to say, the life stretching between death and a new birth. As soon as we come to study the inner nature of man, this life between death and a new birth must be taken into consideration.. For life here on the Earth is in truth a reflection of the life between death and a new birth. Life in matter is the bodily life and what we have developed in the world of spirit-and-soul before birth expresses itself in this bodily life.

What we must acquire anew, what must be built up anew in the core of our being, is the element appertaining to the will, and in a certain respect also to the life of feeling. The faculty of thinking that is bound up with the head—this we bring with us from the spiritual world—to the extent to which thinking is unmixed with feeling. Our thinking faculty per se comes with us at birth into physical existence and we have only to develop it during physical life or allow it to be developed by education. What we mainly acquire in the new incarnation through intercourse with the outer world are the qualities inherent in feeling and in will, which for this reason play an extremely important part in education.

In the sphere of education, if through our own short-comings as teachers we are incapable of helping the child to think properly, we may leave undeveloped much that by virtue of his previous incarnations he could have brought to expression. If, however, we are unable to work on the child's life of feeling and of will through our natural authority and our example as teachers, then we fail to impart to him what he ought to receive in the physical world, and thus we do injury to his subsequent life after death. In the modern world this is a cause of deep pain to anyone who understands these things. In the world of education to-day people insist upon the importance of the child being made to use his brain, upon the cultivation of his intellect. True, much that the child brings with him through birth is brought out by these means. But it can only be of real use when earthly life, too is presented to the child in the right way, that is to say, when we are able through example and authority to impart to him the intangible qualities belonging to feeling and to will. We injure the child's eternal life if we fail to cultivate in him the right kind of feeling and. will.

The faculty of thinking which we bring with us at birth, comes to an end here, in the material world, it dies with us. Only what we cultivate through feeling and will—which is nevertheless unconsciously permeated with new thoughts—this and this only we take with us through the Gate of Death. In our present very difficult times, religion, education, indeed every domain of mental and spiritual life must begin to take account of man's eternal nature, not merely of human egotism.

Religions of the present day speculate far too much upon human egotism. On the one side they encourage inertia by not spurring men on to acquire those things which are eternal by inner individual effort in the life of feeling and of will; and on the other side they enhance egotism by speaking only of eternal life after death, not of what was there before birth or conception and has come down with us into the physical world. I have said before that this life before birth is connected with selflessness in man, whereas human egotism comes into play whenever mention is made of the life after death. Life after death assumes an egotistic form in the religious concepts of to-day. The idea is put before man in such a way that his longings are satisfied. When the religions believe that they have helped the egotistic life of soul in man, they think they have done what is expected of them. But through a truly spiritual understanding of the world, mankind must be brought to realise how essential it is for the whole life of the human being to be viewed in the light of eternity, free from every trace of egotism and moulded accordingly by those whose task it is to teach and educate.

Now this has a significant bearing upon public life too, and it is of this that I want to speak to-day. For it is in the highest degree necessary that what we gain from an anthroposophical knowledge of higher worlds should be carried into actual life, that we should know how to bring it to expression in life. Abstract theories are really of little use. Life on the Earth is many-sided, full of variety. If, for example, we consider the life of the peoples, it is not only obvious that Indians differ from Americans or Englishmen, but Swedes are often said to differ from Norwegians although they live in such near proximity. We cannot let ourselves be guided entirely by general principles; concrete, individual conditions prevail everywhere and it is these that are important. It is just these individual conditions that we shall fail to recognise if we do not take our start from the Spiritual. Modern man does not really know the world. He talks a great deal about the world but he does not know it, for he is unaware that the soul-and-spirit extends into physical existence and that, fundamentally, this physical existence is governed by the Spiritual. This knowledge is not acquired by studying abstract, general principles. These abstract principles are often perfectly correct, but they do not carry us very far in the world as it actually is.

Certainly it is quite correct to say: ‘God rules the world.’ But in face of the manifold variety of the world it is purposeless to keep repeating: ‘God rules the world in India, God rules the world in England, God rules the world in Sweden, God rules the world in Norway.’ Certainly, God rules the world everywhere, but for the purposes of life in its immediate reality, it is necessary to know how God rules the world in India, in England, in Sweden, in Norway. In spiritual study the individual conditions must be observed in every case. Of what use would it be, for example, to take a man into a Geld, show him a plant with yellow flowers and round petals and merely tell him, “That is a plant”—and then take him to a plant with thorns and pointed, tapering petals, repeating: “That is a plant.” It is the specific and individual properties of the plant that must be made clear to him. But in spiritual matters man has become so easygoing and slack that he is content with general principles. He only wants to hear: ‘God rules the world,’ or ‘Man has a Guardian Angel’ and he feels no desire for detailed knowledge of how life is differentiated in the various regions of the Earth, or how its various manifestations have been influenced by the spiritual world.

This, then, will be the theme of the lecture.

It is precisely in these days of tumult, when people all over the world are so utterly at sea in public affairs, when congresses and conferences produce no result, and in spite of high-sounding programmes, men disperse without having come to any real decision—it is precisely now that deeper questions should be raised concerning all that is revealing itself from the spiritual world in the different regions of the Earth.

Think of the peninsula which you, together with the Swedes, have as your earthly dwelling-place. There is something about it that presents a kind of riddle to those who do not live in Sweden or Norway, as well as to those who actually live here. There was certainly a great difference in the way in which since 1914, let us say, you thought about the tumultuous events going on in the world. These events have struck their blows in manifold ways but man to-day is largely unaware of their effects; he does not realise what deeper forces have been and are in operation. Looking down to Middle Europe, to the South of Europe, to Africa, even to regions of Asia, the events will have seemed to you to be the direct expression of violent, elemental passions, whereas up here you were merely experiencing the consequences and reverberations of those events. People up here in the North may well have been perplexed, for it really was as though men had suddenly become frenzied with desire to tear one another to pieces. Those who were only onlookers must certainly have been perplexed when they thought about these happenings more deeply.

But such things cannot be explained by studying only the one period—even a period fraught with happenings as momentous as those of recent years. True, someone may say that it seems to him as though he had lived through centuries in these few years, but in general there will only be a very gradual realisation that this is actually so. Most people are living and thinking to-day exactly as they did in 1914. In countries like these in the North, this is in a way understandable. But that it is also the case in Middle Europe is terrible. The normal feeling would be one of having lived through events which would otherwise have come to pass only in the course of centuries. Everything was compressed into a few short years. Events like those of 1914-1915 embraced within a brief space of time as much as about ten years of the Thirty Years War, and a measure of illumination can only be shed upon them when they are studied in a much wider historical perspective.

From the vantage-point of your Northern peninsula you will be able to realise that it is only since the beginning of the present epoch that things have been happening South of you in which your participation has been different from that of the peoples who live in the South of Europe, in Western Asia, or in Middle Europe. There has really been an utter contrast between the South and the North of Europe in this respect.

I want you to think of the fourth century A.D., or rather of the period which reaches its climax in that century. In the South, on the Greek peninsula and especially on the Italian peninsula—also in the life of Middle Europe which was in contact with Italy—you see the spread of Christianity. But something else as well is to be perceived. Christianity makes its way from the East into the Pagan world of Europe, expressing itself in many different forms. When we consider the early centuries, the first, second and even the third centuries, we find the old, inherited wisdom being brought to bear upon Christianity. Efforts are made to understand Christianity through the Gnosis, as it is called, to interpret Christianity in the light of the highest form of wisdom. A change comes about in this respect, but not until the fourth century, just at the time when Christianity begins to spread more towards the regions of Middle Europe. The Gnostic conceptions, the wisdom-filled conceptions of Christianity now disappear. A writer like Origen who wants to introduce something of the old Gnostic wisdom into Christianity is branded as a heretic: Julian, the so-called Apostate, who wants to unite the old pagan wisdom with Christianity, is ostracised. And finally Christianity is externalised by the deed of Constantine into the political form of a Church. In the fourth century, that which in Christianity had once been quite different, those secrets which were felt to need the illumination of the highest wisdom if they were to become intelligible—all this begins to take on a more superficial character. Men are called upon to lay hold of Christianity in a more elementary way, with a kind of abstract feeling. Christianity makes its way from the South towards the North. It is, of course, true, that from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, the Christian life which develops in the South and especially in Middle Europe, is rich in qualities of soul, but the Spiritual in its living essence, has receded. The Gnosis is regarded as an undesirable element in Christianity... There you have one or two cursory flashlights upon happenings among the peoples of Europe more towards the South.

Christianity spreads out, finds its way into the Greek world, the Roman world, into the life of Middle Europe, and there, in a certain sense it is stripped of spirituality. Think now of your Northern world in the third and fourth centuries, that is to say in the same early centuries of the post-Christian era. External history gives no true account of the conditions then prevailing. This period must be studied with the help of Anthroposophy. In connection with the European Folk-Souls this was done here some years ago (1910) but to-day we will think more of the external character of the peoples.

At the time when, in the South, the Spirit withdrew more and more towards the East—that is to say, shortly after the period I have described—the old Athenian Schools of Philosophy were closed and the last philosophers of Athens were obliged to make their way to the East, where they attached themselves to the mysterious academy of Gondi Shapur from which at that time a remarkable spiritual life was spreading via Africa and Southern Europe towards the rest of Europe, deeply influencing the spiritual life of later times. Yet it can truly be said that there, in the South, men looked back to a lofty spirituality they had once possessed.. The mighty Event of Golgotha had taken place. In the first centuries it had still been found necessary to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with the help of this sublime spirituality. This spirituality had been gradually swept aside; the human element had more and more taken the place of what may be called the working of the Divine in the life of man.

The Gnosis still helped man to realise the existence of the Divine-Spiritual within him. This Divine-Spiritual reality was more and more put aside and the human element brought to the fore. In this respect much was contributed by those peoples who took part in the migrations. In their migrations towards the South, in their conquests of the Southern regions, the Germanic peoples of Middle Europe who brought with them souls more naturally bound to the physical, contributed to this repression of the Spiritual. For they did not understand the old spirituality and brought a more fundamentally human influence to the South. And so the lofty primeval wisdom which had once been alive in men receded from the spiritual culture of the West. And at the same time when this repression of the Spiritual was taking place—in the third and fourth centuries A.D.—we find that up here in the North, teachings about the Gods were being spread among men.

In those days human beings who were inspired in an instinctive way were held in high esteem. These were times which had long since passed away for the Southern people. Up here in the North it still happened that here and there a man or a woman living in isolation would be sought out and listened to, when in a mysterious way, through faculties arising from their particular bodily constitution, they gave revelations concerning the spiritual worlds. These faculties were a natural gift in certain individuals who worked in this way among their fellows. And when the people were listening attentively to these isolated seers, they realised, when they went into the hut of one of these ‘God-intoxicated,’ ‘God-revealing’ men or women, that it was not really the physical man or woman to whom they were listening, but that it was the Divine-Spiritual itself which had descended and was inspiring such individuals in order that they might give forth the teaching of the Gods to their fellow-men.

It is very striking for the anthroposophical student of European history to find that the men of the North were still so constituted as to be able to receive divine teachings, to feel that the Gods—the Beings of the higher Hierarchies—were still living realities among them; whereas in the South, during the same period, the Spirit is becoming weaker and weaker and the human element which man brings to expression in his life on the physical Earth comes to the fore and supersedes the Divine. So it was in the decisive fourth century, when the men of the South were becoming more and more eager for human doctrine.

These individual revelations, springing as they did from obscure depths of spiritual life must be taken in all seriousness. It is verily as if in those times the Gods moved as teachers among the still childlike peoples of the North. This condition which was still present in a particular form in the North during the first centuries of the Christian era had long since vanished in the South. But it is a remarkable and significant fact in the destiny of the peoples that the men of the North became for the men of the South, the bearers of what had been learnt from the Gods —not from men.

This must be taken earnestly. The people who belonged, in the main, to the population of the West of your peninsula, whose descendants are the Norwegians of to-day, journeyed towards the West, towards the South West, and as a result of their wanderings, their sea-voyages and conquests, their influence reached right down to Sicily and North Africa The sons of the Gods went to the sons of the World, bringing them what they had learned from their Gods.

It is an interesting chapter of history to study the migrations of the Northern peoples towards the South West and to see how—in continual metamorphosis, of course—the teachings of the Northern Gods spread towards the South West, deeply influencing the British Isles, France, Spain, Italy, Sicily and North Africa. Moreover, the effect of this influence is perceptible even to-day. The Roman, Latin form of life which makes its way from the South towards the North is permeated with the Northern influence. Whatever consciousness of the Divine has remained in the stream of civilisation from the South is here influenced by the Northern teachings of the Gods. But it takes on a peculiar character which is not fully noticeable until we look towards the Eastern side of this Northern peninsula—towards Sweden.

We need remind ourselves only of one fact—how the peoples of Eastern Europe turned to the Vareger, and how in the East of the Northern peninsula the trend is more towards the East. It is a really remarkable picture. The form of life that later on tends more towards the civilisation of Norway, streams towards the South West, and the life that later on tends towards the civilisation of Sweden, streams towards the South East. Everywhere, of course, there are the teachings of the Northern Gods, but they are presented in different ways.

The peoples who later on became the Norwegians, carry the element of activity, of strength, of enthusiasm, towards the South West. In this way the languishing Latin culture is stimulated and imbued with life. The influence of the Northern Gods in these migrations is such that it is a stimulus to activity in the whole life of the peoples. This is apparent everywhere and it is a most fascinating study.

But we also see what is happening in the East of this peninsula.—It is of course influenced by geographical conditions, but these geographical conditions are also reflected in the character of the people, for the human being does not grow out of the Earth but is born on the Earth, he comes down from world of soul-and-spirit and there is a real difference between being born as a Norwegian or as a Swede. We shall not get anywhere by simply saying that the geographical conditions are such and such, but we must question further as to why one soul has the urge to become a Norwegian, and another a Swede. But now think of the remarkable character—and this applies even at the present day—of the Eastern Scandinavian, the Swedish impulses which make their way towards the East.

These impulses stream towards the East but as they advance they are everywhere deflected. They do not become really active. They cannot maintain their stand against what is brought over from the East, first by other Asiatic peoples and later by the Mongols and Tartars, nor against the early, more characteristically Eastern form of Christianity. This stream flows towards the, South East but meets with obstacles everywhere and takes on a more passive character. The impulse as a whole is deeply influenced by the North. But what streams from the West of the Northern peninsula towards the South brings activity everywhere; whereas the influence that makes its way towards the East, is seized by the inactive, the more reflective element of the East and its own activity is in a way blunted.

As the Northern Gods send their impulses towards the West, they unfold, paramountly, their nature of will. As they send their impulse towards the East, they unfold their life of reflection, their contemplative nature.

External wars and conflicts are ultimately only the material images of what takes place in the way I have just indicated. Those who are abstract theorists, who view the whole world from the standpoint of some theory—and the empiricists of to-day are fundamentally the greatest theorists of all, for they never get down to realities, they think about things instead of trying to know them from inside—these theorists will bring forward all sorts of characteristics displayed by the Norwegians and the Swedes. The inhabitants of these countries themselves often emphasise the existence of outward divergencies simply because people to-day will not penetrate to the depths of human nature in order to acquire a real knowledge of life. But life must be observed in the way indicated in the two lectures I have given here. External life must be viewed not only from the standpoint of life between birth and death, but also from the standpoint of life between death and a new birth; we must be mindful not only of those things which satisfy the egotism of the human being who merely wants to be happy after death and because he still has physical life before him, does not trouble about the life before birth. We must study how we can apply in this earthly life what we have brought with us through birth from worlds of soul-and-spirit.

Then we begin to see that there are connections in the life of men and in the life of the peoples which are only revealed when we perceive what man is and has become through many earthly lives, when we have knowledge of the periods he spends between death and a new birth.

A most remarkable connection is then revealed, helping us to understand what comes to pass on Earth. In the external national character of the Norwegian of the present day there are traits which have been inherited from those men who once migrated towards the South West and by their revelations of the Gods poured life and activity into the Roman-Latin form of civilisation. At that time something developed in the great plan of the world which gave the Norwegians their special character, their particular task. And those who are born in Norway to-day will understand their destiny and task in the world as a whole, only if they look back with spiritual understanding to the times when Norway was able to develop in a particular way, when the Northern people went forth on their migrations, their raids and their campaigns of conquest towards the South West, to fulfil a task on Earth. The task sprang out of the character of the people who inhabit these countries. Their character, it is true, was different in those times but something remains as a heritage in the present-day Norwegian and endows him with certain faculties which are important from the point of view of man's eternal life, of man's immortality.

From the Eastern part of this peninsula where the Swedish character has developed, the old teachings of the Gods were carried towards the East, to men whose own religious doctrines had been preserved in a certain mystical, oriental form. What was more a revelation from Nature met with little response in the East; those who wandered towards the East, therefore, were destined to lead a more contemplative life.

But this again has left a heritage which has set its stamp upon the character of the people. And if we are to understand the western and the Eastern parts of the Scandinavian peninsula, we must look back to what these peoples have experienced through the centuries, realising what they have become to-day as a result of these experiences. We have every reason at the present time to think about these things. It is, after all, quite easy to realise in an elementary way that spiritual forces must be working in the world, in the whole international course of events, in the whole racial life of man, and that the missions of each particular people must be understood in the light of spiritual knowledge.

Now when the power of super-sensible cognition is brought to bear upon this connection between the tasks of the modern Norwegians and Swedes and the course of their historical evolution, remarkable things come to light. Norwegians have a definite gift—nor does this gift depend upon actual birth into a Norwegian milieu. What develops in the life of Norway can be seen even in the physical world; it can be described by anthropologists, historians, or even journalists. Their statements will be more or less correct but will give no true account of the forces at work in the depths of the human soul. For man has a mission not only here on Earth; he has a mission also in the spiritual worlds after death. And this mission in the spiritual worlds after death takes shape here, on the Earth.

What we experience in the period immediately following death is a consequence of our Earth-evolution. What we experience on the Earth immediately after birth—this again is a consequence of our life in the world of soul-and-spirit, and it is of the highest importance to study the mission of the Norwegian people not only on the Earth but in the period after death, with the means at the disposal of spiritual investigation.

Because of their physical and racial character, because of the special constitution of their brains and the rest of their bodily make-up, it can—I repeat, it can—fall to the lot of those souls who pass through the gate of death from the soil of the Western part of the Scandinavian peninsula, to give a very definite stimulus to other souls after death. They can give to other souls after death something that only the Norwegian characteristics are able to impart. In this epoch especially, the Norwegian character is so constituted that subconsciously and inwardly it understands certain secrets of Nature.

I am not now referring to your external, intellectual knowledge but to the kind of knowledge which you develop in your spiritual body, without using the physical senses, between the time of falling asleep and waking, when you are outside your bodies. When during sleep you experience the spirit in the plant-world, in stone and rock, in the rustling trees and the roaring of the waves, you become aware of the reality of forces living in the plants, hidden in the rocks, operating in the waves of the sea as they break in upon the shores, in the sparsely flowering rock-plants. A great picture arises in your souls during sleep, in the form of an intimate knowledge of Nature of which the intellect and the life of the senses are unconscious. And when, as I described in the last lecture, you develop a real connection with the Angel-Being, then you can bear into the spiritual world this unconscious Nature-wisdom, this concrete knowledge of spirituality in the plants, the stones and the other phenomena. of Nature.

Those who in the true and real way have lived a Norwegian life become the stimulators and teachers of their fellow-souls after death in regard to the secrets of Nature here on the Earth. For in the spiritual world, souls must be taught about the secrets of the Earth, just as here, on the Earth, they must be taught about the secrets of the spiritual world.

In the Eastern portion of this peninsula, where the heritage from olden times is as I have described it, a different mission is carried through the gate of death. What the souls there carry through death into the spiritual world is not so much what is experienced during sleep but during waking consciousness in connection with the external world, in contemplation and study of the sense-world and in a kind of understanding—permeated with feeling—of the external world.

But this after all, is something which fundamentally speaking, has significance only for the earthly life. Yet while man is developing just this element in earthly life, something very significant develops in the subconscious region of the soul. I have pointed out to you that even in waking life a certain part of our being sleeps and dreams. The life of feeling is really only another form of dream life. In our feelings we dream and in the operations of our will we are asleep. What we know of our will is only the illumination thrown upon it by our thinking. But the kind of will that is kindled in the Swedish soul is less capable of penetrating the secrets of Nature during sleep. What enters the Swedish soul more unconsciously in the life of will and of feeling during contemplation of the outer world and in the operations of intellect and reason—that is what is carried through death. So the mission of the souls belonging to the Eastern part of the Scandinavian peninsula who pass through death is to impart to other souls an element pertaining more to the will—exactly the opposite of what they were able to impart to their physical fellow-beings during the times of their old historical connection with them.

Let me put it like this—A special gift in connection with the element of will developed in the Eastern part of the Scandinavian peninsula as a primary and then as an inherited quality of the character of the people. The people of Europe have lived a long time without asking in this concrete way what they really have to do after death, for they have contented themselves with the egotistical answer: We shall be happy. But if the world is to be prevented from falling into complete decadence, this egotistical answer will not suffice. It will only be possible for men to lead a true and proper life when they are willing to accept the selfless answer, when they not only ask about the happiness in store for them after death but when they also ask: What am I called upon to do, in view of my particular situation in earthly life? Only when people are willing to frame the question in this way will they put their situation in life to proper use and so prepare truly for their mission. And then the preparation will no longer be difficult.

The two lectures—indeed the three—which I have given you here, are all connected in this respect. In view of this special mission, it is essential that the spirituality in the anthroposophical attitude to the world should be understood here in Norway. For when you consider that it is a specific task to create out of the subconscious life a natural science for the next world—however paradoxical this may seem, it is indeed so—then you must deliberately and consciously prepare your life of feeling in such a way that your souls, while you sleep every night, are not unreceptive to the knowledge of Nature which should be infused into them during sleep. But the bodies of to-day are not always a help in this process of preparation. The souls of the Northern peoples are, through ancient heritage, fundamentally fitted for the spiritual world. Here above all, the bodies must be influenced by a spiritual form of culture.

And now a great question arises which can be illuminated by comparing the mission of the peoples of Middle Europe with that of the peoples of the North.

The state of the people of Middle Europe, if they will not accept the Spiritual, was not badly described by a man who gave no thought at all to the possibility of a spiritual regeneration of humanity. Oswald Spengler has written his book on the Decline of the West, that brilliant but thoroughly pessimistic book—although he has repudiated the pessimism in a subsequent pamphlet. Of course, it is pessimism to speak of the decline of the West. But Spengler is actually speaking of the decline of culture, of something that is of the soul. Without spiritual regeneration the people of Middle Europe will suffer injury to their souls. But in this corner of Northern Europe, human beings cannot be injured only in the life of soul; when they are injured in the soul, their very bodily nature is injured at the same time. In a way this is fortunate, for if the people of Middle Europe do not accept spirituality, they become barbarian, they degenerate in soul. The Northern people can only die out, in the bodily sense, for everything depends here upon the particular constitution of the body.

The influence of a new stream of spiritual culture is profoundly necessary. For Middle Europe will degenerate, will become barbarian will go to its decline if it does not allow itself to be influenced by the spirit. The Northerner will die out, will suffer physical death if he does not allow himself to be influenced by the Spirit.

And so what is developed here, during physical life, is connected with the mission of Northern souls after death. They cannot fulfil their mission if they allow their bodies—which are so well-adapted for spirituality—to degenerate.

These earnest words must be uttered to-day for the evolution of our epoch demands that men shall speak together of such matters. And it is for this reason that I wanted to speak to you from the general, human standpoint, to say to you what a man says to his fellow-beings on this Earth if he has the destiny of Earth-evolution deeply at heart. For those human beings who do not prepare themselves selflessly for an eternal life, will not be leading their earthly life between birth and death aright.

That is the thought I should like to leave with you. Those who feel themselves Anthroposophists should realise that they are a tiny handful of people in the world who must apply all their energy to shaking a lazy humanity out of its lethargy and helping it onwards. Those who hate Anthroposophy to-day—this may be said. among ourselves—hate it because their love of comfort and ease prevents them from being willing to grapple with the great tasks of humanity. They are afraid of what they must overcome if they are to transform their easy-going thoughts and feelings and experience something much more profound. For this reason we see many a storm of opposition arising against what is taking place in Anthroposophy and developing out of it. You too will have to accustom yourselves to violent attacks being made against Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science by reactionaries of every kind, by all who love to saunter along their old beaten tracks. Those however who let this opposition deter them from developing their powers, are not firmly rooted in the real task of Anthroposophy. When people see how Anthroposophy is being attacked to-day from all sides, they may become timid and say: Would it not be better to go forward more quietly so that the opposition may be less violent? Or again they may ask, if they find praise being meted out to them by men who in a decadent age hold leading positions: What have I done wrong? This is a matter of great importance from the anthroposophical point of view. Attacks and abuse are usually explicable for the reasons given above. But if praise were to come from the same quarters, it would be a bad augury for anthroposophical world! It is just because the opponents of Anthroposophy to-day do attack it, that we can be reassured—but only, of course, in the sense that we must apply all the more energy in order to introduce Anthroposophy into the world, not out of personal idiosyncrasies but out of a deep realisation of the needs and tasks of the world.

On this note, then, we will conclude. Let me express to you my heartfelt thanks for your active and energetic co-operation. I assure you that I mean it seriously when I say that separation in space is no separation to those who know the reality of the spiritual bond between souls. In taking my leave, I remain together with you, I do not really go away from you. I believe you can always realise this, if you wish it to be so. You may be quite sure that there are already numbers of people who feel this bond and who look with love in their hearts towards this region in the North West with its special task—the importance of which is so well known to Anthroposophy.

I take leave of you with this love in my heart for those who feel that they truly belong to us, to our Anthroposophical Movement. May our next meeting, too, be full of the inner strength that is necessary and right among Anthroposophists.

For his present life on Earth man is beholden partly to the external world, including in the wider sense not only the several kingdoms of Nature immediately around him but also the influences coming from the stars and the cosmic expanse. But this is only one part of the world to which he is beholden for his present earthly life. He is beholden above all to his previous lives on Earth, the results and effects of which he brings with him inwardly. As you know from anthroposophical literature, man is a fourfold being. Every time he goes to sleep his astral body and ‘I’ separate from his physical and etheric bodies. Of these members only the physical and etheric bodies owe their character and composition to the external world lying visibly—or also, as etheric world, invisibly—around man. On the other hand, everything that he bears within him in his astral body and Ego in his present earthly existence, he owes entirely to what he experienced in the past, in earlier lives on Earth.

In the outer physical world there are two portals, two gates, through which the life of man, taken in its entirety, reaches out beyond this world. We will begin to-day by considering this cosmic aspect and conclude with a study very directly concerned with human life. For inhabitants of the Earth, these two gates are the Moon and the Sun.

The fact is that modern science knows very little indeed about the heavenly bodies—actually only what can be determined by calculation or observed by means of instruments. Just think what an inhabitant of Mars would know about the Earth if, from Mars or from some other star, he were to acquire his knowledge by employing the same methods as those employed by the inhabitants of the Earth! He would know no more than that the Earth is a luminous body radiating into cosmic space the light it reflects from the Sun. He might form all kinds of hypotheses, just as men do about Mars—as to whether beings do or do not exist on the Earth. But an inhabitant of the Earth knows that beings of his own rank and beings of other kingdoms share his dwelling-place; and those whose knowledge is derived from the inner, spiritual destinies of earthly humanity, will be able to reach a deeper understanding of the significance of the other heavenly bodies, for example, of the Sun and the Moon.

Let us think about what may be said of this physical, psychic and spiritual aspect of Moon existence. I must here remind you of many things to be found in the book Occult Science—an Outline, and in several of the printed lecture-courses. From this literature you know that the Moon was once united with the Earth. It is accepted by orthodox modern science, at any rate by its most important representatives, that the physical Moon once separated from the Earth and, if I may put it so, chose its own position in cosmic space.

But Spiritual Science discloses that not only did the physical Moon separate from the Earth but that certain Beings went with it, Beings who had once inhabited the Earth together with men. They were of a much higher spiritual rank than man in his physical embodiment; but they were in close intercourse with men, although this intercourse was altogether different from the relationships between human beings to-day.

Anyone who devotes even cursory study to the early history of the Earth and its spiritual achievements will feel deep reverence for the different civilisations. Certainly, our forefathers—that is to say, we ourselves in earlier incarnations—were not as ‘clever’ in the modern sense as we imagine ourselves to be to-day, but in point of fact they knew a great deal more. Knowledge, after all, is not acquired through cleverness only. Cleverness comes from intellect, and intellect is only one of the human faculties, although nowadays it is prized, especially by science, more highly than all the others. Yet when we see how the world has developed in a moral and social respect in this enlightened twentieth century, there is really no cause to be so very proud of our intellectual culture—which has come into being only in the course of time. Even if with no other aid than external history we go back and consider, for example, what originates from the ancient East, we cannot but feel great reverence. The same may apply even to certain achievements of so-called ‘uncivilised’ peoples, but we will think now only of ancient India and Persia, of the wonderful wisdom contained in the Vedas, in Vedanta or Yoga philosophy. If we let these things work upon us, not superficially but with all their deep intensity we shall feel an ever-increasing reverence for what past ages created—not through cleverness as we know it, but in a quite different way.

Spiritual Science makes it clear that what has been preserved in documentary records is only the residue of a wonderful, primeval wisdom of mankind. It was expressed in a much more poetic, artistic language than is used for our modern knowledge, but it was nevertheless wonderful wisdom, imparted to men by Beings at a stage of evolution far higher than that of humanity on Earth. Intellectual thinking takes place, after all, through the instrumentality of the physical body, and these Beings had no physical body. This accounts for the fact that they conveyed their primordial wisdom to mankind in an essentially poetic, artistic form.

These Beings did not remain with the Earth; the majority of them to-day actually inhabit the Moon in the heavens. What modern science can discover has to do only with the external properties of the Moon. The Moon is in truth the home of lofty spiritual Beings whose task once was to inspire earthly humanity with the primeval wisdom. They then withdrew to establish this Moon colony in the Cosmos. It is clear from what I have said about these Beings who now inhabit the Moon that our own human past is connected with them. In earlier lives we were their terrestrial companions. And our connection with them is immediately evident if we look beyond what external knowledge and external life can give to man. When we contemplate all the factors by which our existence is determined, which are not, however, dependent upon our intellect but transcend the intellect and are related to our deeper nature, we realise that these Moon Beings, although they no longer have their habitation on the Earth, are still deeply and inwardly connected with our very existence. For before descending to the Earth and receiving a physical body from our forefathers, we were in the spiritual world, in pre-earthly life; and there, even to-day, we are in close contact with these Beings who were our companions in Earth existence long ages ago. When we come down from the spiritual worlds into earthly existence, we pass through the Moon sphere, through the Moon existence. Once upon a time, when these Moon Beings were on the Earth, they had a profound effect upon mankind, and it is still so to-day, inasmuch as they impress into the descending Ego and astral body what is then carried over into the physical body on Earth.

Nobody can himself decide to be a man of talent, or a genius, or even a good man. Yet there are men of talent and genius and some who are innately good. These are qualities which the intellect cannot produce; they are connected with man's inmost nature, a great part of which comes with him when he passes from pre-earthly existence through birth into earthly life. To impress into his Ego and astral body what then makes its way into his nerves and blood as genius or talent or the will to do good or evil—this is the task of the Moon Beings during the time when in a man's pre-earthly existence he is passing through the Moon sphere. It is not only when, in poetic mood, lovers go walking in the moonlight that the Moon has an effect upon what is living and weaving in the deeper part of man's nature below the level of consciousness; this Moon influence is active in everything that rises from a level below that of the conscious intellect and makes man what he really is in earthly life. And so to-day these Moon Beings are still connected with our past, inasmuch as it is they who after our earlier incarnations give us in pre-earthly existence the stamp of individuality.

If we look back over our life to the point where it runs out beyond the earthly realm into the spiritual, whence our particular faculties, our temperament, our inmost, essential character, are derived, we find in the Moon the one gate which leads from the physical into the spiritual world. It is the gate through which the past makes its way into our life and gives us individuality.

The other gate is the Sun. We do not owe our individuality to the Sun. The Sun shines alike on the good and on the evil, on men of genius and on fools. As far as earthly life is concerned the Sun has no direct connection with our individuality. In one instance only has the Sun established connection with earthly individuality and this was possible because at a certain point of time in the Earth's evolution, a sublime Sun Being, the Christ, did not remain on the Sun but came down from the Sun to the Earth and became a Being of the Earth in the body of a man, thus uniting His own cosmic destiny with the destiny of earthly humanity. The other Sun Beings who remained in the Sun sphere have no access to the single human individuality but only to what is common to all mankind. Something of this remained in the Christ and is an infinite blessing for earthly humanity: what had remained in Him was and is that His power knows no differentiation among men. Christ is not the Christ of this or that nation, of this or that rank or class. He is the Christ for all men, without distinction of class, race or nation. Nor is He the Christ of particular individualities, inasmuch as His help is available alike to the genius and the fool. The Christ Impulse has access to the individuality of man, but to become effective it must take effect in the inmost depths of human nature. It is not the forces of the intellect but the deepest forces of the heart and soul which can receive the Christ Impulse; but once received this Impulse works not for the benefit of the individual-human but of the universal-human. This is because Christ is a Sun Being.

Looking back into the past we feel ourselves connected with the Moon existence and realise that we bear within us something not derived from the present but from the cosmic past—not merely from the earthly past. In our present Earth existence we unite this fragment of the past with the present. We do not, in the ordinary way, pay much attention to what is contained in this fragment of the past; but in point of fact we should not be of much account as human beings if it were not there within us. What we acquire at the time of descending from pre-earthly into earthly existence has something automatic about it—the automatic element in our physical and etheric bodies. What makes us into particular human individuals is inwardly connected with our past and thus with the Moon existence. But just as we are connected with the past through our Moon existence, so are we connected with our future through the Sun existence. We were ready for the Moon forces, especially in relation to the Beings who have withdrawn to the Moon, even in earlier times; for the Sun which works to-day as an impulse in the sphere of the universal-human only, we shall not be ready until a very distant future, when evolution has reached a much more advanced stage. The Sun to-day can reach only to our external being; not until distant future ages will it be able to reach our individuality, the inmost core of our being. When the Earth is no longer Earth, when it has passed into quite another metamorphosis, then and then only shall we be ready for the Sun existence. Man is so proud of his intellect—but the intellect in present humanity is purely a product of the Earth, since it is tied to the brain, and the brain—despite current belief—is the most physical structure in the human organism.

The Sun is perpetually wresting us away from this bondage to the earthly, for the Sun does not in reality work upon our brain ... if it did, we should produce much cleverer thoughts! From the physical aspect the Sun's influence is exerted on the heart, and what streams out from the heart is Sun-activity. Through the brain men are essentially egotistic, through the heart they become free from egoism and rise to the level of the universal-human. Thus through the Sun we are more than we should be if we were left to our own resources in our present Earth existence. Let me put it like this: if we can really find our way to the Christ, He enables us, because He is a Sun Being, to be more than we could otherwise be.

The Sun stands in the heavens personifying the future, whereas the Moon personifies the past. The Sun is the other gate into the spiritual world, the gate leading to the future. Just as we are impelled into earthly existence by the Moon Beings and Moon forces, so, through death, we are impelled out of it by the Sun forces. These Sun forces are connected with that part of our nature of which we are not yet master, which the gods have given us so that we may not wilt in earthly life but reach out beyond our own limitations. And so Moon and Sun are in truth the two gates in the universe into the spiritual life. The Moon is inhabited by Beings with whom we were once connected in the way I have indicated. The Sun is inhabited by Beings with whom—with the exception of the Christ—we shall be united only in our future cosmic existence. The Christ will lead us to those who were once His companions on the Sun. But this, as far as man is concerned, belongs to the future.

We have said that the influences of the Moon work upon us from the spiritual world; the same is true of the influences working from the Sun upon our physical and etheric bodies. Think, for example, of the temperaments. There are forces in the temperaments which play into the physical body, but more particularly into the etheric body. This is regulated by the interplay of Sun and Moon. A man with a strong vein of melancholy in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Moon. Similarly, a man with a markedly sanguine vein in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Sun. A man in whom the quality of Sun and Moon are in balance and neutralised, will be a phlegmatic type. When the physical element as such plays into a man and comes to expression in the life of soul, as in the temperaments, the Sun and Moon forces are in play in the whole of his being. But to begin with, man is aware of these forces only when they confront him in their external, physical manifestation, when the Moon—and similarly the Sun—announces its presence through the orb that is outwardly visible. Yet forces far transcending the physical are taking effect; we must always speak of the Sun and Moon as spiritual realities. And that is easy enough to realise.

Think of a human body. This body to-day no longer has within it the same substances as it had ten years ago. You are perpetually casting off these physical substances and replacing them by new. What endures is the spiritual form of man, the configuration of inner forces. Suppose you had been sitting in this room ten years ago; you do not bring with you now the flesh and blood that were within you then as material substance. The physical is involved in a perpetual stream from within outwards; it is being cast off all the time. Although this is a known fact it is not always remembered. It is a fact in the Cosmos too. People think that the Moon which shines down upon the Earth to-day is the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or Buddha. Spiritually, yes, it is the same Moon, but not in respect of physical substance. As for the Sun, the physicists and astrophysicists calculate how long it will be before it disintegrates in cosmic space. They know that it will disintegrate but they reckon in terms of millions of years. The same kind of results would be obtained if such calculations were applied to the human being. The calculations are absolutely correct and cannot be faulted—only they are not true! They are dead correct, but just think of this—if you examined a human heart today, then five days later and then again after a further five days, you could calculate from the minute changes what it was like three hundred years ago and what it will be like three hundred years hence. In the same way geology can calculate what the Earth looked like twenty million years ago and what it will look like twenty million years hence. The calculations may be perfectly correct, but the Earth was not in existence twenty million years ago and will not be in existence twenty million years from now. The calculations themselves are correct but they are not true! Not even for the shortest periods does the Cosmos differ from man in this respect. Although mineral substances last essentially longer in that form than the configuration of substance in living bodies, yet even the purely physical part of mineral substances is transient. As I have said, the Moon in the sky to-day is in its physical composition no longer the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or the Emperor Augustus, for its substance has changed, just as the substance of a man's physical body has changed. What endures out there in the Cosmos is the spiritual element, just as in the case of a human being what endures from birth to death is the spiritual entity, not the physical substance.

We shall therefore only be viewing the world rightly when we say of man that what endures between birth and death is his soul; what endures out yonder in the celestial bodies is a multiplicity of Beings. And when speaking of Moon and Sun we ought to be conscious that if we are to speak truly we must speak of Beings of the Moon and Beings of the Sun. The Beings of the Moon are connected with our past; the Beings of the Sun will be connected with our future, but even now they work into our present existence.

A sound basis for the study of human karma and destiny can be established only when man is given his real place within the Cosmos.

Try as we will, we can never alter the past. For this reason, in the Moon forces as they work into and lay hold of our human nature there is an element of immutable necessity. Everything that comes to us from the Moon has this character. In whatever comes from the Sun and points to the future, there is something in which our will, our freedom, can be a factor. So that we can say: when man again apprehends the Divine in the Cosmos, and instead of vague, sentimental generalisations is able to speak with precision and definition about the Divine as revealed in the several heavenly bodies, a special kind of language will take shape within him when he contemplates the heavenly bodies with heart-knowledge and true human understanding.

Now suppose a human being were standing in front of us and looking at his hands or his arms, his head, his chest, his legs, his feet, we were to ask in each case, ‘what is that?,’ and were told in reply, ‘that is something human.’ When no distinctions are made but everything is labelled with the generalisation ‘human,’ we are without bearings or direction. The same is true if we gaze out into the Cosmos, contemplate the Sun and Moon and the stars and speak of the Divine as a generalisation. We must acquire a definite, concretely real view of the Divine. And this we do when we recognise, for example, the deep connection of the Moon with our own past, indeed with the past of the whole Earth. Then, when we look at the Moon in the heavens, we can say: “Thou cosmic offspring of Necessity, when I contemplate that within me over which my will has no sway, I feel inwardly united with thee.” Our knowledge of the Moon then becomes feeling, for we realise that every experience arising perceptibly out of inner necessity is connected with the Moon.

If in the same way we contemplate the inmost nature of the Sun, not merely making calculations or observing it through instruments, we shall feel its kinship with everything that lives in us as freedom, with everything that we ourselves can achieve for the benefit of the future.

Such experiences would enable us to find a link with the instinctive wisdom of primeval humanity. For we cannot rightly understand what radiates with such poetic beauty from ancient civilisations unless we can still feel, when we gaze at the Moon, that there we are glimpsing the past with its element of necessity and when we gaze at the Sun that there we are glimpsing the freedom belonging to the future.

Necessity and freedom interweave in our destiny. In terms of the terrestrial and human we speak of Necessity and Freedom; in terms of the heavenly and cosmic we speak of Moon existence and Sun existence.

Now let us try to discover how the forces of the Sun and Moon work in the web of our destiny. We meet some human being. As a rule the fact that we have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet, their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the life of the one, say the twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular place, with the other. The same will be true of the twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to the meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be revealed by studies of this kind but human life is infinitely enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished without it. If we begin to think about our relationship to some human being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him, ever since we were born into this earthly existence ... and as a matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to believe that something to which one pays no attention is non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to observation. There is, however, a significant difference between what takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of the other's existence. After the meeting the mutual influence continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the beginning of something extremely significant.

Naturally, we also meet many individuals in life for whom we have not been seeking. I will not say that we meet a great many people of whom we might think that it would have been better not to have done so! I am not suggesting any such thing ... but at all events we do meet many individuals of whom we cannot say that we have deliberately set out to find them.

If what I have now been saying is viewed in the light of Spiritual Science, it becomes clear that what has been in operation between two human beings before they actually meet in earthly life is determined by the Moon, whereas everything that takes place between them after their meeting is determined by the Sun. Hence what occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free relationship and behaviour. It is indeed true that when we get to know a human being our soul subconsciously looks back and forward: back to the spiritual Moon, forward to the spiritual Sun. And with this is connected the weaving of our karma, our destiny.

Very few people today have faculties for perceiving these things. But it is precisely because these faculties are beginning to develop that so much in our age is in a state of ferment. The faculties are already present in numbers of human beings, only they are unaware of it and ascribe the effects to all kinds of other causes. In reality these faculties of perception are striving to function so that when human beings become acquainted with one another they may realise how much is due to iron necessity, to the forces of the Moon, and how their relationship will go forward in the light of the Sun, in the light of freedom. To experience destiny in this way is itself part of the cosmic destiny of humanity today and on into the future. When we meet a human being in the world we can distinguish quite clearly between two kinds of relationship. In the case of one individual the relationship proceeds from the will, in the case of another, it proceeds more or less from the intellect, or even from the aesthetic sense.

Think of the subtle differences in the relationships between human beings even in childhood or youth. We may love an individual or perhaps we hate him. If our feelings do not reach this intensity, we shall feel sympathy or antipathy; our feelings in this case do not go very deep—we just pass him by or let him pass us by. It cannot be denied that this was how we felt about most of our teachers at school; and we should count ourselves fortunate if it was not so.

But a quite different kind of relationship is possible, even in childhood. It is when we are so inwardly affected by what we see a person do, that we say: we must do it too! The relationship between us makes us choose him as a hero, as one we must follow on the path to Olympus. In short, some human beings have an effect upon our intellect, or at best upon our aesthetic sympathy or antipathy; and others have a direct effect upon our will.

Or think of the other side of life. External circumstances may bring us into very close contact with certain individuals—yet we simply cannot dream about them. We may meet others only once, yet we never seem to be free of them, we are always dreaming about them. If a more intimate association is not vouchsafed to us in this present earthly life, this will have to be reserved for other incarnations. However that may be, our relationship to a human being is deeper if, as soon as we meet him, we begin to dream about him.

There is also a sort of waking dreaming, which in the case of most people to-day lacks clear definition. But as you know, there are also initiated human beings who experience life very differently. If we meet an individual who makes an impression upon our will, he will also have an effect upon our ‘inner speech:’ he will not only speak when he is face to face with us; he will also speak out of us. If we are initiated into the secret of cosmic existence we shall know that there is a double relationship between individuals when they meet: we may meet one person to whom we shall listen, and then go on our way; we need never listen to him any more. Others we may meet to whom we shall listen, but when we go away from them they still seem to be speaking—but out of our own inner being: they are there and they really do seem to speak in this way.

What happens in the case of an Initiate is as I have just described: he actually carries within him, in the very quality of his voice, those who have made this impression on him. In those who are not initiated this also takes place, but only in the realm of feeling; it is there all the same, but subconsciously. Let us suppose that we meet an individual and then come across other people who know him as well and will remark what a splendid fellow he is. This means that they have thought about the man and have formed a judgement based on the intellect. But we do not call everyone we meet a splendid fellow or a cad, as the case may be; there are individuals who have an effect upon our will—which as I have said, leads a kind of sleeping existence within us during our waking life. The effect is that we feel we simply must follow or oppose them. In one who is not initiated, these individuals, even if they do not speak within him, live in his will. What then exactly is the difference between these two kinds of relationship?

When we meet other human beings who have no effect upon our will, but of whom we do no more than form a judgement, then there is no strong karmic connection between us; we have had little to do with them in earlier earthly lives. Individuals who affect our very will, so that they seem to be always with us, whose form is so strongly impressed upon us that they are always in our thoughts, so that we dream of them even in our waking life—these are the individuals with whom we have had a great deal to do in our past earthly lives, with whom we are as it were cosmically connected through the gate of the Moon; whereas in our present life we are connected through the Sun with everything that lives in us without any element of the necessity belonging to Moon existence.

Thus is destiny woven. On the one side man has his isolated ‘head-existence’ which has considerable independence. Even physically this head-existence raises itself all the time above the general conditions of man's cosmic existence, and in the following way—the brain weighs on average 1,500 grammes, and with this weight it would crush all the underlying blood vessels. Just think of it—a weight of 1,500 grammes pressing on those delicate blood vessels! But this does not happen. Why not? Simply because the brain is embedded in the cerebral fluid. If you have learnt any physics, you will know that a body in water loses as much of its weight as the weight of the volume of water it displaces—this is the so-called principle of Archimedes. The actual weight of the brain is therefore about 20 grammes, because the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. Hence the brain in the body presses with a weight of only 20 grammes—certainly not with its actual weight of 1,500 grammes. The brain is isolated and has its own existence.

As we go about the world, the brain is like a man sitting in his motor-car. The man himself does not move; the car moves and he sits still. And our brain as the bearer of intellect has an isolated existence. That is why the intellect is so independent of our individuality. If each of us had our own separate and distinct intellect this would augur badly for any mutual understanding! We are able to understand one another only because we all possess the same principle of intellect, although naturally there are differences of degree. But intellect is a universal principle. Human beings can understand one another through the intellect which is independent of their individual qualities. Whatever appears in human destiny as something belonging to the immediate Present—such as the meeting of two people—works upon the intellect and impulses of feeling associated with the intellect. In these cases we speak of someone as a ‘splendid fellow’ in whom we have no further interest than that he has had an effect upon our intellect. Everything that is not part of our karma has an effect upon the intellect; everything that is part of our karma and links us with other human beings as a result of experiences once shared with the individuals we now meet—all this works through those depths of human nature which lie in the will. And so it is true that the will is working even before we actually meet a human being with whom we are karmically connected. The will is not always illumined by the intellect. Just think how much in the working of the will is shrouded in darkness! The karma which leads two human beings together is shrouded in the deepest obscurity of all; they become dimly aware that karma is working from the way in which their wills are involved. The moment they come face to face the intellect begins to work; and what is then woven by the intellect can become the basis for future karma. But in essentials—not wholly, but in essentials—it would be true to say that for two human beings who are karmically connected, their karma has worked itself out when the meeting has taken place. Only what they may do after that as a continuation of what lives in the unconscious—that and that alone becomes part of the stream of future karma. But a great deal is then woven into their destiny which has an effect only on the intellect and its sympathies and antipathies. Past and Future, Moon existence and Sun existence are here intermingled. The thread of karma that reaches into the past is interwoven with the thread that reaches into the future.

We can actually gaze into cosmic existence. For if we watch the Sun rising in the morning and look at the Moon at night, we can glimpse in their mutual relationships a picture of how Necessity and Freedom are interwoven in our own destiny. And if, with a concrete idea of the mingling of Necessity and Freedom in human destiny, we again contemplate the Sun and the Moon, they will begin to unveil their spirituality to us. Then we shall not speak like the unwitting physicists who when they look at the Moon merely say that it reflects the light of the Sun ... but when we see this light of the Moon which is the same as the light of the Sun, we shall rather speak of the weaving of cosmic destiny.

Thus contemplation of our own human destiny leads to a conception of cosmic destiny. Then and only then are we able in the real sense to knit our human existence with cosmic existence. Man must learn to feel himself a living member of the Cosmos. Just as a finger is a finger only while it is actually part of a human body—if it is amputated it is no longer really a finger—so man himself has real being only inasmuch as he is part of the Cosmos. But man is arrogant, and the finger would probably be humbler if it had the same kind of consciousness. ... Yet perhaps it would no longer be humble if it could at any moment tear itself free and move around the body... although it would have to remain in the sphere of a human being in order to remain a finger at all! And man, as earthly man, must remain in the Earth-sphere if he is to be man. He is a quite different being, he is a being of eternity when he is outside the Earth-sphere, either in pre-earthly or post-earthly existence. But again, we can gain knowledge of these spheres of existence only when we recognise that we ourselves are members of the Universe. This recognition will never be achieved by fanciful speculation about our connection with the Universe, but only when, as we have tried to do to-day, we learn gradually to feel its concrete reality. Then we feel that our destiny is in very truth an image of the world of stars, of the Sun-nature and the Moon-nature. We learn to look out into the Universe and read the scroll of our human life from the life of the great Universe. Again, we learn to look into our own soul and to understand the world through it. For nobody understands the Moon who does not understand the element of Necessity in human destiny; nobody understands the Sun who does not understand the element of Freedom in human nature. Such are the interconnections of Necessity and Freedom.

At the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum we tried to give the impulses which would help us to make these facts of true esoteric perception still more effective in the years to come. And I hope that our Members will become more and more conscious of what took place at Christmas. I would like particularly to draw your attention to the fact that every Member can now receive the News Sheet. Through this News Sheet and many other developments in the Anthroposophical Society, the whole Society should in future be able to share in that quickening life which can flow from Anthroposophy. The isolation which has hitherto existed between the Groups must as far as possible come to an end. The Anthroposophical Society can become a real whole only when those who are members of a Group in New Zealand know what is going on in a Group in Berne, and members of a Berne Group know what is going on in New Zealand or New York or Vienna. This should now be possible. And one of the many things we are doing, or at least that we want to do in connection with the Christmas Meeting is to make this News Sheet a medium for all anthroposophical work in the world. It will be necessary to pay some attention to the News Sheet, and then everyone will realise what he can do to promote its aims.

While I am speaking here the third number of the News Sheet is being issued in Dornach; in it I have shown how every Member can co-operate in making it a genuine reflection of anthroposophical achievements. Only because I believe that to this end it is necessary for Anthroposophy to be cultivated more intensively within the Society—I do not mean in the sense of more content, but with greater intensity, greater enthusiasm, greater love—only for these reasons, although in the ordinary way I should have every right at my age, to retire, I have decided, after having given up the personal leadership of the Society in 1912, to begin again and to imagine that I have regained my youth and am capable of the work. I want this to be understood as a desire to stimulate interest for a more active life in the Anthroposophical Society. My hope—and anyone who was not at Dornach can read about it in the Goetheanum Weekly and the News Sheet—is that whatever of spiritual value was achieved at the Christmas Meeting shall in some way reach every individual Member. Thereby the aim of bringing true esoteric life into the Society will be achieved. The High School for Spiritual Science was founded at Christmas with the aim that esoteric life shall again flow into the Anthroposophical Society.

I hope that the words I have spoken to you to-day will have expressed the desire that this esoteric life may again unfold among us in the way that will be made clearer and clearer to you. This aim can become reality through what can go out in future from Dornach as the centre where the General Anthroposophical Society was founded at Christmas. May the Members of this Berne Group be able to contribute effectively to what we should like to achieve in Dornach for the whole Movement, to the extent that our forces permit.

On the last occasion, during our Waldorf School Conference, I spoke to you about karmic connections in the evolution of humanity, and to-day I want to say something more on the same subject. I shall begin with matters of which you already have some knowledge and then pass on to others less familiar to you.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, his ether-body dissolves away into the Cosmos when the physical body has been laid aside at the moment of death itself. To-day we shall not be studying this first stage after death, when the ether-body is dissolving, but the stage which follows. This can best be understood by thinking, to begin with, of the earthly life between birth and death. This earthly life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state the four members—physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego—interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining their several functions. But in sleep the physical body and etheric body remain in the bed, leading temporarily a plant-like existence, while the astral body and Ego-organisation live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. We know from ordinary experience that when we are recollecting our earthly life, our remembrances are falsified in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary consciousness over our life, this retrospect seems to be a continuous, onward flowing stream, one event proceeding from another consecutively, and as a rule we ignore the fact that the stream of our memories is continually interrupted by the nights. In remembrance, therefore, there is a sequence of day-night-day-night; a period of clear consciousness passes over into one of darkness and this again into one of light. With the exception of dreams which arise from sleep, the part of earthly life which is spent in sleep remains, for the most part, unconscious. Generally speaking, this constitutes a third of the earthly life—if a man is not an abnormally long sleeper. Even taking into consideration the many more hours a child spends in sleep, it will be found that sleep occupies about a third of the time of life on the Earth.

We may ask: What are the Ego-organisation and astral body doing during the period of sleep? They are, it is true, in the spiritual world. But they have no awareness in that world and with the exception of dreams they remain unconscious. Moreover if the human being—constituted as he is on Earth with his ordinary consciousness—were always to have awareness during sleep he would go astray in one direction or another. A man of a more Ahrimanic disposition would go about during the day as if in a swoon, as if his consciousness had suffered a kind of paralysis; a man of a more Luciferic disposition would go about in a state of confused consciousness, with his thoughts and feelings in a perpetual jumble. Generally speaking, the human being is protected by the power known as the “Guardian of the Threshold” from becoming aware of the spiritual world around him during sleep.

When a man has passed through the gate of death, however, and after the first few days has laid aside the etheric body, he starts an existence which flows backwards, beginning with the day of death, passing then to the day before that, and so on through the whole of his life, in the direction from death to birth. But he lives backwards through the nights—the periods of sleep—not through the days. Hence the time during which his life is lived through in this backward order amounts to about one third of the span of his earthly life. If a man dies at the age of sixty, this backward ‘journey’ lasts about twenty years, that is to say, this other life is passed through three times as quickly as the life on Earth. Between death and a new birth we review the nights during which—unconsciously of course—pictures were produced which are in a sense negative images of the earthly life.

If man were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able to live through these compensatory experiences?

In order to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event. During the course of the Earth's evolution, the Moon—which was originally part of the Earth—separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies. Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas, originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive, innocent state of the human race. Before men succumbed to the possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life after death when we are living through the events of earthly existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after his death know well that through the magical power of the great Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this. Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are then within the other man, you experience the pain and the shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead man is deeply moving—one cannot say ‘shattering.’

Let me give you an example here. Most of you will remember that among the characters in my Mystery Plays, I have depicted that of Strader. As in the case of most of the characters in the Plays, the figure of Strader is drawn from actual life. There was a man whose life was almost exactly similar to that of Strader as depicted in the Plays. You can well imagine that I was very much interested in this personality during his physical life on Earth. He died in the year 1912, and my interest in his experiences after death began from then onwards. He had ultimately become a writer on the subject of rationalistic theology, and everything he had experienced on the Earth became infinitely more intense as he himself was experiencing the effect of his books and his rationalism. After I had shared for some time in what he was experiencing, I found it impossible to continue the character of Strader in the Plays and he dies because my interest in his earthly life was no longer there; it was eliminated by the intensity of interest in what he was experiencing after death.

An incident connected with this was that certain friends interested themselves in the writings left by the original of Strader and wanted to bring them to me. I simply could not take any interest in the matter and had to ignore it, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is so much stronger and eliminates everything else. By this I merely want to indicate that the experiences of a man after death while living through his life in backward order are much more intense than they were during his earthly existence. Earthly life is almost like a dream as compared with this other experience. It is an experience in negative, an experience of the consequences in the other person of what we have done and left undone. Hence it should not be described as altogether terrible. But at any rate a man must come to realise which of his deeds, his thoughts, his feelings, were just and which were not.

You can imagine that it is in this state of existence that the first seed of karma is formed. For when the human being realises what actually happens between death and a new birth, his judgement differs from judgement as it is on Earth.—I may already have mentioned that many years ago I met a lady who had listened to a conversation that had taken place in her presence on the subject of repeated earthly lives. She said that one life was enough for her, that she had no desire at all for any others, and she protested vehemently against the possibility of having to return again and again. I was obliged to say to her at the time: ‘Yes, it may be that this is your opinion here on Earth; but that is not the point. What matters is the judgement that is made between death and a new birth.’ As long as she was with us, she realised this, but on her travels afterwards she sent me a postcard saying that after all she did not admit that there are many earthly lives!

When the human being is undergoing these intensified experiences after death, he makes a resolve that may be expressed as follows: Owing to this and that, you have become imperfect, you are an inferior human being; and you must make compensation! Thereby the plan of karma is laid down. And such resolutions in the spiritual world between death and a new birth are realities. Just as here on Earth it is a reality that you burn yourself if you put your finger into a flame, so it is a reality in the spiritual world when you form a resolution. And you do most assuredly form it!

All these experiences are lived through in the Moon sphere. Passing through the following spheres of Mercury and Venus, man gradually approaches the Sun sphere. The Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere form the transition into the Sun sphere. But entry into the Sun sphere would not be possible if the whole burden of the evil laid upon the soul in the Moon sphere had still to be taken in tow. The Cosmos therefore provides that when the human being leaves the Moon sphere, the evil in him stays behind; it waits until he returns and is again passing through the Moon sphere. But as the human being is one with his deeds, he leaves much of himself behind. If I have done evil on the Earth, this simply makes me an inferior being; in passing through the Moon sphere I lose part of myself, leave it behind. A man who had been an out-and-out villain, who had never once done anything good—but after all, nobody like this really exists—such a man would be left behind in his entirety in the Moon sphere. But, as I say, nobody like this exists ... human beings do make progress.

With less or more qualities or defects, the human being passes, at first, into the Mercury sphere. Here too, between death and a new birth, he undergoes particular experiences which are a preparation for his existence in the Sun sphere. In physical life on Earth, a man becomes ill in one way or another. In soul and spirit he must be completely healthy when he passes into the Sun sphere. Hence in the Mercury sphere the human being is freed from all the effects that illnesses have produced upon the soul. Therefore it is the case that true medicine can only be mastered when one is able to perceive how the dead are freed from illnesses in the Mercury sphere. This can teach us what must be done for human beings on the Earth to free them from illnesses. And so, in the times of the Mysteries and of instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was regarded as a revelation from the Mercury sphere through the Mysteries. Just think: What is a God to modern man? A God is a Being who can never be seen on the Earth. This was not so in the days of instinctive clairvoyance. Mercury had his Mysteries. As you can read in the book, Occult Science, there were Mercury Mysteries. Indeed the Arch-High-Priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This was brought about through a man being born whose spirit was then released by a super-human process in order to seek embodiment in another way. The body was there, and this body was used by the God Mercury in order to come to the Earth, that is to say, to reveal himself in the Mysteries. The Gods themselves were the teachers in the ancient Mysteries. The same applies to all the Gods of Greece; they were all on the Earth in this sense. The God Mercury taught men the art of medicine of which Hippocrates, later on, still preserved a tradition.

Then the human being enters into the Venus sphere where he becomes wholly aware of his incompleteness. But in the Venus sphere all that is incomplete in him is prepared for the Sun existence in which the longest period is spent. Man lives twice through the Sun sphere, but we need now speak only of the one period. He spends the longest period in the Sun existence where, to begin with, he is in the company of those souls with whom he has some kind of karmic connection and who are now, like himself, in the spiritual world. But he is also in the company of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens here? Inasmuch as the human being is fully conscious of his incompleteness, he works together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies at the model and prototype of his next Earth existence. During the first half of the Sun existence he works more at the prototype of his future physical corporeality, and during the second half more at the prototype of his moral nature as it will be in his next Earth existence. This work that proceeds during the Sun existence is by no means as uniform as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is infinitely richer, more splendid and more mighty than anything that a man can experience on the Earth. On the Earth, man does not experience what is actually enclosed within his skin, but what is around him. During the Sun existence it is the exact opposite, for then man experiences everything that is within the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we say: this is my stomach, so in yonder sphere we say: out there is my Venus. And as we say here: this is my heart, over yonder, we say: this is my Sun. The Beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves are as the universe. While man is on Earth—I refer of course to a spiritual conception of man—he is merely filled by earthly substance. This inner world of the human being is in very truth more all-embracing, more splendid than the Cosmos outside man on the Earth. On the Earth, man is not conscious of all that is concealed within his being. But it is much greater, much more majestic than anything he sees on Earth. And what thus lies concealed within him, is revealed to him during the Sun existence. Out of what is then his world, he forms and shapes his physical and moral nature for his next life on Earth. He also works at his karma. After having learnt during the first decades after death how he has to work, he proceeds to labour at his karma. The final touch, as it were, is not given until the evil he has done is encountered again during the second passage through the Moon sphere, and to the model and prototype is added the force which impels him into the karma of a new earthly life.

In order to have more precise insight into how karma is formed, we must think of the following.—Stars—what are they, in reality? Scientists speak of the stars as if they were orbs of burning gas or the like. It is by no means so! Suppose you were on the planet Venus. The Earth would then appear to you more or less as Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the Earth as you now describe Venus; you would estimate that on the Earth—which is the theatre of man's existence—there are so and so many souls. But wherever a star shines, there are souls! There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers, intermingled in a sense with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi. The God Mercury is an Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in whose company man forms his karma. We must see in the shining stars the outer signs of colonies of Spirits in the Cosmos. Wherever a star is seen in the heavens, there—in that direction—is a colony of Spirits.

When the human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. He has already, in the Sun sphere, begun to work at his karma. But as well as this—in order that he shall find the load of evil that belongs to him when, later on, he goes back through the Moon sphere, and in order that karma may be prepared in such a way that it can be fulfilled on Earth—he needs to live with the Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Moreover when highly characteristic human destinies are being worked out, it is the case that the final stage of the development of karmic connections takes place in the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere or the Saturn sphere. Karma can, of course, be worked out when the human being comes again into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to investigate this.

Today the time has come to speak more openly, with greater freedom and frankness, of many spiritual facts. The Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was held in order to introduce this esoteric character which should now imbue the whole Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, when I was able to speak to you on the last occasion, I began to explain all kinds of karmic connections. Let it not be thought that one is delving with clumsy fingers into the life of man when attempts are made to speak of interesting human phenomena from the point of view of their karmic connections. For thereby the world becomes for the first time transparent, full of light—not poorer but richer, more splendid in content.

I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives.

In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world?

With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.

And now study Schiller's life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller's dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.

What circumstances lie behind Schiller's life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place.

Initiation-knowledge, of the degree that can be attained only in advanced age, is necessary in order to understand the essential nature of the Saturn sphere. The question may be asked: How is it possible to acquire knowledge of life on the stars and the like? I have told you that when the human being reaches Imaginative consciousness, he beholds his whole life in a great tableau. But he also beholds it divided into epochs. When Inspiration is attained, and the emptied consciousness wipes out this tableau, something shines out of every such epoch. Instead of beholding his own life between birth and the seventh year, a man beholds, at this place in the life-tableau, the happenings of the Moon existence—he can look into these happenings. In the tableau of the second epoch which lies between the change of teeth and puberty, the Mercury existence shines through all the happenings. The events of the school period, seen as they are backwards in this tableau, lead into the Mercury existence. How aptly and truly were the functions assigned to the several planets in the days of instinctive wisdom on the Earth! Statistics reveal that the human being is most healthy, not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after puberty, but during the school period as it is called (between the ages of seven and fourteen), because that is the time when Mercury works most strongly into the human being in his Earth existence. In the tableau arising from the epoch stretching between puberty and about the twenty-first or twenty-second years, the processes and Beings belonging to Venus are seen. Again it was genius that ascribed to Venus the initial stages of the sex life. The Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, the Mars existence through the epoch lying between the years forty-two and forty-nine; the Jupiter existence through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and the Saturn existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three. Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence.

As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence.

And now let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle, battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born, they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe.

When history is studied in this way, when we try to glean from the Mysteries and from secrets of the Cosmos what is happening on the Earth, I do not think that the Earth's history loses significance thereby. Prosaic professors may always be insisting that it is much more to the point to depict Goethe as the man he actually was in life, than to waft him away into a higher sphere! In richer epochs of evolution, when instinctive clairvoyance still survived, men spoke, openly as well, of how life in the heavens is revealed through human acts and human existence. In this respect we must get away from that abstract mentality which makes us think we are mere worms looking upwards from the Earth, believing only what the astronomers and astro-physicists have to say about the stars. In our civilisation and culture, with all their heavy trials, it is urgently necessary to understand the battle that is being waged between men who strive for the Spirit in order to comprehend spiritual law in the Cosmos, and men who have no desire for such knowledge, who limit themselves to the Earth, not only in the sphere of natural science but also in what is called ‘cultural’ or ‘spiritual’ history at the universities where documents alone are studied—for documents too are records only of happenings in the physical, material world. A decision will most certainly have to be taken in the course of Earth-evolution. Either degeneration of the spiritual life will intensify, and an illness of which I have been speaking for years—even in public lectures—will become more and more widespread. Very little is said about it as yet in medical literature, but it will none the less exist in life—its name is Dementia professoralia (Academic dementia)—or the human being will have to unfold enthusiasm for knowledge of the Supersensible. And this will also lead him to realisation of the connection between the Cosmos and the life of man.

I want to give you a third and rather more complex example. In an earlier life on Earth, a certain individuality was incarnated in India, when India was already in decline, and in that incarnation assimilated much knowledge of a kind accessible to one with extremely poor physical sight. Such details must be studied, for, as I have often said, it is details which lead to perception of the real connections. This individuality lived through various other incarnations which were, however, less important than the characteristics developed in him in India, where his extremely poor sight allowed him to see the lotus flowers and all the blossoms only with blurred outlines. His whole vision was clouded, lacking in clarity. His knowledge of life was of the kind that is inevitable when sight is blurred and the deeper qualities of things unprobed. The karma of this individuality was developed in a complicated way. He unfolded in the Mars sphere, to begin with, qualities that made him into a regular squabbler in the spiritual world! He also worked a great deal at his karma in the Mercury sphere, developing qualities of wit, of satire. And, in the background of all this, picture to yourselves a non-European world. The individual in question tends to be reborn in Europe. He passes through the Mars sphere—battle; through the Mercury sphere—critical, subtle thinking and perception. Having developed still other characteristic qualities in the Venus sphere—it is a particularly complex karma—and with the tendency to evade the physical, while at the same time strongly permeated with spirituality, this individual in the nineteenth century becomes Heinrich Heine.

Just try to realise the understanding that arises of every verse written by Heine, of the very language, words and form, when we know: this is, in reality, a product of the Mars sphere, the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere. All of it really originates in the Cosmos. Karma is formed and fashioned in the Cosmos; it is lived out upon Earth.

And so, looking backwards upon the life-tableau of man, we perceive the Moon sphere, the Mercury sphere; from the 21st to the 42nd years the Sun sphere, then the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. (I cannot now go into the still later periods; there too one sees something, but I cannot enter into it now). We see that all these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does not know that man has within him the workings of the Mercury sphere, Moon sphere, and so on. Yet karma is brought into being by what is thus within man; he is impelled by these forces to live out his karma in his own particular way. Heinrich Heine unfolded and developed his karma in the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere, the Mars sphere; and it is these same beings of the Venus sphere, Mercury sphere, Mars sphere which work through his earthly bodily nature in order to help him to fulfil his karma. And so, by virtue of his karma, the whole being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives expression to the Cosmos here on Earth—in one case in this way, in another in that.

These things must be studied with a free and wide outlook. When I say to you that Goethe, in the Jupiter sphere, transformed what he had absorbed in ancient Greece into deep, instinctive wisdom, which comes out in all his creations because living beings are at work—this will have a different result in another case. At the time when the culture of ancient Mexico had fallen deeply into decline, though the echoes of the Mysteries and their cults still persisted, there lived a certain individual. He came into close contact with the magic arts, the decadent manifestations of the Mystery epoch in ancient Mexico, and he understood the sense in which such beings as Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl, had been living realities. Orthodox books on cultural history as a rule mention hardly anything more than the names of these Beings. Nevertheless there was a time when men had living conceptions of all these Gods, of Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl; they had actual connection with super-sensible Beings. These matters were understood by the individual to whom I am referring; and comparatively quickly, without an intermediate incarnation, he was born again in the nineteenth century as the occultist Eliphas Lévi, having passed through the Jupiter sphere in his life between death and a new birth. In ancient Mexico he had been connected with such things as sorcery, magic arts, and the like, and had absorbed an outworn, decadent kind of knowledge. A peculiar, primitive form of wisdom—an inferior wisdom—was in this case transformed in the Jupiter sphere into the kind of content we find in the books of Eliphas Lévi. Whereas the Jupiter sphere produced in Goethe, as the fruit of the earlier incarnation, a mellow, Olympic fire, and great wisdom, Eliphas Lévi dabbles with a kind of charlatanism in all sorts of magical formulae and the like.

The earthly life is, of course, the decisive factor in what the stars are able to make of our karma. But the stars, that is to say the Beings who live where the stars indicate their existence, the stars transform into karma those things which, here on Earth, become elements in the constitution of karma.

It is in this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And if a great deal seems paradoxical and strange—as it certainly will—we must not mind it. In the paradoxical and the strange lies the truth. Man's life is based upon foundations that are deeper and more complex than is usually believed. In order to understand it, our thoughts must not be fettered to the Earth but take wings out into the expanses of the Cosmos. On the Earth man gazes at matter and too easily forgets the Spirit. The opposite is the case as soon as only a little Imaginative knowledge leads us to the realms of the heavens. There quite certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits, as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge.

Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny of a single human being with holy awe. For what is it that works in the destiny of each human being? In very truth it is star-wisdom—all-embracing star-wisdom! Nothing can enable us to behold the working of the Gods in the universe with deeper or truer feelings than to behold it in the destiny of a man. A world-justice flows through Eternity in the existence, the deeds, the thinking, of the Gods weaving behind the being of man.

That is what I wanted to say to you today concerning karma.

Yesterday I used the culture of the Druids—which at the moment is particularly relevant to the development of our Anthroposophical Movement—to illustrate the soul-quality of an earlier age in a particular region. If we go back three or four or five thousand years—it varies in different parts of the Earth—we can always penetrate into a quite different type of soul-quality, and we then find that the whole spiritual and social guidance of human life in a particular period follows the pattern laid down by such a quality. The development to which I am referring is connected with the gradual evolution of human consciousness. It would be true to say that in olden times men were quite different beings from what they are today, and in the future they will again be different. Ordinary history tells little of this and so as soon as we get a few centuries away from the present, ordinary history, as it is presented to us, is to a considerable extent quite illusory as an aid to a real understanding of man.

In the lecture yesterday I pointed out how we should have to study three main stages of human consciousness, though naturally with many different shadings. The states of consciousness with which we are familiar—waking, dreaming and sleeping—are valid only for the present. If we go back into older periods of human evolution we no longer find the sort of waking condition of today, with its logically interrelated concepts. The farther we go back, the more do we fail to find this logical consciousness, which appeared in full development only during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though it had begun in the later period of Greek culture. In earlier times, on the other hand, we discover a type of consciousness filled much more with living pictures than with abstract concepts; and we find this consciousness in man everywhere.

Natural forces in our sense were quite unknown to an older humanity. In the times I spoke of yesterday, people did not talk of meteorological laws controlling wind and weather, but, as I explained, of beings seen pictorially, of elemental spirits hovering around the plants, or of gigantic spiritual beings active in wind and weather, frost and hail, storm and thunder. All this was living in their observation of Nature without any logical deductions. Everything they saw, including the phenomena of Nature, was a living, weaving, surging of spiritual beings. The whole basis of their inner condition of soul was quite different from ours.

In a sense, men were more self-enclosed, but in a way very different from what we know today; this living in themselves was at the same time a consciousness full of living dream-pictures which led them out into the distant spaces of the Cosmos. Men saw pictures, though not in the way in which today we have thoughts, when the things are outside. While they had these experiences of the giants of frost, storm and fire, of the spirits of root, leaf and flower, they felt themselves united with plant, root, leaf and flower, with thunder and with lightning. Because they experienced the spiritual and spiritual pictures in their own being, they did not therefore feel their soul-life separated from external Nature.

If not in the very oldest periods described in my book Occult Science, at least in those that followed them, one can observe spiritually how this constitution of soul was accompanied by a general mood in the peoples who at the time were the most civilized. There was a time when men had an inner spiritual perception of the real being of man. In these pictures I have just spoken of they saw not only their present existence but their pre-earthly existence as well; just as we can see a perspective of space, they saw a perspective of time. It was not a recollection but an actual seeing; and they saw beyond their birth into a spiritual world from which they had descended into the life of man on Earth. It was quite natural for a member of this older humanity to see into his pre-earthly existence and to feel: I am a spiritual being, since before I assumed this earthly body I rested in the bosom of the spirit and spent my time within it, and there experienced my human destiny—not yet in a physical body but—if I may say so, however paradoxical it may sound—in a spiritual body.

To demand that one should believe in the spirit would have been absurd for this older humanity just as it is absurd to ask modern men to believe in mountains; you don't believe in them, you see them. In those days men saw their pre-natal spiritual life, though of course they saw it with the eyes of the soul. But there came a time when they indeed saw spiritually this inner being of man as the outcome of pre-earthly existence, while external Nature surrounding them became increasingly a sort of riddle. Pure sense-perception made its way gradually into human evolution. In very early times, such as those of ancient India, as I described them in Occult Science, men still saw everything, Nature included, spiritually. It marked a step forward when the vision of the spiritual remained inward, but Nature, if I may put is so, became gradually de-spiritualized. While man still felt inwardly that he was spirit born of spirit, when he looked outward to the blossoming of Nature, to the clouds from which the lightning flashes, to the wind and weather, to the delicate, wonderfully formed crystals, to hill and dale, a mood came over him which can be traced by Spiritual Science over long periods, especially over the times when men were civilized. They might have expressed it as follows: We men are spirit born of spirit; in our pre-earthly existence our being was knit together with the spiritual, but now we are transplanted into the environment of Nature. We behold the lovely flowers, the vast mountains, the mighty power of Nature in wind and weather, but the spirit is withdrawn.

Thus the notion of a purely material Nature in the environment increasingly arose. Men felt—I mean of course those who were the most developed, the men whom we should call civilized in our modern sense—they saw that their body was formed out of the substances of this Nature which for them had lost its divine-spiritual quality. If men nowadays felt anything like this, they would begin to think, to speculate and philosophize about it. It was not so with the men of that earlier time. Without reflection they experienced a great disharmony within themselves: “I come as spirit from a world of spirit, my essential being has descended from divine heights, but I am clothed with substance taken from a Nature which the spirit seems to have abandoned; my spiritual existence is interwoven with something that does not reveal the spirit. My body is made up out of the same substances as the flowers of the field and the water of the clouds and rain, but these substances have lost their divine quality.”

Those men felt as if they had been expelled from the spiritual world and thrust into a world to which in their essential being they did not really belong. It was of course possible to reject or to sleep through this mood, as happens nowadays with various aspects of our civilization. But those who were awake at this time felt it, and it is through moods and feelings like this and not in thoughts and concepts that mankind develops.

Even the way in which our thoughts evolve nowadays is only an episode—as indeed these lectures will show—and anyone who speaks merely in the form of thoughts is speaking in an unreal way. This is particularly true of the way we speak nowadays. The people who pride themselves most on being practical and are filled with conceit about it are basically the worst theorists. We have these theorists in offices, in schools—obviously in schools, but no less in offices and commercial houses—and everything there has a theoretical bias and thoughts run riot. But it is only an episode without any essential truth. These people will attain to some truth in their thinking about life only if they feel once more as men did when they found Nature de-spiritualized, when they feel that they are an outcast race, taken from a divine-spiritual world where they really belong, into one where their inmost human being is a stranger.

One of the ways in which this mood expressed itself was through the feeling that there had been a Fall of man. This idea arose from a change that had come about in human consciousness. Men felt that they had been thrust out of a spiritual world and that the reason for this must lie in some original sin. Thus at a particular epoch the conception of original sin, of the Fall of man, dawned in human consciousness.

If we understand the changes in human consciousness from the past through the present into the future, we shall also be able to understand how this conception of original sin, of a pre-historic Fall of man, arose. And at the same time when this mood came over man, his need was not for some grey theory, but for words through which souls needing comfort could find healing power. And what we have often described as the guidance of mankind in the old centers of ritual and religion, in the Mysteries, can be seen arising at a particular period of time coinciding approximately with ancient Persian and the earliest Chaldean culture in the Near East—it can be seen to coincide with what came from the priests, the great comforters of mankind. Consolation streamed from them and the Mysteries they celebrated; and indeed, human consciousness at that time was greatly in need of consolation. The words of the Mysteries had to contain some quality of soul that could speak to men's hearts with a power of healing and consolation. This is the epoch which exhibited such magnificent creative power (though in a somewhat different form from alter periods) in the spheres of art and religion, and a great deal in our art and in our religious ideas derives from that time, particularly the symbols, pictures and ritualistic ceremonies.

What was the source from which these teachers of the Mysteries drew in order to give this consolation? If the general waking consciousness consisted in the sort of living picture-consciousness I have described, yet at that time too there were three stages of consciousness. Nowadays we have sleeping, dreaming and waking. In those days, as opposed to the waking dream which, as I showed yesterday, was the normal form of waking consciousness, sleep was not as it is today, when it completely damps down our consciousness. Although with these men, too, consciousness was dimmed during sleep, there remained something of it on waking. Yesterday I described this by saying that when men woke after sleep, there remained something of it on waking. Yesterday I described this by saying that when men woke after sleep they had a sort of after-taste. Most people felt, not merely on the tongue or in the mouth, deeply permeated by a certain sweetness of experience which was the after-taste of their sleep. This sweetness they experienced in sleep spread over from their life of sleep into that of waking. This sweetness was to them a test of the healthiness of their life, whereas if other tastes were present it was evidence of illness.

It sounds strange to say that an older humanity experienced the sweet after-effects of sleep in their limbs, the arms, right down into the finger-tips and the other members. But spiritually-scientific investigation shows that it was so; and the genius of language has retained something of this, though in a crude and materialized form. A sleeping-draught was once something spiritual; that is, sleep itself, and it was only later that it became an actual liquid draught in material form. Sleep was then itself a draught of Nature, which extinguished the ordinary memories of day; it was a draught of forgetfulness. What ordinary men had from it was only a vague after-feeling, but Initiation gave the Mystery teachers, who were the leaders of humanity, a more exact consciousness of what really was experienced in sleep. In modern Initiation we ascend from our ordinary ideas to spirit-sight, but in those days, while ordinary men passed from their dream-waking life into sleep, for which they cultivated a consciousness and experienced this after-taste, the Mystery priests had means to feel their way consciously into sleep and so got to know what this after-taste implied. They learned of the water beyond physical existence, the water into which the human soul plunged during sleep each night—the waters of the weaving astrality of the world.

But that was only a second condition beyond the waking and reaming of ordinary life. The third condition was one of which modern humanity has no knowledge at all, a condition deeper than dreamless sleep today. I said yesterday that one might call it a state of being surrounded by the Earth, and this was the condition of man at night during deep sleep. Only the priest of the Mysteries by means of his Initiation could attain consciousness of it and impart the results of this experience, which constituted the knowledge of those days. Men felt themselves embraced by the Earth, but they felt something more; they felt that in the ordinary course of the day they had come into a condition very near death, a death, however, from which there was an awakening. They experienced this third condition of consciousness as if they had actually descended into the Earth and been laid in a grave, yet not one that could be called an earthy grave. I will try to make clear to you in the following way how this grave not only was, but how it had to be, conceived.

Now when the Sun's rays fall on to the Earth, they are not merely reflected from flowers and stars. Farmers know this better than the city dweller does, for during the winter they use the Sun's warmth which has penetrated into the Earth. At that time of the year we have within the Earth what has streamed into it during the summer. Not only the Sun's warmth but other forces stream into the Earth. Yet from the point of view of which I am speaking this was the less important fact; the more important was that the activities of the Moon could also penetrate below the surface of the Earth to a certain extent. It was a pleasant idea of those days, not just a poetical idea but, in a way, a super-poetical one—though of course not held in any logical conception as we should today, but as a picture—when men thought of the light of the Sun streaming down to Earth in the light of the full Moon and penetrating a certain distance into the Earth, then being reflected not just from the Earth's surface but from its interior, after the light had been absorbed by the Earth.

The silver ebb and flow of the moonlight were experienced by man as the rhythmic play of its rays. It was not only a beautiful picture; the priests of the Mysteries knew something definite about this flowing moonlight. They knew that man is subject to gravitation as he lives on the Earth; that gravity holds him to the surface of the Earth, and thus the Earth draws his being to itself, as it were. The forces of the Moon were known to work against this force of gravity. They are in general weaker than the vigorous forces of the Earth's gravity, but they work against those forces. It was known that man is not just a clod held fast by the Earth's gravity, but that he is rather in a sort of balance, drawn to the Earth by gravity and away from it by the forces of the Moon, and that for him as earthly man it is the Earth which holds the upper hand. But as regards his head-activity, the effective influence on it is the negative gravity that draws him away. Thus though man might not be able to fly, at least he could raise his spirit into the starry spaces. By means of this Initiation, through these Moon activities, humanity in those days learnt from their Mystery-priests the effect on earthly man of his starry environment.

This was the astrological Initiation, so much abused nowadays, which was specially prevalent among the people of ancient Chaldea. By its path men could learn not only of the activity of the Moon, but of that of the Sun, Mars, Saturn, and so forth. Nowadays man is—if you will pardon a pictorial way of putting it so, for it is hard to describe such things in strictly logical words—man, as far as his knowledge goes, has become a kind of worm, not even an earthworm but something worse, a worm for whom it never rains so that he never emerges from the soil! Worms do after all emerge periodically when it rains, and then they can enjoy whatever is happening on the Earth's surface: and that is healthy for them. Modern man, with regard to his soul and spirit, is a worm for whom it never rains, and then they can enjoy whatever is happening on the Earth's surface: and that is healthy for them. Modern man with regard to his soul and spirit, is a worm for whom it never rains, and he is entirely encased in the Earth. Thus he believes that the members of this body grow on Earth more or less as stones are formed. He has no idea that the hair on his head is the result of the Sun's activity, for he is a worm which never comes above ground, a creature, that is, which bears the Sun-forces within him but never comes to the surface to investigate them. As the old Mystery-priests well knew, man has not grown out of the Earth like a cabbage; he has been created by the joint activity of the whole cosmic environment. You can see, therefore, how men in those days felt towards their Initiates and Mystery-leaders who could tell them from their training what his cosmic environment signifies for man.

These priests of the Mysteries could thus proclaim something which I shall have to give in an unimaginative form, since we are not nowadays capable of speaking as they did; they clothed all they said in wonderful poetry. The genius of language made that possible then, but nowadays we can no longer speak in such a way, because language is inadequate. If we had to put into words the message of the priests of the Mysteries to their people who came to them for comfort, feeling themselves thrust into a Nature which had lost its spirit, we should have to put it somewhat as follows: As long as you remain in your ordinary waking consciousness, your environment will seem to have been robbed of spirit. But if you plunge consciously into the region embraced by the Earthy, where you can behold the power of the star-gods in the silvery light of the Moon flowing and surging through the Earth, you will come to learn—no longer with the earlier spontaneity but only by human effort—that external Nature is everywhere permeated by spirit-beings and bears the gifts of the gods within herself as spirit-beings and elemental spirits.

This was the consolation which the priests of the Mysteries could give their people in olden days; they made them see that plants are not just beautiful but are really permeated by the weaving of the spirit; that the clouds do not just sail majestically through the air but that divine-spiritual elemental beings are active in them—and so on. It was towards the spirit of Nature that these Initiates led the men who depended on them for guidance.

Thus at a certain point in man's evolution the task of the Mysteries was to make it clear that when Nature appeared to have lost the spirit, this was only an illusion of ordinary waking consciousness. Actually, spirit was to be found everywhere in Nature. You see, there was a time when man lived within the spirituality of existence, and through the Mysteries experienced this spirituality even in the sphere which at first sight seemed to have been robbed of spirit. Man was still dependent on the spirit in all that affected him, whether instinctively when he had inner spiritual perception, or by the Mystery-teachings which showed him that Nature also was permeated by spirit.

If human evolution had stopped there, our consciousness could never have experienced one of the greatest blessings of humanity, perhaps the very greatest—I mean the experience of free-will, of freedom. The old mood of soul, with its instinctively experienced spirituality, had to be damped down. Man had to be led to three other conditions of consciousness. The feeling of being embraced by the Earth, which had enabled the old Initiates to attain their star-wisdom and their knowledge of Nature's spirits, died away completely, and man's soul-condition came to include only dreamless sleep, dreaming and waking. To balance this, there were the beginnings of that sphere of consciousness in which freedom can dawn. What we call today our waking consciousness, which enables us to enjoy our ordinary life and knowledge, was quite unknown to early humanity. Yet through it came the possibility of pure thinking; we may profess doubts about its existence, but in it lies the only possible basis for the impulse of freedom. Had men never attained this pure-thinking—which is actually pure thinking and does not, as such, guarantee the actual reality—they would never have reached the consciousness of freedom.

We might say that as humanity developed, man's earlier association with the spirit was veiled in darkness; on the other hand, he acquired those three states of consciousness which led him from spiritual heights into the depths of the Earth. But out of these depths he was to find the original forces for the unfolding of freedom. This quality of soul, with its waking, dreaming and sleeping, had been developing for close on a thousand years, and men had gone far into that darkness where the light of the spirit does not shine but where the impulse of freedom is to be found. Try to realize what human evolution has really been like. There was a time when man looked up to the starry heavens and the knowledge he still had of the stars showed him that their forces lived within him and that he belonged essentially to the Cosmos. But now, man—as spirit—was thrust down to Earth and the Heavens became, so to speak, dark, for the light, though shining down physically from sun or stars, became impenetrable for him. It was as if a curtain had come down, so that he could no longer find any basis for his existence. He could no longer perceive what lay behind the curtain.

We shall see tomorrow how this curtain has existed for a thousand years, becoming thicker and thicker, and how this expressed itself in man's whole mood. Then a light appeared which did penetrate the curtain and to a certain extent the curtain fell away; it was the light that shone forth on Golgotha. In this way the Deed of Golgotha finds its place in human evolution. This Deed, accomplished on the Earth, was to reopen for man the vision of the spirituality of the world which he had once seen in the wide spaces of the Cosmos. Christ, by passing through the Mystery of Golgotha, was to bring into man's life on Earth what had in earlier times been seen in the Heavens. The divine-spiritual Being of Christ was to descend and live in a human body, so that He might bring this light in a new way to men who could no longer leave the Earth.

We are only just beginning to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and the future evolution of the Earth must consist in this Mystery being ever more deeply understood, so that the radiance spreading from the Mystery of Golgotha will change more and more from an inward to a cosmic radiance and will gradually irradiate everything perceptible to man.

But we shall be able to talk of this in greater detail only if we lay some further foundations for it today. Now something which was once a living fact in human evolution is, in a sense, returning. The priests of the Mysteries possessed, as I have told you, the power of contemplating the influence of the Moon; the influence of the Moon bore them up to their astrological Initiation. They learnt how it was possible to be initiated into the secrets of the stars by this means. An important point for the candidate for Initiation was that he should feel as though gravity were of less importance to him than it normally was. He felt that he weighed less. But then he was instructed by the older teachers not to give way to this feeling; when he began to feel lighter he must restore his heaviness by a strong exercise of will. The technique of the old Initiation made it possible for the candidate to allow the weight which was lost by the influence of the Moon to be restored by an effort of will; and as a result the wisdom of the stars shone forth. Thus every tendency in man at that time to overcome gravity was used to develop the will to hold fast to the Earth by the power of his own soul. But since this exerting of the will acted as a kindling of an inner light, it shone forth into the Cosmos and he could attain knowledge of cosmic spaces. When Spiritual Science throws its light on these matters, it is possible accurately to describe how this old consciousness came into being.

Now there is always a tendency for what existed in such men to recur; there is a sort of atavism, an inheritance, of things long past. It recurs just because men themselves return; and when this relation to the Moon appears in men who live at a time when, because this deep sleep is a thing of the past, such a relation should not occur, it appears as somnambulism, especially as ordinary sleep-walking. Then they do not combat this increasing sense of lightness by exerting the forces of their soul, but they wander about on roofs or at least get up out of bed. They do with their whole being what only the astral body should properly do. Something which has now become an abnormality was in earlier times an asset which could be used to attain knowledge. It was quite appropriate that popular usage should call such men “moon-struck,” for this condition of man's being is connected with an atavistic relation to the Moon-forces which has survived from older times.

Again, just as man is related, in the way I have described, to Moon-forces, he is also related to Sun-forces. But they are active in a more hidden part of man's being and we find them only indirectly. The Druids of the finest period—not those when decadence had set in—certainly sought their Sun-Initiation in this relation to the Sun-forces. Now whereas astrological Initiation depends on Moon-forces and makes possible a knowledge of the secrets of the Cosmos, this Sun-Initiation makes possible a sort of conversation with the divine-spiritual Beings of the Universe, a kind of Inspiration, whereas the Moon-Initiation gave only Imagination. Sun-Initiation is like a listening to the counsel of the spiritual Beings of the Cosmos—certainly a much deeper vision of the secretes of the world's being than could be given by Moon-Initiation. This may also recur atavistically, for Sun-activity exists in every man. But the constitution of man's soul today is quite different from that of the past, and his eyes are now specially organized to see only the physical rays of the Sun. As I told you yesterday, in the physical rays of the Sun there is an element of soul and spirit. Modern man does not realize or perceive this. In his attitude to the Sun, present-day man behaves as if he met another man who claimed to possess some inner quality of soul, and said to him: “There is no such thing; if you move your arm, it is a mechanical process like that of a lever; the muscles act as cords and when they are drawn tight the lever comes into action. That is the mechanism of it.”

That is really how men behave nowadays in regard to the Sun; they see only the external-physical; that is, the physical light. But when the physical light of the Sun's working penetrates into us, the spirituality of the Sun's being penetrates also. By means of a sort of inner concentration—not acquired in the way described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds but possessed atavistically like some elemental force—a man can nowadays (and by nowadays I mean our present epoch of history which may of course extend for some thousands of years) cease through inner concentration to be strongly receptive to the physical working of the Sun but may, on the contrary, become receptive to its spiritual activity. Then his sight is changed. When this atavistic capacity appears, he sees differently from the ordinary way. When we look into a mirror, we see the reflection of what stands in front of the mirror. Just because the mirror is not transparent, it can reflect in this way. Now when a man's soul is constituted in such a way that, even when in full possession of all his senses, instead of looking into the Sun and seeing the physical sunlight he sees darkness, the darkness then becomes a sort of mirror which reflects his immediate surroundings. He does not say to himself: Here I have a plant which has a root which sends forth its leaves, flower, fruit and seed; rather, he says: When I look into the lower part of a plant, I see in it an elemental spiritual wisdom which makes it solid and permanent; if then I look further up the plant, I see how that quality is gradually overcome and how the plant strives to create alternatively a contraction and expansion in the formation of leaves, and finally strives upwards in the blossoms, as through transformed by fire. In this way the life of the plant is reflected in the darkness, which is however spiritual light.

Jacob Boehme possessed this atavistic power when he looked a the plant and saw the quality of salt below, the mercurial in the middle and the phosphoric above. Thus we can see in the spirit of a man such as Boehme, who was a natural Sun-Initiate, a capacity belonging to an earlier period of civilization, that primal civilization before there was any reading or writing. You completely misunderstand him if you read works such as the Mysterium Magnum, the De Signatura Rerum or the Aurora and do not see that in this stammering presentation there is something quite similar to what I described in relation to the Druids. Boehme was not initiated in an external sense, but his Sun-Initiation rises within him like a repetition of an earlier earthly existence. We can trace this into the very details of his biography.

There are still deeper forces which can be active in men, the forces of the outermost planet of our solar system. Modern astronomy does not regard it as the outermost since it has added two more—though even orthodox astronomers are worried because the movement of the moons does not properly fit, (The moons of Neptune and Uranus move in the opposite direction to the satellites of other planets,) but since it is the spatial arrangement with which they are concerned, they have added Uranus and Neptune. These, however, cause trouble because their moons are a little crazy compared with the ordered moons of Jupiter and other planets. In reality one must say that, for a living, concrete grasp of the planetary system, Saturn is the outer-most planet. Now just as a man can be under the influence of the Moon-forces which I described in detail, or of the Sun-forces, which I only outlined, he may also be under the influence of Saturn-forces. The activity of Saturn, as it rays into the planetary system and thus also into man, is like a cosmic historical memory. Saturn is, as it were, the memory, the recollection, of our planetary system, and if you want to know anything about the history of that system, you cannot really get it by astronomical speculation. Even external science is becoming rather desperate about all this because nothing fits. But the problem is not rightly tackled.

We have often spoken among ourselves about the so-called theory of relativity and the idea that it is never possible to talk of absolute motion; that there is nothing but relative motion. We can either say that the Sun moves and the Earth stands still, or that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still—as we have done in modern times. It makes no difference which one says, since everything is relative. And on one occasion here in Stuttgart, at a meeting of the Anthroposophical Society when we were talking about relativity, a supporter of the theory showed his audience clearly how it is all the same whether you take a match and strike it on the box, or take the box and move it past the match: in either case you light the match. This was meant as a serious scientific statement, and there is nothing to be said against it. Perhaps some simple soul might have thought of nailing the box to a wall—and then we should have had a little bit of “absolute.” We might somehow have moved the whole house and we should have had relativity again—but this might have been difficult! Yet it one takes the whole physical world, Einstein is quite right in saying that within the world there is nothing absolute, everything is relative. Unfortunately he stops at relativity, and it is just this relativity that ought to lead us on to look for something absolute, not in the physical world but in the spiritual. Everywhere nowadays, science—were it only rightly understood—offers us entry into the spiritual world. It is not a question of amateurish but of genuine exact science, and genuine science—except that it is not thought through to the end even by its experts—will lead to the spirit. Ordinary physical investigation cannot really tell us what this Saturn of our universe is. Saturn is in a sense the memory of our planetary system; everything that has occurred within that system is preserved in Saturn, and a Saturn-Initiate can learn of all those happenings.

Now just as our relation to the Moon can appear in a one-sided form in men as an inheritance of an older period of human evolution, with the result that they become sleep-walkers, or, again, as the spiritual forces of the Sun may emerge so that a man will not see the sunlight with open eyes but will see into the darkness in which Nature is mirrored, and then he will see as Boehme did—in the same way it is possible to experience our relation to the forces of Saturn, which work particularly on the head and implant in the human being a passing memory during his life on the Earth. These Saturn-forces can appear in a peculiar way, and just as we can talk of “Moon-men” who are the ordinary sleep-walkers, and of “Sun-men” such as Boehme, or in a lesser degree, Paracelsus, so we can also speak of a Saturn-man. This is what Swedenborg was. His is another case which should worry ordinary science—though it does not!

Swedenborg was master of the ordinary science of his time and was regarded as an authority. Up to his fortieth year he was thoroughly orthodox in his views and said nothing to which ordinary science might take exception. Then he suddenly became befogged. Actually we ought to say that the Saturn-forces became active in him, though people with an ordinary materialistic outlook say that he went mad. But it ought to make us pause to realize that there are so many surviving works of his which are recognized as scientific and are being published by a Swedish Society. The most distinguished scholars in Sweden are occupied just now in publishing his works—works, that is, written shall we say, before he attained spiritual vision. There is something unpleasant in having to deal with a man who up to his fortieth year was the most brilliant man of his age and after that must, to put it mildly, be called a fool!

Actually Swedenborg did not become a fool, but, at a particular moment, just after he had reached the heights of ordinary science, he began to see into the spiritual world. When this power of vision reached his head—the organ he had developed to so high a level—and when it was influenced by the spirituality of Saturn, he had his own special power of vision, not the vision of Boehme who saw the inner secrets of Nature mirrored in the darkness, but direct vision into the etheric, where the patterns of a higher spirituality appear. And thus he was able to give his own descriptions of them—though he did not actually see what he imagined he had, for the spirit-beings to whom he was referring are different. Nor on the other hand was it a mere earthly reflection of these spirits; he saw etheric forms and the activities of spirits in the etheric. He saw in the ether of the Earth the deeds of the spirits, though not the spirits themselves. Whereas Boehme saw reflection of Nature, Swedenborg saw what was accomplished in the etheric by the spirits whose activity was all he could see. Thus when he describes Angels, it is not Angels whom he sees but etheric forms. Nevertheless, these forms were actually the work of Angels—a picture of the activity of Angels. We must always keep our eyes on the reality of such things. And whereas it would be an error to claim that Swedenborg saw the spiritual world as such (that was not his peculiar power,) yet it was a reality that he saw.

The ordinary sleep-walker does something real, does with his physical body what he ought to do only with his astral body. Boehme saw with his physical body, particularly with his eyes, which were organized in such a way that he could exclude the physical and see into the darkness, but in that darkness he saw the light, the mirroring of Nature-spirits. Swedenborg did not see mirror-pictures, but etheric pictures of a spiritual existence of a higher order. Here we have an upward process from the sleep-walker who, being permeated by spirit, does not see but acts automatically, through what I may perhaps call the natural second sight of Boehme who saw not the external side of Nature but the mirror of his inner side, up to Swedenborg who saw not mirror-pictures but reality in the etheric, the picture of activities which proceed in higher spiritual regions.

You see then in what way we can speak of man's past and present, and how in the so-called abnormal conditions there is a sort of inherited survival which we must try to understand. When we can see the past in this light and see also what survives from the past into the present, we shall be able to get some idea of mankind's future with the help of a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what we shall attempt in the lecture tomorrow.

This is the 4th of 7 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at The Hague, in November of 1923. The title of this series of lectures is: The Supersensible Human, Anthroposophically Comprehended, and published in English as: Supersensible Man, and At Home in the Universe. This lecture is also known as: Anthroposophy / Spiritual Science as a Human and Personal Way of Life. This lecture first appeared in English in The Golden Blade of 1950.

The road that leads to a knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world differs in many respects from the method of knowledge that meets with general acceptance to-day.

As I have explained on other occasions, not only is it possible in our time to travel on this road, but there is in the man of the present day a deep need—yes, a hunger—for knowledge of the super-sensible. Certain preparatory inner experiences are, as you know, required in order to awaken in man the hitherto slumbering consciousness of the spiritual world and of the eternal in his own being. Man cannot, therefore, follow this path of knowledge without its affecting him in his innermost soul. Here we have at once a radical difference from the way of cognition to which we are accustomed.

Consider for a moment the scientific knowledge we acquire to-day by the activity of the intellect—and all present-day knowledge is so acquired, whether it be based on observation or on experiment. Where, to begin with, is this knowledge? For the most part, in books, in writing. The path of knowledge is in consequence well-defined, and man has continually to accept—and is often glad to accept—the limits marked out for recognised knowledge. How readily, when entering into some question of practical life, a man will defer to books—or shall we say, for it sounds a little better, will seek the requisite knowledge along purely scientific lines! This knowledge once acquired, he is, of course, ready to be himself—to be man—again. He has no wish to remain, in life, in the mood that accepts without question, maintaining even with a certain pride: it has been scientifically proved. ... When anyone brings forward something he has discovered out of his own experience, it will frequently happen that one who is au fait in scientific matters will immediately reply: But that does not tally with what is already known and proved, with what has been established as scientific fact. Knowledge has become severed from direct personal experience, so much so indeed that it is regarded as genuine only if acquired and experienced quite apart from any relation to what springs from the heart of man.

The path of knowledge which leads to a recognition of the spiritual world and of the eternal in the human being has quite another character. It calls upon the personal in man; he cannot so much as take one step upon it without heart and soul being directly concerned. And I want to-day to speak of the results for the life of man when knowledge is in this way brought into immediate connection with the personal in the human being.

Knowledge of the spiritual world is not just a continuation or extension of the knowledge that prevails to-day; rather does it imply a change in the whole way of experiencing knowledge.

Let us look a little more closely at a distinctive feature of the knowledge that has made such advances in our day and generation. Do not think I want to criticise this method of knowledge. It has achieved a very great deal on its own ground, and has brought to humanity quite remarkable blessings of a material kind, although it must be admitted that these are, in the present age of civilisation, somewhat heavily cancelled out! Present-day knowledge has, throughout, this characteristic: it starts from the assumption that things are either “true” or “untrue”, and sets out to decide between the alternatives by the exercise of the intellect. We make a point, do we not, of being logical and of basing our conclusion on the facts of experience. Once we have come to see that some scientific statement is true or untrue, then it stands there before us in its truth or untruth and our personality has very little concern with it. We can of course—and should—be filled with enthusiasm for the truth, and turn with loathing from error and falsehood; but if we compare our personal relation to the scientific findings of our time as regards their truth and falsehood with other relations of life, we find a considerable difference.

Let me take a simple, practical example. When we satisfy our hunger, we are doing something in which we are ourselves personally involved; the satisfied hunger cannot be said to stand before us as something objective to ourselves. Whereas when we come to a conclusion between truth and untruth in the realm of science we seek rather to keep our personality out of the decision. If yesterday we were in error on a certain matter, and to-day are no longer so, the implication is, we have arrived at a conclusion, but in doing so we have not essentially changed in our personal being. If, on the other hand, we have eaten something we never tasted before, and have enjoyed it, then we are not quite the same as we were.

Now it will be found that the concepts “true” and “untrue”, “true” and “false” become changed when we begin to have immediate experience of the truths of spiritual science. As we gradually find our way on this new path of knowledge, we stop saying: This is true, that is false. The criterion holds good for the material world; there we can rightly let it be our guide. Few people, however, are aware of its origin. If we trace back the word “true” in the various languages, we make an interesting discovery. The abstract concept, it denotes to-day is comparatively new; it is a product of evolution. In earlier times, anything to which man felt he owed acknowledgement and assent was said to be “what the Gods willed.” The world was divided for man into what the Gods have willed and what the Gods have not willed. In many languages the word “true” still retains this older meaning as well. “True” meant “true to the Divine Order”; the abstract meaning came later. When the intellect took command in the field of knowledge, men forgot the origin of the word “true”. And so to-day we have this completely impersonal relation to knowledge.

The new way of knowledge, however, leads us again to associate something actual and vital with what we assent to or reject. In spiritual science we are not content to say of something that it is true or correct; we ascribe to it a quality, an effectual quality. We speak of knowledge being sound, wholesome—or unwholesome, and to be discarded. The concepts “true” or “correct”, and “untrue” or “incorrect”, which are really valid only for the physical world, are replaced by the concepts “sound” and “unsound”. We are thereby obliged to come into a nearer, more personal relation with the whole of knowledge. For we must needs regard as desirable what is sound and wholesome, we incline to it; on the other hand, we turn away from, we reject, so far as we are able, what is unsound or unhealthy. And as we begin to discern in the field of knowledge whether ideas enrich life or impoverish it, strengthen and aid life, or render it sick and feeble, we begin to realise how intimate is the connection of ideas with life. The knowledge of the present day we approach rather as we do a person to whom we are more or less indifferent, with whom we have merely a conventional relation. Not so with the Spiritual Science I am representing here. We approach it in the way we would a friend whom we love.

As we come to apprehend the truths of the pre-earthly life of man—the life he had as a being of soul and spirit in a purely spiritual world—or as we take our way into the realms of the spiritual world through which man lives between death and new birth, we begin to feel deeply connected with these worlds and with all that they contain; we feel impelled to unite our very being with what we recognise as sound and healthy knowledge, giving us a sound, healthy outlook on life, while on the other hand we naturally reject and cast behind us views that we cannot help seeing are unhealthy, unsound.

Let me illustrate my point by comparison once again with a familiar everyday experience. Normally, man takes nourishment, and this, when it has undergone change inside him, enables him to replace what he has used up in his body; and in this metamorphosis of the means of nourishment man has a feeling of well-being. Conditions, however, may arise, owing to which he is unable to take food—perhaps because his organism is not in a state to digest it, or for some other reason. When this is so, man feeds on what is in his own body; he begins, so to say, to devour himself. Certain illnesses are associated with this condition. This is not unlike what happens with us in the pursuit of knowledge. As we gradually acquire knowledge of the spiritual world, we come to feel how, through such knowledge, we are being brought together with the spiritual world, we are becoming one with it; we are finding our way to the Gods, and to our own immortal soul, finding our way to what we shall experience in the spiritual world when we have passed through the gate of death, and to what we experienced there before we came down to earth. It is almost as though we had offered up our own existence, surrendered it in devotion to the world; but that thereby our life had become richer, inwardly richer. We have become the world, and in so doing we begin to apprehend ourselves for the first time in our full human inwardness. We discover that the whole being and existence of man depends on his coming together with the world in this way. Similarly, too, we learn to understand how the lack or neglect of such truths is like having to live in the world without the organs for receiving nourishment, driven to feed on our own body.

It is different on the intellectual plane. Here we can dispute and argue about idealism and materialism, and so forth; to one we may feel kindly disposed—to another perhaps not, but we do not suffer on that account; none of them affects us deeply. But when we have learned to apprehend sound spiritual truths, then ideas that have a materialistic orientation give us pain; for we know, such truths leave man to feed upon himself.

Now we shall find that the experience I have described enables us to distinguish spiritual truths in yet another way, for it brings home to us that truth is related to love, that healthy and sound knowledge is related to selflessness in man—not the selflessness that loses the self but that leads rather to the possession of the self in the true sense. When man has learned to go out of himself and into the world, becoming in this way not empty but filled with world content, then it is that he finds his true manhood.

Devotion, loving devotion to the spiritual facts of life, becomes a characteristic of one who is able to receive spiritual knowledge. We do not, as a rule, find that the pursuit of purely intellectual knowledge has any specific effect on character; but when a man has probed to the heart of spiritual knowledge, he knows that he cannot apprehend such knowledge without its affecting his character, without its entering—to speak in a paradox—into the flesh and blood of his soul, developing in him an inclination to selflessness, to love. He comes also to understand that when man receives knowledge that lacks this health-giving impulse, it drives him—spiritually speaking—to feed on himself, and from this he can learn the true nature of egoism.

The effect upon character is one of the most important results that can accrue from spiritual knowledge. Abstract intellectual knowledge is like an artificial root; it has been constructed by the intellect—no plant can grow from it. This is true of all the scientific knowledge that men respect and revere to-day, useful though it be, and by no means to be disparaged. From a real root grows a real plant; and from a real knowledge, whereby man can unite his spirit with the Spirits of the World, grows little by little the complete man who knows what true selflessness—selfless love—is, and what egoism is, and from this understanding derives impulses to act and work in life—the impulse, where it is right, to be selfless; or again, where he perhaps has need to draw forth something from his own being in preparation for life—there, openly, without any disguise, to develop egoism.

A certain clairvoyance will be found to enter into this self-observation, and into the way it is led over into deed and action. From the root of spiritual knowledge springs the plant of the higher man, the man of soul and spirit. Spiritual knowledge leads therefore quite naturally and inevitably to morality. As regards present-day knowledge, we tend to be proud of the fact that it has no connection with morality or ethics. We assume as a matter of course that we have to examine the inorganic processes in Nature in accordance with their laws, looking in them for cause and effect and not expecting to find in them any ethical working. We boast that we can even go on to apply these methods to living processes, to our study of the plant, of the animal and of the human being, allowing ourselves to concede the presence of a moral element only when we come to consider the deeper impulses that rise up in human hearts and souls: impulses of which, however, we cannot say that they are able to demonstrate their independent existence by accomplishing the transition to objective reality.

Knowledge of the spirit, on the other hand, leading as it does to an intensive development of the experience of selflessness, of that loving devotion to the matter in hand, without which spiritual knowledge is unattainable, and on the other hand to a fine perception of the nature of egoism, brings us right into the moral world-order. The moral world-order begins to be for us an immediate reality. Let us examine a little how this comes about.

We begin to speak no longer merely in an abstract way of a pre-earthly life of man, but actually to look into the spiritual world in which we lived before we descended to Earth, even as we look out: with our physical eyes on our physical surroundings; and we find that we are surrounded there by beings who never take on a physical body, just as here in the physical world we have around us beings who have, like ourselves, a physical body. The spiritual world and its beings become actual and objective; we begin to be familiar with them.

What is the secret of our bodily existence on earth? Even as through the years of childhood, from birth onward, we are continually being impelled, unconsciously or half consciously, to find our way into our body, to grow increasingly one with it, so do we in like manner, throughout our physical life on earth, gradually approach the world, feeling our way towards it by means of our physical organs. When we are active and creative, we—so to speak—lose ourselves in our body; soul and spirit are surrendered to the body and we lose consciousness of them. The content of the world is communicated to us through our bodily nature. Materialism is quite right as far as earthly consciousness is concerned, for we are obliged to make use of the body as long as we remain in the earthly consciousness, and so have to be content with perceiving only what is bodily. If, however, man wants to comprehend the spiritual world and his own super-sensible being, he has to undergo in himself a development wherein the body acts as a hindrance. For the body would wrench us away from the spiritual world, would alienate us from it, driving us back again and again upon ourselves and our own egoity; whereas in spiritual knowledge we have to come right out of ourselves—rather as we do when we love another human being. And in so far as we become able to do this, a deeply significant truth begins to dawn upon us, namely, that man passes through repeated earthly lives.

As a matter of fact, many of the feelings and impulses that we carry in our soul are there as a result of earlier lives on earth; only we do not observe them as such because we remain in our body. Suppose we meet someone, and the meeting leads to a friendship that alters the whole course of our life. When we look back over the earlier years, we discover with the eye of the spirit what we could never find by the aid of bodily vision alone: namely, that our whole life up to the moment of meeting him was a search for that person. One who is already a little older and looks back in this way is able to see his life as the working out of a plan; he recognises how, when he was quite a little child, his life took a direction that was to bring about eventually the meeting with this friend. We can go further in this kind of observation of life and discover that all we do, though it may seem to result from the working of earthly physical forces, is in reality guided from elsewhere. We come in fact to recognise that the life we are now living is dependent on earlier lives on earth. And between these have been also lives in a spiritual world.

Now we can come to a knowledge of the other lives we have lived on earth only when we learn to imbue with love the faculty of cognition. It is by no means so easy as some people think, to discover the man we were! For he is a complete stranger to us now. Only a selfless, love-imbued faculty of cognition can grasp this other person, so that he enters into our consciousness.

This is how it is with all stages of higher, spiritual knowledge. Our knowledge has to become a loving knowledge, intimately bound up with our personality, a knowledge that simply cannot be at all without our personality taking part in it. And as we grow into this larger world, and learn to look beyond birth and beyond death, to look also beyond and behind the world of the senses—for in the plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms we begin to behold beings, spiritually active beings—as we do this, we come into a kingdom of reality, where the ethical impulses that inhere in our knowledge have place. I will give you an example.

Destiny, we say, is hard to bear. So little good seems often to result from actions that spring from the highest motives, whilst others that flow from evil motives reap marvelous success! How is this? The reason is that this physical world of the senses, not-withstanding that we have taken for ourselves a fragment of it to form, as it were, a garment for our souls, has in it no moral impulses. The moral and ethical impulses that are behind our actions have no place there; they are wiped away out of whatever we do or make in the physical world; the nearest approach to moral working is a purely formal compensatory effect. But this physical world is permeated throughout with spirit; we carry our moral or immoral actions into the world of the spirit. And here, even as we found that “true” comes to mean for us sound or healthy, we recognise that when man devotes himself to moral truth, he becomes in his inner being, strong, well developed; whereas when he gives himself up to error he becomes a cripple in soul and spirit.

In the present cycle of evolution this does not find expression in the physical body (there we carry the results of what we did and achieved in our previous life on earth); but when we have laid down our physical body and gone through the gate of death, then there is no longer anything to prevent our soul and spirit from assuming the physiognomy we have acquired from the ethical quality of our experience. There in the spiritual world we, as soul and spirit, are strong and well-developed, or crippled and weak. Then, later on, comes the time for us to resume a physical body; and in forming it we build, from within, our own destiny. For we may, on the one hand, be able, having brought from an earlier life a harmonious soul-and-spirit nature, to form the new body in perfect order and proportion, so that we can employ it in good and useful activity; or, coming into incarnation, as it were, as a moral cripple, we may find ourselves able only to form and guide the new body in a clumsy and awkward fashion, from embryo up to adult age. And now this inner destiny becomes our outer destiny. For it is clear to an unprejudiced observation that whatever befalls us from without is closely connected with what we ourselves have prepared as our inner destiny. In all our intercourse with the world outside, we make use of the body as an instrument, and according as we use it skillfully and well, or badly and clumsily, we occasion, at any rate in part, the events that befall us. And then, in the further lives that follow, come new compensation and balancing-out. Thus in the spiritual world we find the formative forces that belong to our moral life. The moral world becomes for us a reality.

We see how an ethical impulse cannot in one earth-life effect a change in the physical body, but when it passes over into the next life on earth, can work there quite definitely as a health-giving influence, no less truly than heat works in the physical world, or light, or electricity. That we imagine the moral world—order to be no more than a man-made abstraction is due to the fact that we take cognisance only of the physical world, tracing everything back there from effect to cause; we can, however, equally well recognise this law at work in the spiritual world; only there we have to trace the effects, as they show themselves in one life, back to causes in an earlier life on earth. In other words, we need to know the level on which the law of cause and effect has to be applied to human destiny.

Now all that sounds very well, someone might say, but as things are, men have not this spiritual knowledge of which you speak; only a researcher in the spirit can see into the spiritual world-others must be content with the words and ideas in which he clothes his perceptions. To this I would reply: To paint a picture, one must be an artist; but to experience the beauty and inner content of the picture one need not be an artist, one has only to approach the picture with a sincere and open mind. It is the same with spiritual knowledge. In order to “paint” in ideas, one must be a researcher in the spirit; but once the picture is painted, it stands there for others to behold. And if these, who are not themselves “artists”, are free from prejudice and are sincere seekers after truth, they will receive health and healing from the descriptions of the spiritual world.

We are actually, at the present day, in a peculiar position in this respect. Spiritual Science, in the sense we understand it here, is, comparatively speaking, a new thing in our civilisation. The person who is able to represent it from immediate experience, stands alone; and all he can do is to clothe it in words and ideas, and impart these to his fellow men. It might even be thought that what he has to say concerns himself alone! In any case, that is how the position is to-day. One earnestly hopes it will soon alter, for Spiritual Science has power to quicken and awaken man inwardly. As things still are, however, mankind remains to-day a recipient only of spiritual knowledge.

For him who acquires spiritual knowledge, the case is very different. There comes a point where he has to undergo a pain with which no other pain can be compared. It is at the moment when he passes beyond his own spiritual experience between birth and death and launches out into the vast ocean of eternity in which we shall be when we have gone through the gate of death, and in which we were before we descended through birth to physical life on earth. An indescribable pain is involved in leaving, on the path of knowledge, the world of the physical senses, and entering the world of the spirit. The whole being is, as it were, steeped in pain. And now a remarkable thing happens. At first the higher knowledge seizes hold of the traveler in his entire being; but then, it wrests itself free of him with unbelievable force and certainty.

Since we have set out in this lecture to show where the personal has place in the path of knowledge, you will allow me, I think, to describe at this point what is, on the face of it, an entirely personal matter. As we shall find, however, what seems most personal in it has nevertheless an impersonal character. It is an experience that can befall anyone who comes into a similar situation.

To begin with, as I said, the knowledge of the spiritual takes hold of the entire human being. Ordinary intellectual knowledge is a concern of the head, the intellect. It is in the head alone that we have to exert ourselves. True, the acquisition of this kind of knowledge often obliges one to sit still for long hours at a stretch, so that one may be glad to break off for sheer weariness! It is nevertheless true to say that ordinary knowledge does not call upon the whole human being. But if we try to acquire, with the aid of the intellect alone, knowledge of the spiritual and super-sensible, it evades us like a dream; its great and far-reaching conceptions slip from our grasp. When we have, so to speak, pressed forward to the spiritual world, when we have passed what is spoken of as the Guardian of the Threshold, we have the greatest trouble to bring to consciousness—not the content; that one can acquire as a matter of knowledge—but the experience.

It is a fact that very many people become able, comparatively quickly, to have experiences in the spiritual world. But presence of mind is needed to grasp these experiences. With the majority of persons it happens that before they can give their attention to some experience, it is gone again. Presence of mind is altogether indispensable for the attainment of spiritual knowledge, as you will know from my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. When one succeeds in acquiring knowledge of things that are beyond space and beyond time, they seem like a dream, and only with the greatest difficulty can one lift them on to a higher level of consciousness. They vanish-away like a dream if one tries to grasp them with the head alone.

Now it is important for one who speaks about the spiritual world in ideas to have always the spiritual world before him as he speaks; and he can acquire the habit of standing in this way within the spiritual world only if his whole being participates in the knowledge. Everyone will find his own way of doing this. I, for example, find it necessary to fix the results of spiritual knowledge by jotting down either brief notes or symbolical drawings. I need hardly say, I mean by this nothing of a mediumistic nature, but a perfectly conscious and deliberate action. Putting down some note at once ensures that the activity is not confined to the head alone but is shared in by the whole human being. It is of no consequence whether later on one refers to these notes: the point is, to make them. I can assure you I have used up whole cartloads of notebooks in this way and never looked at them again. What has been seen in the spiritual world is more strongly retained when the experience is allowed to flow into an impulse of will that leads to the activity of writing; for ultimately, all depends on experiencing the truths of the spiritual world—let me say—”organically”, experiencing them with one's whole being.

Initiation-knowledge of the present day has perforce another characteristic, which need not continue indefinitely and was not present in earlier and other paths to initiation. I mean the following. Suppose one has produced some spiritual knowledge, and later on has occasion to come back to it. If one is, let us say, as old as I am, and produced some 40 years ago much of what one has to communicate, then as far as the inner spiritual activity is concerned, it is almost as though one had to deal with something one was reading for the first time in an old book. Please understand me aright. Knowledge one has oneself produced many years ago becomes as strange to one as a book one has never seen before. It is not remote in the way that we feel abstract knowledge to be remote, but spiritually it severs itself from one. A man who stands outside initiation-knowledge, may feel how this knowledge, when he receives it, becomes united with his very being; but for the one who has produced it, it separates itself from him; he feels as if he had before him another human being.

Many a book, I assure you, by one or other of our friends, strikes me as more familiar than the books I wrote myself in earlier years. In fact, I read these only when I must: for instance, to revise them for a new edition. The teaching of the spiritual researcher severs itself from him and becomes objective; he is quite unable to feel any particular pleasure or satisfaction in it—as one might naturally expect in other circumstances! This has nothing to do with the knowledge as such; it arises only from the fact that one is obliged in the present day to attain the knowledge in solitude. In earlier times, when the path of initiation knowledge was far more instinctive and less conscious, it could not rightly be pursued in solitude. There were societies for the fostering of initiation knowledge. Such societies exist even in our time, but they merely carry on a tradition. If to-day one speaks from direct personal experience in knowledge, one is compelled to stand alone.

How was it arranged in societies of this kind? And how will it be in the future, when knowledge of the spiritual will be received again into civilisation and be called upon to enter once more into all the practical spheres of life? For spiritual knowledge will be able to do this, when once man begins to take hold of it. The societies of which we have spoken were ordered in the following way. An agreement was come to, freely and willingly on the part of all, that one of their number should undertake a particular field of knowledge, another, another field, and so on. One, for example, would concentrate all his powers on inquiring into the influence exercised upon the life of man by the world of stars, another on investigating the path leading from pre-earthly existence into the sphere of the earth.

This plan made it possible for the several fields of knowledge to be investigated in detail. For if it takes ten years to get to know something of the influence of the stars on human life, it takes, not ten years, but a lifetime to explore in detail even a few steps of the way from pre-earthly into earthly life. There was accordingly good reason for distributing among different persons the several realms of knowledge. Each made a deep study of the field of knowledge upon which he set himself to concentrate, and for the rest, allowed himself to take the knowledge from his companions. He had thus the double experience; he knew what it was to produce knowledge himself inwardly, and he had also the experience of receiving knowledge he had not himself produced.

When men learn to be more open-hearted and to approach knowledge with real warmth of soul, then it will afford them the same kind of experience one may have from the painting of a great artist. Man's own natural feeling for reality will enable him to take hold of what lives in the idea he has not himself produced; he will have a direct inner experience of the idea. He will undergo also the pain and suffering of which I told you—all the phases of inner personal experience that come from meeting spiritual knowledge face to face. This can be achieved by one who receives spiritual truths; he can grasp them, take hold of them with the entire forces of his soul. Such an experience is, however, in large measure denied to the spiritual researcher of the present day; he has to forgo it in so far as he produces the knowledge.

The fruits of spiritual knowledge can accrue to those who receive the truths with warmth of heart. And within the societies of earlier times provision was always made for the receiving of knowledge. When a particular field of spiritual research was allotted to one member—or the member chose it for himself—then, as far as that field was concerned, he went without the receiving which gives so much help and enrichment to life; on the other hand he experienced the blessing of receiving, in that he received knowledge from his companions who undertook other fields of research. Something, of the kind must come again in the future.

Do not think I speak out of a desire to attach importance to my own experiences; I want rather to draw your attention to the fact that in order to reap the fruits of spiritual knowledge, one does not need to have produced the knowledge oneself. Let a man follow the exercises—in meditation, concentration, etc.—described in my book, How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Then, if he succeeds in rousing himself to inner activity of soul, and takes but a few first steps towards an understanding of life, his heart will be open to receive what the spiritual researcher can give, and what he receives will unite itself with him in quite an intimate manner, for it speaks directly to the personal in him, and he will find the way, as personal man, to the deep sources of life whence the eternal in his own being is derived; he will enter into the experiences man has in the spiritual world before his life on earth, and into those also that await man when he has passed through the gate of death and come again into the spiritual world. And as he makes this knowledge his own, a second higher man will grow up within him.

On this path of knowledge we learn to feel, as it were, at home in the spiritual world in the way we feel at home in the world of nature, with its secure and stable laws. The fact that we have muscles and bones unites us with nature; our own physical nature makes us feel at home in the physical nature of the world around. And when we begin to apprehend the reality of spiritual conceptions and to see their content as part of the spiritual world, then we begin to feel at home in a divine spiritual world—even as with our body we feel at home in the world of the senses. And it is this feeling at home in the spiritual world that is so important, for thereby we attain to a knowledge of ourselves as having eternal spiritual existence in the eternal divine spiritual world.

For not only is it true that mankind in general is rooted in a spiritual world. Every single human being, just through that which is most personal in him, just through that which he, as an individual, can experience by being on earth in a particular place and at a particular time, is rooted in, and belongs to, a spiritual world which bears the stamp of eternity. As we come to realise this, we begin to feel as though a voice were calling to us: “Make not yourself a cripple in soul and spirit!” For not merely man in general, but each single human being, is relied upon to play his part.

It is also through what is most individual and personal in him that man finds his way to religion, and to all true artistic experience. Hence it is that Spiritual Science leads directly into a religious mood of life. You will find abundant evidence in our literature of how Christianity is deepened, and can stand forth in its true light and in its true being, when we try to understand the personal experiences of the Christ Who appeared in a personal form.

Attaining thus by a personal path to our own eternal being, we know how to give personality its right place and meaning in the world, conscious that each one of us is needed and reckoned upon as single personality. Knowledge of the spirit has become for us a human and personal path in life. We feel inwardly seized and quickened by the content of spiritual knowledge, in the same way that our body is seized and quickened by the power of the blood.

The meaning we have been led to discern in our personal, our individual existence, may perhaps be best conveyed in a picture. A meeting has been called, and we are summoned to attend the meeting, because it is important for just that to be said in it which we alone can contribute. Suppose we take some action which has the result of preventing our being present. We are not there; we—who are expected, who are looked for—do not appear.

Whatever we do and accomplish under the impulse of spiritual knowledge serves, we shall find, to enrich our life; we begin indeed to recognise how our path in life leads always in a direction where we are needed and expected. In the world where spiritual beings are at work, creating and fashioning our individual existence, we begin to see that we are counted upon to do our part, and we understand that the only way we can fulfill what is expected of us and join with our companions in a higher spiritual world, is by following this personal path of life into the spiritual world, and finding within us, as we tread the path, the higher eternal man, the soul and spirit of our being.

Thus does this human knowledge of the spirit bring us face to face with the challenge: Are we going to arrive in that place where it is given to human beings to unite in a common experience of the spiritual—for we are expected there, we are awaited—or, having passed through many births and deaths, shall we come at length to a point where the word of reproach rings out: You were expected, and you did not come!

We have made a number of observations that have essentially been concerned with showing how a recovery of our social and other conditions of human coexistence can only be brought about by people being seized from within by different ways of thinking from those that have, so to speak, been developed over the course of the last three to four centuries. Among the influences that have been particularly effective in bringing forth such ways of thinking that must no longer dominate people, the scientific way of thinking was also particularly influential. It is difficult to speak quite impartially about this scientific way of thinking today, because there is no doubt that great, tremendous progress has been made for humanity through this scientific way of thinking. However, we must realize that the very advances of modern times that have been made in this area are those that have diminished the actual spiritual life of man. Little by little things have turned out in such a way that those parts of human knowledge have mainly undergone progress that could be utilized in external technology. And even the rest of cultural life has been influenced by this tendency to always orient human thinking, human imagination, towards how it can be used in external technology.

It would be quite wrong to think that this statement applies only to that which is dependent on the scientific way of thinking in modern intellectual life. That is not what is meant here; rather, it is meant that the whole thinking of modern humanity, insofar as old ideas, old elements in this thinking have not been inherited, is of the same nature as it has now come to expression in the extreme in scientific thinking and is expressed. It is not only those people who are directly influenced by science who think scientifically today. It is even true to say, somewhat paradoxically, that those people who are directly influenced by science are the ones who think least in the sense meant here. It is only that which is the general way of thinking of human beings that has found expression in a particularly characteristic form in natural science, so that, to a certain extent, natural science is the best way to see how this modern humanity thinks. Thus, we have repeatedly spoken of the influences of the way of thinking that has found its particular characteristic expression in natural science.

Now I would like to point out a particular idiosyncrasy that is inherent in our thinking, in our entire conceptualization, in fact in our entire modern soul life, due to the fact that so much of natural science impulses is present in this soul life. This idiosyncrasy consists in the fact that we, as modern human beings, have, in a sense, forgotten how to observe things impartially. People believe that they observe things impartially; but they do not. Even our school education today is such that it instills in people a great many preconceived ideas, which color our pure perception of things. We do not actually have a pure perception of things at present.

You can raise the question: Should not the particularly harmful aspect of this fact, that we do not have a pure view of things, be particularly evident in scientific research, in natural science? — One should believe that it is so. But if you look more closely, you notice something else. Science saves itself from the devastating and destructive nature of this inability to properly see relationships by directing more and more of its attention to the external sense world, to that which is given to the external senses. The outer senses do not conform to preconceived ideas, and so they constantly correct what comes from preconceived opinions and ideas, especially from preconceived views. In this way, observation constantly corrects what man carries within himself into his view of things. That is why we do not notice when scientific observations are made that all kinds of preconceived ideas are also brought into them. But they are still brought in. And if you then take what is produced scientifically in context, you will find that preconceived ideas are indeed brought into the entire scientific view.

But the particularly harmful aspect of this inability to see is especially evident when the present-day person is to reflect on social conditions. In this case, the facts do not at all correct the preconceived notions that people bring to these facts. And so, little by little, we have really come to the point where, with regard to the social facts of life, you can ultimately assert anything you want to assert. Today, in fact, you find all sorts of opinions represented. On the one hand, you find the opinion that true social reality consists only of economic processes, that all spiritual life is only a kind of superstructure, a kind of smoke that rises up or is erected over economic facts; that is one extreme. The other extreme is this: today, since we have no clear concept of the real spiritual powers that live in the world, we speak of the prevailing, abstract ideas, ideas of things and so on, and claim that these ideas shape – perhaps through people, but they do shape – what external economic and other facts are.

As you can see, there are two opposing opinions. Now it is a matter of proving one opinion and the other opinion. You can give quite correct arguments, incontestable arguments today for both the one and the other opinion, arguments that are equally good for the one and for the other opinion. If someone comes forward today and claims that all events are actually controlled by the spirit, by ideas, he can prove it. And someone else can come forward and say: What you are proving is pure fantasy; in reality, all ideas are only the mirror images, only the superstructure of what are economic facts. He can refute what the other says in the most beautiful way; he can prove his case and the other's. The arguments are in both cases equally good.

This is a phenomenon that is actually far too little appreciated in the intellectual life of our time. People today separate themselves into parties or groups and advocate some maxim or other, some program. They are convinced of this maxim, they are convinced of this program and can prove it. The others represent a completely different maxim, a completely different program; they can also prove it, and it cannot be said that one has worse or the other better reasons for his conviction. This is a phenomenon of public life that should really be noticed, because it is the most characteristic phenomenon of our time. This phenomenon ultimately leads to the most anti-social facts and attitudes. For if one is convinced of some maxim and one knows the good reasons for this maxim, then one considers the person who has a different conviction to be a fool or a scoundrel or some kind of dishonest person. And the other person, who may have the same good reasons, in turn considers the first person to be a fool or a scoundrel or a dishonest person. That this fact is not recognized as such is, in a sense, the tragedy of the present time. It is just that people today are so attuned that they believe that what is true for the human soul today has always been true. And as soon as anyone's attention is drawn to this phenomenon today, one can almost certainly expect that he will come and say: Yes, what you are explaining, that all opinions prove themselves side by side, that has always been the case in the development of mankind. If people would only take the slightest interest in educating themselves about the real development of humanity, they would not make such an assertion; for it was not always so in reality; the well-proven opinions and maxims and programs were not as openly juxtaposed as they are today. For today one can prove very well. Today, if one is as clever as certain socialists on the Left, one can prove Marxism quite clearly, and one can prove quite clearly, if one is willing to take just one other point of view, that Marxism is complete nonsense. Today one can prove very, very well; one should be quite clear about that.

This training, this ability to prove, is instilled in children today. But therein lies something extraordinarily sad for our present time, that one can prove everything so clearly and so strictly, and therefore can be so easily convinced of a thing. Because of all the ways of being convinced of a thing, the easiest, in today's sense, is to prove this thing. There is no easier way to acquire a conviction today than to prove it. It is precisely because of this ability to prove that people have completely lost a feeling, a real feeling, that convictions in life must be fought for and acquired, that overcoming is necessary if conviction is to take root in the soul.

Where does this fact come from, this fact that is so deeply ingrained in our entire lives, that we can prove so very easily? It comes from the fact that we are accustomed to thinking so superficially with our thoughts. People today think superficially about things, without making any effort to penetrate very deeply into them. And the more superficial one's thinking, the better one can prove. It is extremely important to realize this. The thinner the concepts are – and on the surface of things all concepts become thin and abstract – the better these concepts seem to provide evidence for what one wants to believe and accept from completely different sources, from very unconscious sources, from feelings, from directions of will and the like. Our entire party life should one day be studied and described from the point of view that has just been developed before you here.

What can be achieved least of all under the influence of this superficial approach is a real knowledge of the human being. That is why so many people today demand that we should at last deepen our conception in this respect, that man should penetrate to something of self-knowledge, that is, to knowledge of his essential nature. How many writings and lectures and instructions and political speeches there are today that already speak of this necessary knowledge of the human being! But first of all, the basis for such a possible knowledge of man must be established! It cannot be gained from any starting point. And what is necessary in order to get beyond the misery of proof is to learn to see impartially, to see things really simply as they are in the outer life. For a healthy perception and for a healthy view, it is especially necessary that we learn to see things as they are; for that is what we have most unlearned. We prove how things should be; but we do not look at them in reality, as they are, because looking is indeed more inconvenient than proving that things are so or so. One can only arrive at certain assertions, for example in the social sphere today, if one proves. But if one secures an unbiased view of reality, one cannot arrive at such assertions. So what matters most is a real looking at, a real seeing of things as they are.

If you read Goethe's scientific writings, as well as his writings on art, you will see how he tried to point out with all his might how to see with an unbiased eye even in his time. He saw how all the sciences work from concepts that have to be proven. He found this to be something that must be overcome above all else, and he wanted, above all, to achieve that people really get to know the phenomena, the appearances, the facts in their original meaning, to get to know them as they are. It has been of so little use that the ground on which Goethe particularly tried to let the facts speak, the ground of the theory of colors, is still today a ground on which Goethe's right to speak about the matter is completely disputed. But in particular, it is necessary for the knowledge of the human being to come to a real seeing of the facts of life, of subjective life. For example, people today talk a lot about what is external to the human being and what is internal. I believe that if you ask many people today: You see a red color, you hear a certain sound, you perceive this or that in the outside world - is that inside or outside? - that the person in question will tell you: What the senses perceive is the external! - Then he points to his inner being: that is in contrast to the external. Now ask the person if he is clear about what kind of contrast there is between the external and the internal. He will tell you with a fair degree of certainty: Yes, I am quite clear about that; I know exactly: what the senses perceive is the outside, and what is inside, what belongs to the person himself, that is the inside. But if you go further in your questioning and say to him: Look, you say about the outside: the grass is green, the sky is blue, the sun rises, and so on, you say what you observe and list it in detail, fine. But also describe to me in just as much detail what you have inside, what you call your inside! — Try to get any clear answer at all from most people today, an answer in which you are dealing with concrete facts by which a person describes his inner being to you. He is under the illusion that he knows this inner being quite well in contrast to the outer being; but if you penetrate a little into him and say: Describe your inner being to me as you describe your outer being! you will see that this knowledge of the inner self is not very profound. And when a person does manage to describe this inner self, it turns out to be nothing more than a reflection of the outer self, what has developed from the outer self, stored in the memory, at best, faded in the mind's eye. But what a person describes is not much different from the outer self. As a rule, he cannot tell you anything more about his inner life than that the grass is green and the sky is blue; at most he will tell you that he feels this way when he sees the blue sky, that he feels that way when he sees the green grass, and so on. But a real contrast and a relationship between the external and the internal will not be easily described to you by a modern person.

But this has a great consequence. The consequence is that people today do not even come to grasp the contrast between the external and the internal in relation to the human being in any correct way. For you see, natural science, from its present point of view, endeavors to examine the organs that are supposed to be the carriers of the inner processes. And if one regards from the present point of view what is proved there, but is by no means really seen, one will say: Well, the table is outside, inside is the soul life. And here one points to one's own inner life and thinks, for example in natural science, that the inside of the skull is the inside of the human being. One transfers the unclear images gained by seeing to the human body and says: “In there, somewhere behind the eye, is the inside.” If perhaps some people, when they want to grasp more precise concepts, begin to question the things that are given to them as concepts, unconsciously man still thinks: there, at the tip of my finger, that is outside, and in there, behind the eye, that is inside. But the fact that we say this, and in particular that we draw this conclusion for the bodily organs, arises only from an inaccurate seeing. Because in fact, everything that you are entitled to call your inner self is what you experience in the outside world, in the so-called outside world. You are constantly together with the outside world, and what you seemingly experience inwardly, you experience with the whole wide outside world.

In one of the 'Eight Meditations' — you can read about it there — I pointed out how, by observing the outside world, a person actually grows together with this outside world, and that it is quite unjustified to distinguish between the external and the internal with regard to what we experience in the outside world. That which is in our surroundings for our consciousness, we could only describe as our inner being if we really expressed what we see. But that is precisely our inner being. This is, however, an unpleasant thing for some mystics, because they attach great importance to deepening inwardly. But this inward deepening is usually nothing more than calling certain physical ideas of the outer world inward and even renaming them as divine inward and the like. These are favorite ideas that one borrows from the outer world. That which one can see without prejudice and which one usually describes as the exterior, that is what one should actually call the interior. In a sense, a person is inside his own face in his inner being. After all, we are really much more at home, let's say, in the moment when you are all sitting here in this hall than in your so-called inner being, especially if you call what is inside the skull behind the eye this inner being. Because however you may think about this inner life, except for the few concepts that you have absorbed from anatomy or physiology, which are really quite scanty, you know terribly little about what is behind your eye or your brain skull. And if you ask yourself: What is more inward to me, what is around me in this hall or what is behind my brain skull? you will say to yourself: What is in this hall around me is undoubtedly more inward to me than what is behind my brain skull. — In any case, at this moment your inner life is much more affected by what appears to be the outside world in this hall than by what is going on inside your brain skull. What goes on in your brain is very external to you, it is something that is not really within you at all. And if you describe objectively what you see, you must say: the external is actually the internal, and the internal is very much an external for the human consciousness.

Now you may say: these are concepts spun out of a spider's web. — First of all, it is not the case that they are concepts spun out of a spider's web, but rather they are concepts that stem from the observation of what is really perceived in contrast to what is theoretically proven, proved. It is what is really perceived, really seen. It is what is immediately present in consciousness and what one would regard as correct if one were to observe only what is really present in consciousness and if one did not construct the matter through preconceived notions. That is what needs to be said for the time being. But there is an important consequence to this. As long as you entertain the belief that what is out there is an external thing and what is in there is an internal thing, you cannot come to what I always call: understanding spiritual-scientific facts through common sense; because spiritual-scientific facts can only be understood if you take an unbiased look at them. But then one can see them, can see them long before one ascends in any way to clairvoyant views. But with the complicated concepts of today's everyday life, it is of course very difficult to see what the truth is.

The fact that we see the outside world - what we usually call the outside world - as we see it, and that it also contains our correctly seen and defined inside, comes from our senses and has to do with the way our senses are arranged. Through the senses we live in the immediate present. And we experience through our senses what is happening around us in the present. Our senses essentially make us co-experiencers of the present. But while we are absorbed in the outside world, our perceptions give rise to our ideas, which we then carry forward in our memory. We remember afterwards what we have experienced as co-experiencers of the present. We carry that with us. And these are essentially our concepts. People's concepts are mostly recollections of what they have taken from the so-called external world. But these ideas, these concepts and ideas are mediated, not created, but mediated, by what is otherwise called the inner self, what we have now got to know as the outer self. Through that – what you actually don't know – what lies behind your eye, through that, ideas and concepts are mediated. That is certainly the case. These ideas and concepts are conveyed through it. But what actually goes on in this human head?

If you observe what is actually going on in this human head, then you cannot say: insofar as man thinks, insofar as man imagines, he is just as much a witness to the events of the present as he is when he perceives with his senses. — That is not the case as a thinker, but rather, in our head, through our thinking, there is an effect of what we did as an activity before birth or before conception. That is to say, what goes on in there (see drawing), by imagining, is not an activity that you engage in by being a present human being, but you engage in this activity by the activity that you carried out in the supersensible world between death and new birth or conception continuing to resonate.

You are only a present-day human being because you perceive through your senses; by opening your senses to the external world, you perceive the present and live as a present-day human being with the external present. But the moment you begin to think, what plays into your brain is not what you are presently as a human being, but the echo of what you were in the spiritual world, in the supersensible world before birth or before conception. If you want to visualize it pictorially, you can imagine it quite well by thinking: I strike a note; this note continues to sound even after I have long since stopped striking it. Now imagine that you have some kind of activity in the spiritual world all the time between your last death and this birth, which I am describing schematically (see drawing, red). This activity has an after-effect; and this after-effect is the activity you perform when you think as a present human being. You are not performing an activity of the present human being by thinking now, but the activity that you performed in the supersensible world between your last death and your present birth still resonates.

You are only a present-day human being as a sensual human being. As a thinking human being, you carry out an activity that is the reverberation of what you did before your birth in the supersensible world. It is simply not true that, by thinking, we are “engaged in an activity that originates in the present.” If you examine the present scientifically, what is inside your brain, you will of course only find material things, because what works inside your brain outside of the material is something that came into being before birth and only resonates. The living proof for those who can see correctly is the fact that man not only comes out of the supersensible world, but that what he has practiced in the supersensible world still lives on in him while he lives here.

If you imagine that you have experienced a strong pain here in this physical world, which lingers in you, that is the echo of the pain that no longer causes itself in facts. So in the present your thinking is the echo, the reverberation of what you experienced in a much more intense way before you were conceived here for the sensual world.

Thus, only by perceiving with the senses are we men of the present. If we were only people of the present, we would never think, because we are not granted thinking by being born here into the physical world, but we are granted thinking by being able to resonate the activity that we exercised in the spiritual world before birth or conception, and by applying this activity to what is spreading around us sensually here.

One will never understand this fact if one starts from the ordinary concepts of 'exterior' and 'interior', and one will least of all understand the true facts, which express themselves in the human being, if one starts from that stupid mysticism that dominates so many minds today and that speaks: 'There is something to be sought within, something human and supersensible'. What should be sought is the prenatal: you should not point to your inner self by pointing beyond the outer sensory world, you should point to the time you lived through before your conception and before your birth; you should go out of this present human being into the pre-present human being, then you will enter into the real supersensible. That is what it is all about. Because one does not want to work one's way to this sound concept, one speaks in words that actually have no content, of all kinds of divine inner things or the like. The inner being that one seeks in the present human being should be sought in what was there before we were conceived for this life.

And if we act, when the will enters into our actions? Let us take the simplest action: we walk around the room; that is an action, isn't it? First we see ourselves walking around. There is no consciousness in man of how volition is connected with our walking, just as there is no consciousness in man in ordinary life of what he experiences in sleep. The human being does experience himself asleep. Outwardly, he sees as he sees the color blue or a tree or the stars, and also that which this individual of the flesh does, as he walks around. He observes himself. How he wills, he knows nothing about. He only knows that there goes one who is himself. And because he is compelled to think himself in the one who goes about, he says, “I go about.” But how this wanting hangs together with this going about – there can be no question of man's knowing anything about it in ordinary consciousness.

Now, this is again very closely related to what is usually called the “outward” and what is actually an “inner” process. When you walk around, i.e. move your legs, you see how you move your legs (see drawing on page 158). You see the guy walking around and you can see what he wants. You see this external process. But here you can actually see much more that it is actually a human inner process, because you put your will into this walking around, even if you cannot see how it is connected. This walking around is actually a part of him. You can see this more easily here than with the sense world, so that you can more easily call what is there an inner being than with the content of the sense world. With what goes from wanting to acting, you can more easily see that it is an inner being.

Of course, this does not suit the present-day mystics either, who explain external action as an external thing and say that one must penetrate to the divine human being within, who is the truly true human being and so on. But just as we have an inner side in sensory perception and an outer side in the so-called interior of the human head (see drawing above), so we have, in relation to this interior (drawing below), what the human being with limbs is.

And now we come to this strange idea, which of course does not agree with what can be proven today, but which, strangely enough, is correct if you look at it impartially. I do believe, however, that the present mood of human souls is such – excuse me, I must also mention these things – that many of the present philistine natures, and there are quite a few of them, believe that that region of the cosmos that spreads out below their diaphragm has a great deal to do with their inner selves. That is what people call something that has something to do with their inner selves. Now, in truth, this is the outermost part of the human being for human consciousness. We can say that if we call this (drawing above) an exterior, we can call that which lies below the diaphragm the outermost part of the human being (drawing below). What lies below the diaphragm, what is the human abdomen, is the very, very outermost part of the human being. Every tree, every stone that we see with our eyes is closer to us inwardly than what our abdomen is. That is the very outermost. Our true inner being is the sense perceptions, that which we perceive as our actions. The contents of the head are already external, and what lies below the human chest is the very outermost. That is the real observation of what can be seen. And it can be seen.

You see, that has a very specific meaning. Just think, since we have been practicing anthroposophy, we have always said: When a person is awake, his I and his astral body are in the physical and etheric bodies. That is correct. But when a person is asleep, from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up, his I and his astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies. But I have often pointed out what this exteriority mainly consists of. This exteriority consists in that what is otherwise of the I and of the astral body in the head, submerges into what is below the diaphragm. You can even, I might say, have empirical proof of this: You dream of the most beautiful snakes because you have just woken up from your stay in your own abdomen, where you perceived the intestines. You dream this memory of perceiving the intestines as the most beautiful snake dream. — So, when we speak of human conditions, the exterior and interior only really make sense when we know what is really exterior and interior in man.

But only if one can acquire such seen ideas, not those that can be “proven”, but such seen ideas, then one again gets the possibility to understand the spiritual-scientific achievements through common sense. Because what we want arises in a certain way from the most external.

Now think about what healthy ideas have to take the place of quite unhealthy ones. Man believes that when he wills something, it arises from his inner being. It arises from his very outermost part, it arises from that in which he is already completely out of touch during the day, and in which he is at most in touch with when he is asleep. When we want something, we are not at all within ourselves. We are in the cosmos. We are performing something that is a cosmic event, that is not at all merely our subjective event.

I have endeavored, I would say, throughout my entire literary life, to teach the present such concepts that are healthy concepts from this point of view. You can start with my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings,” in which I tried to replace the unhealthy concepts of the present with healthy ones from Goethe's worldview. In these writings, I have pointed out that one can only properly observe certain things that take place within a person if one does not say: That is going on in there, and the person does it - but if one regards this so-called human interior as the arena for human actions that are carried out in this arena from the cosmos, if one regards the so-called human interior as the arena for the cosmic. My entire development of epistemological concepts in my booklet “Truth and Science” ultimately fades away, on the last and penultimate page, into this: that man is a theater for what the cosmos actually does in him, and that he does it in connection with the cosmos, from the outside in, not from the inside out. The last two pages of my booklet 'Truth and Science' are the most important part. And because these two pages are the most important and significant, because they most intensively address what needs to change in the way we present the present, I was only able to design this booklet, which was also my doctoral dissertation at the time, after the doctoral dissertation was over. In the form in which it was submitted as a dissertation, these last two pages were missing; because one could not expect science to draw the conclusions from these things, which have a certain significance for the transformation of the entire world view. What was prepared epistemologically was relatively harmless in the dissertation; because that is an objective philosophical development. But what it amounted to could only be added in the later print. Only then, when one looks at things in such a way that one really practices this precise seeing, that one no longer succumbs to the illusions caused by preconceived notions, only then is one in a healthy way able to gain corresponding insights through the will. For what we see outside when the “guy” or the “gal” walks around, when we observe ourselves doing the simplest of actions, when we move our legs forward, that is only the inner side of our will. The outermost side, the one that has a meaning for the cosmos, is apparently hidden within us. But hidden in our outermost being is a spiritual element that underlies the inner being, which is not readily accessible to people. And what happens in there, the spiritual - of course not what happens physically, but what goes parallel to this physical as a spiritual - that is not a present moment. What is present is what you observe externally in the guy or gal. What is going on internally is something different, something that is only just beginning to happen in the germ, in the embryo. While you are walking around or performing some other action with your limbs, something is happening in your external being that only takes on real significance after your death. This is just as much a foreshadowing of the processes from death to the next birth as what is in your thinking is an echo of what you were in the spiritual world from your last death to this birth or conception. That which resonates in your outermost being, what people call your innermost being, is the embryo of the processes you will engage in between your next death and your next birth. Only he sees the human will that now, in turn, does not look at the present human being, but sees in what lives in the human being, seemingly in the human being, but in the uttermost part of the human being, the correlate, the belonging, to the action, and in the action sees the what emerges through the gate of death, becomes activity between death and a new birth and is formed in such a way that it can come in again and now continues to vibrate here in the external.

When one examines human volition and wants to seek mystically deep in the present human being the source of this volition, the divine source of this volition, then usually the word mystics find that they should not do that in the gut, because that is not noble enough for the word mystics; for them it is not about truth, but about special, unctuous phrases. But if one goes to the truth, then it is a matter of the fact that, with regard to the sensual-physical fact, now, let us say, the most unsavory thing is a correlate that goes through the gate of death into the later world; there we must seek the future man. And so we obtain the evidence from the thinking of prenatal man and from the volition of the man after death, as I have often stated here and as I have even mentioned in public lectures here and there. But these are truths that must be brought to our consciousness without fail today. It is imperative that we realize today that human thinking is something that cannot be produced at all by the human being who lives in the present with his flesh and blood and bones and nerves, but that it from prenatal life, and that the will is not something that can be brought forth by the present human being in his totality, but that the will has a side that remains beyond death. If we really get to know that which in the present human being cannot be brought forth by the bodily-carnal human being, then the eternal human being is present in the human being who stands before us. But these truths are not attained by speculating about the eternal, but by really being able to enter positively into what thinking on the one hand and willing on the other hand is. In this way one attains such knowledge.

It is really necessary: if one wants to pursue higher knowledge in the sense of today's spiritual science, then one must, above all, consider the word mysticism, which is practiced in many ways today, to be the most harmful.

That is why certain things that have to be written down today from the point of view of an honest spiritual science should be accepted. And they are indeed widely accepted. But when it comes to what it is actually about, to the intervention of the concrete facts of human life, then people no longer go along with it, because then they prefer to listen to the chatter of mystifying people who want to conjure up an inner world out of words. But the present is too serious in their lives to be able to indulge in such a pleasure. For most people, mysticism today is just a pleasure. What is to be done today is something that shapes the soul of the human being in such a way that he can really only grasp what lives in social life with these appropriated concepts. Is a person to arrive at social concepts if he cannot see, if he learns from the scientific way of thinking, to approach reality with nothing but prejudices and preconceptions? The pure observation of reality, as we need it today, can only be gained by freeing ourselves from the thicket of ideas to which we have surrendered through spiritual-scientific ideas, and which finds its ultimate, extreme consequence in some mystical aberrations of our time. The mystic aberrations of our time are not the sign of an initial improvement for the better; often they are the last sign of decline, the very utmost of mere empty words instead of real insights.

Real insights provide something like: Thinking is an echo of prenatal life; volition is a prelude to post-mortal life. These are concrete insights. When we speak of such concrete things, we speak quite differently from those who say: the eternal lives in the temporal man, the divine I lives there; when one experiences oneself in that, one has grasped the divine, that is the true I; the other is the untrue I, and so on. You can waste the whole day with playful terms. It can create a great sense of well-being internally, but you won't get any real insights with it.

You have recently seen a eurythmy performance of Fercher von Steinwand's “Choir of Archetypal Dreams” (Choir of Primordial Dreams). Fercher von Steinwand's next poem, which follows on from the “Choir of Archetypal Dreams”, is now being prepared for a eurythmic performance: the “Chor der Urtriebe” (Choir of Primordial Instincts). It is perhaps desirable for you to familiarize yourselves with the ideas of the poem first, because during the eurythmic performance, your attention will be very much taken up by the simultaneous absorption of the eurythmic and the poem. To make it possible for you to familiarize yourself with the text before the eurythmy performance, Dr. Steiner will recite the first and second paragraphs of the Chorus of Primordial Drives before the lecture today and then continue with it tomorrow.

In these reflections, I have tried to tie in a few episodes from the significant developmental events of the present, which should then offer the opportunity to provide further perspectives from our spiritual scientific point of view. Today, I would also like to present one or two more episodes to you with reference to our current events, so that within these three lectures today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, we may be able to arrive at some perspectives that must be important to everyone in the present. I would like to start today with a general observation. Among the many terrible and catastrophic events that have befallen humanity in recent years, two things in particular should be mentioned. One is that a kind of strengthening of humanity in relation to the feeling for actual truth should arise from the observation of what has been experienced. And the second should be: a certain ability to learn from world events, from the world as such, should arise from the tragedy that has taken place and will continue to take place.

These are the two things that should be gained from the observation of the past four and a half years. I said that humanity should develop a feeling for actual truth, for the truth within the world of facts. We have seen, if we wanted to see, if we were concerned to see, that over the years – by which I do not mean that it was not the case to some extent before, only it was not so noticeable – that over more than four years humanity throughout the civilized world has gradually become dulled to the observation of actual reality, of the truth that lives in events. How often is it necessary, within the circle of those who have joined together in our movement, to speak of the significance, the actual significance of truth! On the other hand, how difficult it is to awaken any understanding for the genuine image of truth, in so far as truth is not merely an abstraction but a reality. And how great are the temptations to withdraw from the vision of real truth. Mankind will also want to be informed about the last four years and about what preceded them, because at least out of the chaos something like the urge to get to know the events will develop. Today – I wanted to point this out in particular in the last reflections I made here – today few people really have a need to know the truth about the last few years. But that is not what I mean so much as devotion to reality. People love to live in illusions. Between illusions and untruths there is only a very narrow gulf, and it is very easy to cross over from illusions into the realm of downright falsehood. Whether this lie is conscious or unconscious is of little consequence when it comes to realities. The temptations are simply very great to introduce into one's world of ideas at the point where one should practice devotion to the truth, to switch on the illusion and then very soon just the untruth.

It should now be clear to the spiritual scientist that only a life lived in truth can educate, develop, build up and promote growth, whereas everything that is a life of untruth destroys and isolates. A life of untruth is always connected with selfishness. That which is so obstructive to the penetration of the truth prevailing in the facts is the spinning of one's own subjective comfort, namely, of the life of imagination, but also of the life of feeling. One does not want to rise above the illusions that everything, everything is so that one is relieved of thinking, of natural thinking.

The individual is placed in this mood, which very easily becomes the general mood, and if he has to make use of a certain form in a time that is not very favorable to the truth, he is then understood with great difficulty. Those who have been forced to have one or the other examined by the actual circumstances in the last four years, and who have been forced to take brutal realities into account, have naturally been poorly understood. But how difficult it is to develop this leaning towards the truth in the facts can be seen from the fact that it would have been truly quite uncomfortable for many people to adjust their thinking to something like what was, for example, put forward by me in that Vienna Cycle of lectures, to which I have recently referred here again; who spoke of what has been going on within humanity for decades, as of a carcinoma disease, a cancer disease that takes place in the social life of human beings. And I said at the time: Truly, only the obligation to say something like that can cause one to utter it. But at the same time I said: One would like to shout out to the world what lies within. But it is uncomfortable to hear, and it was uncomfortable for people to hear, before this catastrophe befell them, that it would happen. Of course, it was inconvenient for a large number of people to be made aware, let us say, two years ago, that events could take no other course than the one they have now taken. That this course of events is a very inconvenient one for the so-called Central Powers is already obvious today. That it will be quite unpleasant for the Entente, that will become apparent over the course of a few years, but it is not so obvious today; therefore it is still an inconvenient truth today. Of course, pretty much anywhere in the world today, something unpleasant could happen to the person who would say more clearly than has already been said here what it is all about, just as something unpleasant would have happened to someone in other areas if they had put the worship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff in the right light two years ago.

These are things that only play a role on a large scale. But there are things that occur in human life every day, they show themselves from person to person everywhere. And after all, what takes place on a large scale, what are known as the great events, are nothing more than the accumulation of what takes place on a small scale from person to person every day, in everyday life. For one thing, there is a certain tendency for people not to want to look at the truth. Of course, people talk a lot about truth. But I have never seen greater love for illusion than in those people who use the word truth all the time, just as I have never seen greater egoism than in those people who constantly say that they really only want this or that impersonal thing.

That is one thing: the necessity to develop a sense of truth, insofar as truth lies in facts. The other thing is to learn from world events. One's heart can bleed when one sees the necessity to learn precisely from the events of recent years, and when one sees how relatively little has been learned by people. When one considers things, it often seems as if centuries lie between the year 1914 and the present year, and one can still meet people today who judge exactly the same way today as they judged these or those things in 1914. Of course, a certain basic foundation of things remains untouched, but I am sure you will understand when I say that one must have learned to judge certain things differently. —- One can well understand that the same things are meant that have just come to light through such events as the last four years.

What many people could learn already is the necessity of leaning towards a spiritual view of the world. From all that is happening, especially in the field of social life, from the social complications that have finally emerged from this world catastrophe, and from the social chaos that will develop from this world catastrophe, the necessity for humanity to turn to spiritual, to spiritual world contemplation will arise above all. This is already making itself felt today in that those people who, for some time, will be at the top in this whirling dance that has now begun are the very ones who are most fiercely opposed to all spiritual life, to all spiritual contemplation of the world. But it is precisely in this terrible rejection that the real seed for the evocation of the longing for spiritual world contemplation lies. It will not be possible to achieve a social structure full of light in the future without turning one's gaze to what today's order, today's chaos, has produced. But insight into what has happened – and the present chaos is only the result of what has happened in the course of human development – can only be gained through spiritual science as a source of spiritual light.

In order to gain some control over the great proletarian questions that arise – I am not even talking about being able to solve them – one must ask oneself: What is the significance of the classes to which the proletariat, for example, looks back when it perceives itself as a class: the class of the old nobility, the bourgeoisie, and finally the class of the proletariat itself? — Definitions do not get to the bottom of things. Nor does observing how the aristocratic class behaved over the centuries, what became of it, how the bourgeoisie behaved, how the proletariat came into being. Nor does this alone lead to an understanding of what has flowed into the human social order by drawing its tributaries from other classes, especially from these three classes.

The nobility in its most diverse forms - yes, ultimately one understands what is connected with the nobility as a class only if one is able to shed light on it in a spiritual-scientific way. Only in this way is it possible to say: those people who have developed in the caste of the nobility are, of course, not only those human individuals who descend from certain ancestors according to the continuity of blood and have thereby secured certain privileges in the world on the basis of certain events, which are more or less known to you, but the members of this caste are also souls, at least for the most part souls, who have sought to embody themselves in precisely those bodies that were born into the caste. In the future, we will have to acquire the ability to look at the human being not only as a physical-bodily creature, but also in connection with the spiritual world behind him, in which he has the source of his soul. We will gradually have to develop the feeling that we do not know the human being if we do not grasp his connection with the spiritual world behind him.

One can now really make a spiritual effort to answer the question: Where does it actually come from, what has entered into humanity through the nobility? — Indeed, in the present time one has quite a few opportunities to deal with such questions in a spiritual way; at least one had the opportunity to do so. That will all come to an end now. The world has railed much against so-called Prussian-German militarism; now Prussian Germany itself rails against Prussian-German militarism. The railing may be justified from this or that point of view; the reasons that have been advanced by one side or the other, for and against, have mostly been very ugly and certainly very few true reasons, and still are not. And for the seeker of truth, it depends much more on the reasons than on the abstract vote or non-vote. But much more important than this pro and contra is the fact that eighty percent, actually more than eighty percent, of the commanding positions in the Prussian-German army are occupied by nobles, by good old nobles, leading positions, in the highest leading positions, eighty percent, over eighty percent; so that, without allowing sympathies and antipathies to prevail, one can answer the question of where, for example, what has come into humanity through the nobility comes from. Whether this is an opportunity for humanity to speak in favor or against, I will not go into that, as I said above, but what has happened can be reduced to the question: How does it actually relate to the whole process of evolution, to the whole development of humanity? — For one can, for example, raise the question precisely with regard to this militarism, what has happened through it in the course of the last decades and the last four and a half years, since it is led in its majority precisely by aristocrats. The question that I raised above can be answered: How do the impulses of the nobility relate to the overall development of humanity? And everywhere you look, even spiritually, even if you try to explore the connection between the human soul and the spiritual worlds, everywhere you look, you find that what humanity has experienced anywhere and anytime through its nobility is the effect of an old human karma, the effect of impulses that were once brought into human development by this or that. In order that certain things may befall people because of earlier collective human complications, nobility in this or that field was essentially there for that purpose, now seen spiritually; the effect of old debts, one might say. One must go back into the past everywhere if one wants to understand the impulses that work socially in nobility in terms of their significance for humanity.

Once one has begun a deeper consideration of things at the point where I have indicated it to you, then one is driven to also touch the other pole. And the other pole is the proletariat. Here the situation is reversed. All the difficulties for humanity that are caused by the proletariat, all the complications that are brought into humanity by the proletariat, all this points to the future, gives future karma, and will have to be dealt with by humanity in the future.

The former, that the nobility is, so to speak, the executive power with regard to old guilt, this realization can lead to a feeling of responsibility for what must happen today through the proletariat. After all, what happens through the proletariat is, to a large extent, caused by the bourgeoisie through the detour of the spiritual life. In order to understand the latter thoroughly, one must try to consider the bourgeoisie's middle position between the nobility and the proletariat.

You see, the nobility is usually averse to an actual scientific treatment of world events. They are not averse to knowing something about world events, but they do not want to come to an understanding of world events through scientific research and scientific thought. He would much rather enter the secrets of the world by authority, without the effort of thinking – I say all this without sympathy or antipathy, just to characterize – not through knowledge. There is no doubt that the comfortable way in which people try to enter the secrets of the world through spiritualism, for example, finds numerous followers in aristocratic circles. Well, you may say: of course not only the nobility are spiritualists. — That is really true, but in the other classes there are as many people opposed to the spiritualists who at least have a certain aspiration to enter the spiritual world by applying their own thinking, to do science. Within the nobility, people who are scientifically striving are not on the side of those who want to enter the spiritual world in a spiritualistic or mystical way – well, there are different ways, not all of which need to be characterized. On the other hand, whatever a nobility class somehow claims in the world must always be supported in some military way. A nobility class is inconceivable without military support. These are some examples – there are, of course, many other characteristic peculiarities of the nobility class – but these are the ones that are of radical importance.

As for the bourgeoisie, which stands between the nobility and the proletariat, it can be said that with the bourgeoisie there arises a certain striving to make knowledge scientific, to bring scientific form to the ideas that want to enter the spiritual world. The power of the bourgeoisie is based on the possession of the means of production, the tools and the like. I select individual things to say in order to establish certain prospects for tomorrow or the day after, but you will see that what I select has a certain significance.

What is particularly characteristic is what one class always takes over from the next one up. Thus, for example, the bourgeoisie takes over militarism from the nobility. But the interesting thing is that the bourgeoisie everywhere tends to democratize militarism. The nobleman needs an army at his disposal to keep him. How he achieves this is of no concern to him. The bourgeois, by the very nature of his relationship to his means of living and existence, is also dependent on the support of an army, but he must take this army from the same people that he puts to his means of production. Therefore, he becomes a fan of universal conscription. And, isn't it true, in the time when the bourgeoisie gradually emerged and developed, you were obviously a fool if you couldn't enthuse about universal conscription, because that was simply the greatest advance of the time, universal conscription, the so-called democratization of militarism and so on.

What the proletariat in turn took from the previous class is the science of the bourgeoisie, bourgeois science. The proletarian today – at least insofar as he is scientifically educated, and there are very many of them – he knows how to appreciate certain subconscious or unconscious things in man. He knows well how a certain thinking and a certain form of thinking comes from a person's class or caste. For example, the proletarian knows very well that if you are a member of the nobility, you think differently because you belong to the caste of the nobility than if you are a bourgeois or if you are a proletarian. The entire formation of thought is different, the instincts that flow into the thought forms and form these thought forms are different. Bourgeois science, it takes the standpoint that truth is truth, there can only be one truth, and believes in the absoluteness of its judgments. The proletarian does not do that, because he knows the dependence of what a person thinks on his caste, on his class.

Now, of course, there is also a certain basic foundation of truths that do not depend on caste, for me, certain elementary mathematical concepts and the like. Of course, even purely mathematical-mechanical astronomy is not dependent on caste. But everything that relates to social and historical life, and especially the formation and use of individual scientific ideas, depends on the caste. Proletarian science has seen through this. Proletarian science looks into many of the subconscious thoughts of people. But it takes over, this proletarian science takes over bourgeois thinking, takes over, so to speak, lock, stock, and barrel, what bourgeois education, bourgeois intelligence has conquered, and popularizes it. Exactly as the bourgeoisie has democratized the militarism of the nobility, so the proletariat popularizes bourgeois science, or rather, the bourgeois scientific method, in a completely blind faith.

From this you can already see that the proletariat, with regard to its entire thinking, is the heir to what the bourgeoisie has done with regard to human thought, with regard to human scientific achievements. This will prove to be an extremely important fact in the near future, and it would be extremely necessary to be able to learn to pay attention to such things. Otherwise, people will want to live in comfortable illusions, which are only separated from the lie by a narrow gap, about the most important things that are creeping up.

There is nothing, for example, that is more detrimental to the truth, in the sense in which I spoke of the truth earlier, than nationalism. But nationalism is precisely part of the program that will be seen as a particularly beneficial program in the near future. It belongs to the program of the near future. Therefore, when this nationalism wants to build – for in reality it can only destroy – it will have to be experienced that the illusions, which are separated from the lie by a narrow chasm, will continue to exist. For as much nationalism as arises in the world, so much untruth will there be in the world, especially towards the future. And so there will be many sources of new untruths. Untruth has ruled the world in many respects. But it will not be able to rule once humanity has taken in those impulses, those currents, which today emerge chaotically in the proletarian masses and which, as you have seen - I presented this to you recently from spiritual scientific documents - correspond to one of the three great currents in the development of humanity.

Actual events are essentially connected with these things. But people have been reluctant, especially in recent decades, to look into the world in such a way as to really see what is real. One could only look into the world without looking at the spirit if one did not want to miss what is real. You see, everything that has happened in recent years goes back, basically, to spiritually transparent power dynamics in the civilized world. There was actually nothing more dreadful in the course of these sad events than talking from this or that so-called national or other point of view. Most of the time, people were talking about things that had nothing at all to do with the course of events. The strange thing was that the leading statesmen also spoke in such a way that their speeches had little to do with the course of events. One should not treat so lightly the things that are touched upon here, that is to say, what might be called the fate of human beings, insofar as these human beings are crowded together in groups, in groups of nations, for example. For here one touches on circumstances that are fundamentally and deeply connected with the spiritual, and one should not speak of them as superficially as one often does.

Above all, it should not be overlooked that certain terms mean quite different things in different parts of the world. Just think that people everywhere, let us say, speak of the state. But it is not important to have a certain concept of the state, but rather to associate at least something with this concept of the different emotional nuances that are attached to this state here or there, and above all to get away from the unfortunate amalgamation of state and nation and the people, that unfortunate confusion which is a fundamental characteristic of Wilsonianism, which always confuses the state and the nation and the people, and even wants to found states on nations, thereby perpetuating the lie, at least in certain circles, at least if it were possible.

We must look at the specific, real issues everywhere. In the course of these reflections, I have shown you how a certain configuration of Central Europe is connected with those old suggestions, based on group instincts, that emanated from Roman Catholicism, from Rome. You see, what was the old imperial idea of Central Europe, which died in 1806, was closely connected with this specter of the old Roman Empire, as spiritual science says. Until then, there was more or less, really more or less nominally, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which only disappeared in 1806. It did not actually disappear, but was only abolished. For this Holy Roman Empire, which more or less favorably or unfavorably held together or divided the various German tribes over long periods of time, this imperial impulse of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation has actually gradually been transferred to the Habsburg power, and that is what has been blessed with the Austro-Hungarian state structure. But a state that existed in the shadow of Habsburg power means something different from a state that, let us say, has developed since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, as it has actually formed as a state more in connection with the people in England or France. Where the state has no real substance, in what was the Habsburg Empire, where different peoples were held together under the aspect of the Habsburg power and this Habsburg power had them like a mantle, like an old treasure, there was something deeply medieval, namely the emperorship from the old Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. What the Habsburgs were was the oldest Middle Ages, and unfortunately also thoroughly connected with the oldest Middle Ages in terms of Romanism, in terms of that Catholicism that had been revived or at least made lifelike by the Counter-Reformation and which has produced all those conditions of which I have already spoken to you here, which has contributed so much to the lulling to sleep, to the dimming, but also to other evil effects within the Central European world.

This Habsburg empire of the oldest medieval type was confronted by a most modern one, which had gradually become completely modern, something of the most modern character: the Prussian-Hohenzollerian empire, that Prussian-Hohenzollerian empire which represented Americanism within the German being, Wilsonianism before Wilson. That is the great, enormous difference: this most modern character of Prussian-Hohenzollern Americanism, masked as an empire, and the medieval Habsburg empire, which was forged together from the outside. It is necessary to study these things if one wants to understand what has happened and what will happen.

What emerged as Hohenzollern-Prussian Americanism had a very specific peculiarity: it developed exactly the same impulses that developed, for example, in the British Empire, but it developed all these impulses in the opposite way. You see, there are three currents, handed down from ancient times, arising in the present: the aristocratic, the bourgeois, and the proletarian. Nowhere else, I might say, have these three currents, the aristocratic, the bourgeois, and the proletarian, developed in such a pure form, side by side, yet separate, as in the British Empire and also within the so-called Germany – which is not an official name, there is no Germany under constitutional law, there never has been under constitutional law – that is, in the so-called German Reich. So in both areas, but in the exact opposite sense, these three currents developed. In the British Empire, it all developed in such a way that the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat came together, always striving towards a common tendency. There is good old nobility, but it knew how to balance with the demands of the bourgeoisie, namely with the demands of the material and financial bourgeoisie. You are not only a nobleman, you also become a wealthy nobleman, a rich person in the modern sense. You can have your income from industry and be a good, old, respected nobleman. But you manage everything so that the proletarian in his undertakings does not deviate too much from what the others want. It always comes together in some way.

Within the new German state structure, everything diverged. There were also three currents, but they developed in such a way that they diverged in the following sense: you had industry forming large-scale industry, which had its own current; you had the old nobility in the Prussian landed gentry – the two may have pushed together, but it was also afterwards! the proletariat, which increasingly became the opponent of the bourgeoisie and set itself the task of taking up the class struggle against the bourgeoisie in the most eminent sense. All this developed apart. Anyone who has studied historical events in this respect will find this particularly interesting. And all this within a framework that was bound to burst. For what had been constructed as so-called Germany – as I said, which never existed under constitutional law – bore the stamp of Bismarck, the stamp of a man for whom modern big industry never became a reality, who never knew it, who never reckoned with it, who constructed the framework he constructed to exclude the development of big industry. Now the whole Americanism of big industry developed into it and burst the framework. It was already blown up in itself long before this war catastrophe occurred.

To study these conditions with an unbiased eye, with scientific objectivity, in peace, humanity in the mad whirl in which it had fallen in all possible fields, truly had no peace. Because one is not very inclined to go into realities. One must actually seek to achieve realities. One must have a sense for realities, perhaps not only a sense, but also an instinct for realities; for the trend of the times is to deny realities, not to engage with realities at all. You see, the people who looked at where the Inn flows, the Moldau flows, the Danube flows, the Leitha flows, they did not distinguish much between two fundamentally different things: between the German-Austrian people and the Habsburg Empire. That merged. And again, when people visited Austria, where the German-Austrian people lived, who are now heading towards such a tragic fate – how did they get to know what lives within the actual people? As a traveler to Austria, you got to know – as a writer once stated – the “Aryan” attitude, which was very closely connected with sloppiness. When you arrived at a train station, well, you were instructed to go there because you had a connection. You went there, and if you were supposed to arrive at the right time, you certainly did not arrive at the right time. Not true, you were never sure if you relied on the trains that you would arrive at the right time, but you were, as the person said, safe everywhere you went, that you would get a good cup of coffee. But that is just a superficiality. What was there in this area of Central Europe and from which a certain brutality was to stop, was precisely the possibility of developing strong spiritual individuals from a certain background of nationality.

You see, little was printed by Fercher von Steinwand in the 1880s. I lived in Vienna with some friends, younger writers. Once, the conversation turned to Fercher von Steinwand, and I knew some of his poems. It was around the time when I was editing the “Deutsche Wochenschrift” in Vienna. Hamerling had pointed out Fercher von Steinwand with great understanding and sincere goodwill. Then some friends said to me: Yes, we can find Fercher, Of course, I was quickly willing to find Fercher von Steinwand. You could only find him by going to a secluded restaurant on Singerstraße in Vienna. That is a street that goes from the opera house towards Stephansplatz. Yes, you see, among all kinds of brothers, who you could already call “brothers,” there was Fercher's fine, spiritualized face in the middle. This German from the Carinthian region, entirely descended in terms of the way he forms his thoughts, this German-Austrian area, and yet precisely that connection to the world of ideas, as it is a spiritual connection and as he actually only lives in this way in this way. Fercher von Steinwand also had great political ideas, but he was not suited to somehow put these political ideas into practice according to the practices that took place in such fields. He was not at all. There are such people everywhere, even if they are not as talented as Fercher von Steinwand, who, precisely in this area, are connected to the spiritual world, who have carried within themselves for a long time a certain feeling for impulses that live there. But it was uncomfortable to listen to such people.

I must say that I was often with Fercher von Steinwand. He always seemed to me to be like one of those gypsies who wander around the world, but the aristocrat among gypsies, like their leader, with great ideas in his head, and who spoke of great ideas as if he had been among them himself. One evening, as we were sitting together, I said to him, just as I had just edited the “Deutsche Wochenschrift”: “Tell me, Mr. Fercher, couldn't you give us something that has not yet been printed?” Surely you still have all sorts of poetry that has not yet been printed; I would be happy to publish it in the weekly magazine.” — ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have all sorts of funny things lying around that I still have.’ And so he gave me this ‘Choir of Primal Instincts,’ which he had had in his desk for a long time and which I published at the time.

This Fercher von Steinwand is one of those individuals who have truly emerged from the folklore of Central Europe. I would like to give you a little insight into the way Fercher von Steinwand was connected to his folklore.

On April 4, 1859, Fercher von Steinwand gave a lecture at the Dresden Antiquarian Society, in the presence of the then Crown Prince Georg (this book still says: present King of Saxony), all ministers and many officers of the highest rank – I ask you to note the latter in particular – in front of all these people, Fercher von Steinwand, so please: in 1859, on April 4, gave a lecture, and on the Gypsies at that. This lecture on the Gypsies contains an extraordinary amount, not so much because of the subtle observations Fercher von Steinwand makes about the Gypsies, but because of the great psychological insights into the psychology of nations that he presents in connection with the Gypsy question. He believes that the gypsies are Indo-Europeans. And now his gaze wanders – as I said, he gave this speech, from which I will now read a piece to you, before Crown Prince Georg of Saxony, before all the ministers and before high military dignitaries – to the Germans, and he said in the course of this speech:

“We Germans, who for a long time did not believe that such a dark genius was possible on earth, had to pay for our bright trust in the world and world order one after the other on inglorious battlefields. We Germans have the unfortunate virtue of respecting a foreign people to the point of foolishly disregarding ourselves, even if they have little or nothing praiseworthy about them, as a striking peculiarity.”

Now I will skip what he says next.

"But our virtue suddenly turns to vice as soon as a great event comes crashing before our doorstep, without stirring up our suffering and troublesome nature and overcoming our ingrained unnatural fear of the divine hint of history, which has often led us to the guillotine of doom. The gods are more hostile to no one than to the Philistine, and nowhere under the sun are there small-time merchants who would not be bullied by a big-time merchant. Like every future, our German future may be a mystery to us. But this one is not as impenetrable as we usually think. We are already coming up with real solutions to this German puzzle, solutions that we can prophetically call prophetic with reference to our homeland.

All this in a speech about the Gypsies. He ties his observations to being a Gypsy, Fercher von Steinwand.

"Let us look a little over the Atlantic Ocean! Let us turn our gaze to São Jorge dos Ilheus or let us travel in our thoughts up the Rio Contas, where we encounter German settlements. “With quiet contempt – so Emperor Max, who is a man of feeling and creative spirit, so something far better than the Emperor of Mexico – ”with quiet contempt, the new shoots look at the old mainland. The gaunt children with the pale, sallow faces, the forget-me-not blue eyes and the straw-yellow, spiky hair particularly caught my eye and vividly reminded me of the descendants of our German villages. I approached two older boys and spoke to them in German; they looked up at me shyly and could not answer me, only uttering their own German names with difficulty. They were children of German immigrants, of whom there are many in Ilheus. Not without a feeling of indignation, I found that even they were complete Brazilians, unable to speak their mother tongue even with their own parents. And then the Germans wonder why they have no independent position anywhere, that they, instead of dominating, are a kind of halfway house between slaves and free people. What a disgrace for German parents to communicate with their children in foreign languages! How the family relationship must suffer when the weak mother must struggle with her own blood in foreign expressions! – This fact, which can be found everywhere, may be a major reason for the gloomy melancholy that weighs heavily and worryingly on the faces and natures of all German colonists. During my trip, I did not see a single cheerful German emigrant; they all bore a secret pain. Sometimes the children benefit from the broken existence of their parents, but their lack of character almost always leads them to abandon the foreign and closed nationalities. This is the pain that weighs on the minds of these strangers. — Two pale men with haggard features were walking along the path; a few German words proved their transatlantic origin. They answered in the language of their homeland, but the sound was no longer full and pure, the dull tone had something tired and sad about it; their figures were also without energy and elasticity, as if they were people who missed their calling, did not feel at home, for whom the French expression dépaysé applies in the fullest sense. Most German emigrants present such a picture of melancholy; the secret worm gnaws at all of them.”

Is that not the air of the gipsies wafting over from the banks of the Rio Contas? And that dreadful Melusine, what whispers she in our ears? A word from our German future, an icy greeting from her for a speedy reunion. Yes, this future is already approaching eerily on our horizon.

This was spoken in 1859!

"Yes, this future is already approaching eerily on our horizon, looking over the banks and mountains into the depths of our lands, gaunt enough, like the genius of death with the pallor of death on its face. We have no right to expect otherwise.

What we say has no marrow; what we do has no core; what we create artistically has neither the sound nor the nobility of the great outdoors. It seems as if we have set ourselves the task of teasing art with barren idiosyncrasy, with sober folksiness, with forced naturalism. What we think or contribute to history has enough room in the hollow cone of a sleepyhead."

Thus spoke that which really spoke out of this folklore. And that is present, that still lives today. It can only be brutalized. That has also been sufficiently brutalized in the course of recent years. It will also have to be conceded at some point what national self-awareness is in select individuals; perhaps it did not live best under the aegis of people like Clemenceau, but perhaps under a different aegis.

From time to time, one must also look at things apart from the phrases that dominate the world, and in world-historical moments this is perhaps also necessary. When Fercher von Steinwand speaks of his people in reference to gypsy characterizations, there is perhaps something melancholically pessimistic about it when it comes out exactly as it did in this speech, but that is not how it is meant, it is truly not meant that way. Something of these “gypsies” must go into world mission. This is rejected today, this is denied today. This denial is closely connected with Wilsonianism, but the facts will teach the world otherwise. And so that from some side there is already protest against what will certainly be connected with much worldly infallibility and much worldly belief in authority in the near future, so that there may be protest against this – perhaps the world will say: Gypsy -Protest is taking place here — I have expressed my wish and my thoughts that this building, as a protest against what will happen in the coming years to all of civilized humanity, so-called civilized humanity, should be called the Goetheanum. This is not just to connect with Goethe in some superficial, easy way, but it is out of the impulse of our time.

We will continue this discussion tomorrow.

Anyone who knows the nature of the experiences that the human soul undergoes when it has opened the entrance gates to the spiritual world needs only to read a few pages of the “Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz Anno 1459” to recognize that the book's account refers to real spiritual experiences. Subjectively invented images reveal themselves as such to those who have insight into spiritual reality, because they cannot fully correspond to this reality either in their own form or in the way they are strung together. — This seems to provide the starting point from which the “Chymical Wedding” can be viewed. We can follow the experiences described from the soul's point of view, as it were, and explore what insight into spiritual realities has to say about them. Unconcerned about everything that has been written about this book, the point of view characterized by it is to be taken up here first. We will take from the book itself what it wants to say. Only then can we talk about questions that many observers ask before a sufficient basis for this is created.

The experiences of the wanderer in The Chemical Wedding are divided into seven mental days. The first day begins with the bearer of the experiences encountering imaginations before his soul that allow his decision to begin the journey to mature. The description is written in such a way that it reveals the particular care of the narrator in distinguishing between what the bearer of the experiences understands at the time he has a “vision” and what is still hidden from his insight. Likewise, a distinction is made between what comes to the seer from the spiritual world without his will being involved, and what is brought about by this will. The first experience is not one that is deliberately brought about and is not one that the seer fully understands. It brings him the opportunity to enter the spiritual world. However, he is not unprepared. Seven years ago, he was informed through a 'bodily face' that he would be called to participate in the 'Chymical Wedding'. The expression 'bodily face' cannot be misunderstood by anyone who grasps the entire spirit of the book. It is not a vision of the morbid or down-tuned soul life, but a perception that can be attained through spiritual vision, the content of which stands before the soul with the same character of reality as a perception of the bodily eye. That the bearer of the experiences could have such a “vision” presupposes a state of soul that is not that of ordinary human consciousness. The latter knows only the changing states of waking and sleeping and, between the two, the dream, the experiences of which are not related to anything real. The soul, which experiences itself through this ordinary consciousness, knows itself to be united with a reality through the senses; but when its connection with the senses ceases during sleep, it is not in a knowing relationship with any reality, not even with its own self and its inner experiences. And during the dream, she cannot see clearly what relationship she has to reality. At the time of the 'bodily vision' that he still remembers, the Wanderer in 'The Chemical Wedding' already had a consciousness that was different from the usual one. He has experienced that the soul can perceive even when it is in the same relationship to the senses as it is during sleep. The concept of the soul living separately from the body and knowing a reality in this life has become more valid for him. He knows that the soul can so strengthen its own being that in its separation from the body it can be united with a spiritual world as it is with nature through the bodily sense organs. That such a union can take place, that it lies before him, he has learned through the “bodily vision”. The experience itself of this union could not be given to him through this vision. He has waited for this. It presents itself in his conceptions as the participation in the “Chymical Wedding”. Thus he is prepared for a renewed experience in the spiritual world.

At a time of heightened spiritual mood, on the eve of Easter, this renewed experience occurs. The bearer of the experiences feels as if he is being buffeted by a storm. Thus it announces itself to him that he is experiencing a reality whose perception is not mediated through the physical body. He is lifted out of the state of equilibrium with respect to the forces of the world, into which the human being is placed by his physical body. His soul does not live the life of this physical body; it feels only connected with the (etheric) body of formative forces that permeates the physical one. This body of formative forces is not, however, part of the equilibrium of the cosmic forces, but of the mobility of the supersensible world, which is closest to the physical and which the human being perceives first when he has opened the gates of spiritual vision. Only in the physical world do the forces solidify into fixed forms that express themselves in states of equilibrium; in the spiritual world, perpetual mobility reigns. The person undergoing this mobility becomes aware of the raging storm as a result of this mobility. The revelation of a spiritual being emerges from the vagueness of this perception. This revelation takes place through a clearly shaped imagination. The spirit appears in a blue dress studded with stars. One must keep away from the description of this being everything that amateurish esotericists like to add to the “explanation” in the way of symbolic interpretations. One is dealing with a non-sensuous experience, which the person experiencing it expresses for himself and for others through an image. The blue dress studded with stars is no more a symbol of the blue night sky or anything similar than the idea of the rosebush is a symbol of the evening glow in ordinary consciousness. In supersensible perception there is a much more active, conscious activity of the soul than in the case of the senses. — In the case of the wanderer at the 'Chymical Wedding', this activity is exercised through the formative forces body, as in the case of physical seeing through the bodily senses by means of the eyes. This activity of the formative forces body can be compared to the arousal of radiating light. Such light falls on the spiritual being that is revealing itself. It is reflected back by it. Thus the beholder sees his own radiated light, and behind its boundary he becomes aware of the limiting being. The 'blue' comes about through this relationship of the spiritual being to the spiritual light of the body of formative forces; the stars are not reflected, but are absorbed by the being as parts of the spiritual light. The spiritual being has objective reality; the image through which it reveals itself is a modification, brought about by the being, in the radiance of the body of formative forces. This imagination must not be confused with a vision either. The subjective experience of the bearer of such an imagination is completely different from that of the visionary. The visionary lives in his vision through an inner compulsion; the bearer of the imagination adds it to the designated spiritual being or process with the same inner conscious freedom with which a word or a sentence is used as an expression for a sensual object. Someone who has no knowledge of the nature of the spiritual world may think that it is completely unnecessary to clothe this spiritual world, which reveals itself in imageless experiences, in imaginations that evoke the appearance of the visionary. In reply to this, it is true that imagination is not the essence that is perceived spiritually, but it is the means by which this essence must reveal itself in the soul. Just as one cannot perceive a sensual color without the definite activity of the eye, so too can one not experience something spiritual without encountering it from within with a definite imagination. This does not prevent the use of pure concepts, as they are common in natural science or philosophy, when presenting spiritual experiences that are made through imagination. The present remarks are based on such concepts in order to trace the content of the 'Chymical Wedding'. But in the seventeenth century, when J. V. Andreae wrote the book, it was not yet customary to make use of such concepts to such an extent; one directly presented the imaginations through which one had experienced the supersensible beings and processes.

In the spiritual form that reveals itself to him, the wanderer at the “Chemical Wedding” recognizes the being that can give him the right impulse for his journey. Through his encounter with this figure, he consciously feels that he is standing in the spiritual world. The way in which he stands in this world points to the particular direction of his path of knowledge. He does not walk in the direction of the mystic in the narrower sense, but in that of the alchemist. In order not to misunderstand the following exposition, one should keep away from the concept of “alchemy” everything that has been attached to it through superstition, fraud, adventurism and the like. Think of what the honest, unprejudiced seekers after truth who coined this term were striving for. They wanted to recognize the lawful connections between the things of nature that are not conditioned by the activity of nature itself, but by a spiritual essence that reveals itself through nature. They sought supersensible forces that are active in the sensual world but do not allow themselves to be recognized in a sensual way. The wanderer of the 'Chymical Wedding' sets out on the path of such researchers. In this sense, he is a representative of alchemical research. As such, he is convinced that the supersensible forces of nature hide themselves from ordinary consciousness. He has brought about experiences within himself which, through their effect, enable the soul to use the body of formative forces as an organ of perception. Through this organ of perception, he gains insight into the supersensible forces of nature. He first wants to recognize the extra-human, supersensible forces of nature in a spiritual form of existence, which is experienced outside the realm of sensory perception and ordinary mental activity. Equipped with the knowledge of these forces, he then wants to see through the true essence of the human body itself. He believes that through knowledge gained by the soul in conjunction with the body of formative forces, which is activated independently of the physical organism, one can see through the human body and thereby come close to the secret that the universe works through this being. For ordinary sensory perception, this secret is veiled; the human being lives in it; but he does not see through what he experiences. Starting from supersensible knowledge of nature, the wanderer in The Chymical Wedding finally aimed to arrive at beholding the supersensible essence of the human being. It is by this path of research that the alchemist, in contrast to the mystic in the narrower sense, strives. He too seeks to experience the human being differently from what is possible through ordinary consciousness. But he does not choose the path that leads to the use of the formative forces independent of the physical body. He starts from the vague feeling that a more intimate interpenetration of the physical body with the formative forces than is possible in ordinary waking life leads away from communion with the world of sense-perceptible beings and leads to communion with the spiritual world of human beings. The alchemist strives to withdraw himself with his conscious being from the ordinary context of the body and to enter into the world that lies behind the realm of sensory perception as the “spiritual nature” of the world. The mystic attempts to lead the conscious soul deeper into the context of the physical, in order to consciously immerse himself in that area of physicality that is hidden from self-awareness when it is filled with the perceptions of the senses. The mystic does not always seek to give a full account of this endeavor. He will only too often seek to characterize his path in a different way. But the mystic is in most cases a poor explainer of his own nature. This is connected with the fact that certain feelings become attached to the spiritual quest. Because the mystic's soul wants to overcome the kind of togetherness with the body that is experienced in ordinary consciousness, a kind of self-rapture takes hold of it, not only a certain contempt for this togetherness, but for the body itself. Therefore, she does not want to admit to herself that her mystical experience is based on an even more intimate connection with the body than that which produces ordinary consciousness. — Through this more intimate connection, the mystic perceives a change in his thinking, feeling and willing. He surrenders to this perception without developing any inclination to elucidate the reason for the change. This change reveals itself to him, despite having descended deeper into the physical, as a spiritualization of his inner life. And he has every right to see it as such. Sensuality is nothing other than the form of existence that the soul experiences when it is in the same connection with the body as that on which ordinary waking consciousness is based. When the soul unites more intimately with the body than is the case in this form of existence, then it experiences a relationship of the human being to the world that is more spiritual than that established through the senses. The perceptions that arise then are condensed into imaginations. These imaginations are revelations of the forces with which the formative body works on the physical body. They remain hidden from ordinary consciousness. The feeling is strengthened to such an extent that the etheric-spiritual forces, which radiate from the cosmos into the human being, are experienced as if through an inner touch. In the will, the soul knows itself to be dedicated to a spiritual work that integrates the human being into a supersensible world context, from which he separates himself through the subjective will of ordinary consciousness. True mysticism arises only when the human being carries his fully conscious soul being into the more intimate connection with the body that is characterized and is not driven by the constraints of the bodily organization to morbidly visionary or downcast consciousness. Genuine mysticism strives to experience the spiritual essence of man, which is too close to the human heart and which is covered by sense perception for ordinary consciousness. Genuine alchemy makes itself independent of sense perception in order to see the spiritual essence of the world that exists outside of man, which is covered by sense perception. Before entering into the inner life of man, the mystic must bring his soul into such a state that it does not expose its consciousness to fading or extinction in the face of the increased counter-pressure that it experiences through its closer union with the body. Before entering the spiritual world that lies beyond the sense realm, the alchemist needs to strengthen his soul so that it does not lose itself in the beings and processes of this world. The paths of research of the mystic and the alchemist lead in opposite directions. The mystic goes directly into the human being's own spiritual nature. His goal is what may be called the mystical marriage, the union of the conscious soul with one's own spiritual being. The alchemist wants to pass through the spiritual realm of nature in order to see the spiritual being of man with the powers of knowledge acquired in this realm after the successful journey. His goal is the “Chymical Wedding”, the union with the spiritual realm of nature. Only after this union does he want to experience the contemplation of the human being.

Both the mystic and the alchemist experience a mystery at the very beginning of their paths, which cannot be penetrated within the ordinary consciousness. It relates to the relationship between the human body and the human soul. As a spiritual being, the human being truly lives in the spiritual world; but at the present stage of development within the evolution of the world, he has no ability of his own to orient himself in the spiritual realm. Through the powers of his ordinary consciousness, he can only establish his relationship to himself and to the world outside of himself in the sense of truth if the body instructs him in the directions for soul activity. The body is so incorporated into the world that this incorporation corresponds to cosmic harmony. When the soul lives within the perception of the senses and the ordinary activity of the mind, it is given over to the body with just the strength by which the body can transmit its harmony with the universe to it. If the soul is lifted out of this experience according to the mystical or alchemical direction, it becomes necessary to take precautions so that it does not lose the harmony with the universe gained through the body. If he did not take such precautions, then on the mystical path he would be threatened with the loss of spiritual connection with the universe; on the alchemical path, the loss of the ability to distinguish between truth and error. Without this precaution, the mystic would, through the closer connection with the body, so intensify the power of self-consciousness that he would be overwhelmed by it and no longer be able to experience the life of the world in his own life. Thus he would enter with his consciousness into the region of a spiritual world other than that which corresponds to man. (In my spiritual scientific writings I have called this world the Luciferic.) The alchemist would, without the necessary precautions, come to a loss of discernment between truth and deception. In the great context of the universe, deception is a necessity. Man, however, cannot fall prey to it at his present stage of development because the realm of sense perception affords him protection. If deception were not in the background of human experience, man could not develop the various levels of consciousness. For deception is the driving force behind this development of consciousness. At the present stage of human consciousness, deception must indeed work towards the emergence of consciousness; but it must itself remain unconscious. For if it were to enter into consciousness, it would overwhelm the truth. As soon as the soul enters, by the alchemical path, into the spiritual realm that lies beyond sense perception, it enters into the vortices of deception. It can only preserve its nature in the right way within these vortices if it brings with it from its experience in the sense world a sufficiently developed power of distinguishing between truth and deception. If it failed to develop such a power of discrimination, the whirlpools of illusion would sweep it away into a world where it would have to lose itself. (In my spiritual writings I have called this world the Ahrimanic one.) — Before he begins his journey, the mystic needs to bring his soul into such a state that his own life cannot be overpowered; the alchemist must strengthen his sense of truth so that it will not be lost, even if he is not supported by sense perception and the mind that is bound to it.

The bearer of the experiences described in the “Chemical Wedding” is aware that, as an alchemist, he needs a strengthened ability to distinguish between truth and deception on his path. He seeks to gain his support from Christian truth according to the circumstances of life from which he begins his alchemical path. He knows that what connects him to Christ has already brought forth within his life in the sensual world a power in his soul that leads to the truth. This power does not need the basis of the senses and can therefore prove itself even when this basis of the senses is not there. With this attitude, his soul stands before the being in the blue dress, who points him to the path to the “Chemical Wedding”. At first this being could just as well belong to the world of deception and error as to that of truth. The wanderer on his way to the “Chemical Wedding” must distinguish. But his power of discrimination would be lost, error would have to overwhelm him, could he not recall in supersensible experience what binds him in the sense world to truth with an inner power. What has become in this soul through Christ arises out of it. And like its remaining light, the body of formative forces of this Christ-light radiates towards the revealing being. The right imagination is formed. The letter that points him to the path of the “Chemical Wedding” contains the sign of Christ and the words: in hoc signo vinces. The wanderer knows that he is connected to the appearing being through a power that points to the truth. If the power that had led him into the supersensible world had been one tending towards deception, he would have stood before an entity that would have paralyzed his memory for the Christ impulse living in him. He would then have followed only the seductive power that draws man to itself even when the supersensible world leads him forces that are pernicious to his nature and will.

The content of the letter, which is handed over to the wanderer after the “Chemical Wedding” by the being that appears to him, contains, in the language of the fifteenth century, a characterization of his relationship to the spiritual world, insofar as he has become aware of it at the beginning of the first day of his spiritual experiences. The symbol added to the words expresses how the mutual relationship between the physical body, the body of formative forces and the soul-spiritual has developed in him. It is significant for him to be able to say that this condition in his human existence is in harmony with the conditions in the universe. He has found, through “diligent recalculation and calculation” of his “annotated planets”, that this condition may occur in him at the point in time at which it is now taking place. Anyone who regards what is being considered here in the sense of the follies of some “astrologers” will misunderstand it, regardless of whether they are a believer in it or an “enlightened” person who smiles condescendingly at it. The author of The Chemical Wedding had good reason to add the date 1459 to the title of his book. He was aware that the soul-disposition of the one experiencing it must be in harmony with the state in which world-becoming has been attained at a certain point in time, if inner soul-disposition and outer world-content are not to result in disharmony. The outer supersensible world-content must meet the soul, which is independent of ordinary sense perception, in harmony, if the consonance of the two is to give rise to the state of consciousness that constitutes the “Chemical Wedding”. Anyone who believes that the constellation of the “annotated planets” contains a mysterious power that determines the state of experience of the person would be like someone who believed that the position of the hands on his watch had the power to cause him to undertake a journey that he had to take from his life circumstances at a certain hour.

The letter refers to three temples. What is meant by these is not yet understood by the bearer of the experiences at the time when he receives the hint. He who perceives in the spiritual world must know that he will occasionally receive imaginations, which he must first renounce in understanding. He must accept them as imaginations and allow them to mature in the soul as such. During this maturing, they bring forth in man's inner being the power that can effect understanding. If the observer were to explain them to himself at the moment they reveal themselves to him, he would do so with an unsuitable power of understanding and think inconsistently. In spiritual experience, much depends on having the patience to make observations, to accept them at face value at first, and to wait until the appropriate time to understand them. What the Wanderer experiences on the first day of his spiritual experiences at the “Chemical Wedding” is described by him as having been announced to him “seven years” before. During this time he was not allowed to form an intellectual opinion about his “vision” at the time, but had to wait until the “vision” had had such an effect on his soul that he was able to experience further things with understanding.

The appearance of the spirit being in the blue, star-studded dress and the presentation of the letter are experiences that the wanderer has at the “Chemical Wedding” without his soul's own free decision leading to it. He goes on to bring about experiences through such a free decision. He enters into a sleep-like state; one that brings him dream experiences whose content has a reality value. He can do this because, after the experiences he has had, he enters into a different relationship with the spiritual world than the ordinary one through the state of sleep. In the ordinary experience during the state of sleep, the human soul is not bound to the spiritual world by ties that can give its ideas a reality value. But the soul of the wanderer at the “Chemical Wedding” is transformed. It is so inwardly strengthened that it can take up in the dream experience what is connected with the spiritual world in which it finds itself. And through such an experience she first of all experiences her own newly won relationship to the sense body. She experiences this relationship through the imagination of the tower, in which the dreamer is locked up and from which he is freed. She consciously experiences what is unconsciously experienced in ordinary life when the soul, falling asleep, passes from the realm of sense experience into that of supersensible existence. The restrictions and hardships in the tower are an expression of the sensory experiences towards the soul's inner being when it frees itself from the realm of such experiences. What binds the soul to the body in such a way that the result of this bond is sensory experience, these are the life forces that promote growth. Consciousness could never arise under the sole influence of these forces. That which is merely alive remains unconscious. The forces that destroy life, in conjunction with illusion, lead to the emergence of consciousness. If man did not carry within him that which leads him towards physical death, he could live in the physical body but not develop consciousness in it. For ordinary consciousness, the connection between the death-bringing forces and this consciousness remains hidden. But for someone who, like the bearer of experiences in the “Chemical Wedding”, is to develop an awareness of the spiritual world, this connection must come before the “eye of the spirit”. He must experience that connected with his existence is the “hoary man”, the being who, by nature, carries within him the power of aging. Vision in the spiritual realm can only be granted to that soul which, while dwelling in this realm, beholds the power that in ordinary life lies behind aging. This power is capable of snatching the soul from the realm of sensory experience. The value of the dream experience lies in the fact that through it the wanderer to the “Chemical Wedding” is aware that he can now approach nature and the human world with a state of mind that allows him to see what is hidden in both of them from ordinary consciousness. This has matured him for the experiences of the next few days.

At the beginning of the description of the second day, it is immediately pointed out how nature appears to him in a new way. But he is not only to look into the background of nature; he is to look more deeply into the motives of human will and action than is possible in ordinary consciousness. The interpreter of The Chemical Wedding means to say that this ordinary consciousness only gets to know the outer side of the will and action, and that through this consciousness people are also only aware of their own will and action. The deeper spiritual impulses that pour out of the supersensible world into this volition and action, and that shape human social life, remain unknown to this consciousness. Man can live in the belief that a particular motive leads him to an action; in truth, this motive is only the conscious mask for one that remains unconscious. Insofar as human beings regulate their social life together according to ordinary consciousness, forces intervene in this life together that do not lie in the sense of evolution and are beneficial to humanity. These forces must be counteracted by others that are seen through supersensible consciousness and incorporated into social activity. The Wayfarer of the “Chymical Wedding” is to be led to the knowledge of such forces. To do this, he must see through people to the being that really lives in them, which is quite different from the one present in their belief or corresponds to the place they occupy in the social order determined by ordinary consciousness. The image of nature that reveals itself to ordinary consciousness is very different from that of a social human order. The supersensible natural forces, which spiritual consciousness gets to know, are related to the supersensible forces of this social order of man. The alchemist strives for a knowledge of nature that will become for him the basis of a true knowledge of human nature. It is the Way to such knowledge that the Wanderer to the “Chemical Wedding” must seek. But not one such Way, but several, are shown to him. The first leads into a region where the intellectual conceptions of ordinary consciousness, gained through sense perception, impinge upon the course of supersensible experience, so that insight into reality is killed through the interaction of the two experiential circles. The second holds out the prospect that the soul can lose its patience if it has to submit to long periods of waiting for spiritual revelations, in order to allow what must initially be accepted only as an incomprehensible revelation to mature fully. The third demands men who, through their already unconsciously attained maturity of development, are allowed to see in a short time what others must acquire in a long struggle. The fourth brings man to an encounter with all the forces from the supersensible world that cloud and frighten his consciousness when he wants to snatch himself from sensory experience. Which path is to be taken by the one or other human soul depends on the state into which the experiences of ordinary consciousness have brought it before it begins the spiritual journey. It cannot “choose” in the usual sense, because its choice would arise out of the sense consciousness, which is not entitled to decide in supersensible matters. The impossibility of such a choice is realized by the Wayfarer after the “Chemical Wedding.” But he also knows that his soul is sufficiently strong for behavior in a supersensible world to be led aright when such an inducement comes from the spiritual world itself. The Imagination of his deliverance “from the tower” gives him this knowledge. The imagination of the “black raven”, snatching the food given to the “white dove”, evokes a certain feeling in the soul of the wanderer; and this feeling, produced out of supersensible, imaginative perception, leads to the path whereon the choice of ordinary consciousness would not have dared to lead. On this path, the wanderer arrives where people and human relationships are to be revealed to his gaze in a light that is not accessible to experience in the sense body. He enters through a portal into a dwelling within which people behave in a way that corresponds to the super-sensible forces pouring into their souls. Through the experiences he has within this dwelling, he is to awaken to a new life, which he will be responsible for leading when a sufficiently large area of these experiences is covered by his super-sensible consciousness. Many critics have expressed the opinion that the “Chymical Wedding of Christiani Rosencreutz” is nothing more than a satirical novel about the doings of certain sectarians or adventurous alchemists or the like. But perhaps a truly correct view of the experiences that the author of the book has his wanderer undergo “before the gate” will show that the satirical mood that the work displays in its later parts can be traced back to soul experiences, the seriousness of which takes on a form that appears to be mere satire, which only wants to remain in the realm of sense experience. It would be well not to lose sight of this in considering the further experiences of the wanderer after the “Chemical Wedding”.

The second mental day's work brings the spiritual seeker, whose experiences Johann Valentin Andreae describes, to experiences through which it is decided whether he can attain the ability of true spiritual vision, or whether a world of spiritual error shall embrace his soul. For his perception, these experiences take the form of imaginations of entering a castle, in which the world of spiritual experience is administered. Not only the genuine, but also the fake spiritual seeker can have such imaginations. The soul reaches them when it follows certain lines of thought and modes of perception, through which it is able to imagine surroundings that are not conveyed to it through sensual impressions. From the way Andreae describes the society of unreal spiritual seekers, within which the “Brother of the Red Rose Cross” still finds himself on the “second day”, one recognizes that he is well aware of the secret of the difference between the real and the unreal spiritual seeker. Whoever has the opportunity to correctly judge such inner testimonies of the spiritual insight of the author of The Chemical Wedding will be in no doubt as to the true character of this writing and of Andreaes's intention. It is obviously written to provide enlightenment for people who are seriously striving for an understanding of the relationship between the world of the senses and the spiritual world, and of the forces that can arise for the human soul from the knowledge of the spiritual world for social and moral life. Andreae's unsentimental, humorous and satirical style of presentation does not speak against, but for, the deeply serious intention. Not only can one feel the seriousness within the seemingly light-hearted scenes, but one also has the feeling that Andreae is describing like someone who does not want to cloud the mind of his reader with sentimentality about the secrets of the spiritual world, but who wants to create in the reader a spiritually free, self-aware and rational attitude towards this world.

If someone, through the exercise of thought and feeling, has brought himself to imagine a supersensible world, such ability is by no means a guarantee that these imaginations will lead him to a real relationship with the spiritual world. In the field of imaginative experience, the Brother of the Rose Cross sees himself surrounded by numerous souls who, although they live in ideas about the spiritual world, cannot come into real contact with this world because of their inner condition. The possibility of this real contact depends on how the spiritual seeker attunes his soul to the world of the senses before approaching the threshold of the spiritual world. This attunement produces a state of mind in the soul that is carried across the threshold and reveals itself within the spiritual world in such a way that it either accepts or rejects the seeker. The right frame of mind can only be attained if the seeker is willing to discard everything at the threshold that determines his relationship to the world within the reality of the senses. In order to dwell in the spiritual world, those impulses of the mind through which man feels the character and validity – the weight – of his personality from his external circumstances and fate must become ineffective. If this necessity, by which man feels transported into a kind of psychic childhood, is difficult to fulfill, then the other necessity, to suppress the kind of judgment by which one orients oneself within the sense world, is even more contrary to ordinary feeling. One must come to the realization that this way of judging is gained in the sense world, that it can only have validity within it, and that one must be prepared to learn the way one has to judge in the spiritual world from the spiritual world itself. When the Brother of the Rose Cross enters the castle, he develops a mood of soul that arises from a sense of these necessities. He does not allow himself to be led into a chamber to spend the first night in the castle, but remains in the hall to which he has come through his participation in the events of the second day. In this way he protects himself from carrying his soul into a region of the spiritual world with which the forces at work within him are not yet able to unite worthily. The soul mood that prevents him from penetrating further into the spiritual realm than the second day has brought him is effective in his soul throughout the night and equips him with the capacity for perception and will that he needs the following day. Those intruders who have come with him without the ability of such a state of mind must be expelled from the spiritual world the following day, because they cannot develop the fruit of this mood. Without this fruit it is impossible for them to connect the soul with the world through real inner powers, of which they are, so to speak, only externally embraced.

The events at the gates, the encounter with the lion, the reading of the inscriptions on the two pillars at the entrance, and other happenings of the second day are so vividly described by the Rose Cross Brother that one can see his soul weaving in the described mood. He experiences all this in such a way that that part of it remains unknown to him which speaks to the ordinary mind bound to the sense world, and that he only absorbs that which enters into a spiritual pictorial relationship with the deeper powers of the mind. The encounter with the “cruel lion” at the second gate is a step in the self-knowledge of the spiritual seeker. The Brother of the Rose Cross experiences it in such a way that it acts as an imagination on his deeper powers of mind, but that it remains unknown to him what it means for his position within the spiritual world. This unknown judgment is passed by the “guardian” who is with the lion, who calms the lion and, according to the content of a letter that is also unknown to the person entering, speaks the words to the person entering: “Now welcome to me, God, the man I have long wished to see.” The spiritual vision of the “cruel lion” is the result of the spiritual state of the Brother of the Rosicrucians. This soul condition is reflected in the formative part of the spiritual world and gives the imagination of the lion. In this reflection, an image of the observer's own self is given. In the field of spiritual reality, the observer is a different being than in the realm of sensory existence. The forces at work in the realm of the sensory world shape him into a sensory human image. In the spiritual realm, he is not yet human; he is a being that allows itself to be expressed imaginatively through the animal form. Within this existence, the drives, affects, feelings and impulses of the will that live in the human being's sensory existence are held in chains by the life of perception and imagination bound to the sense body, which are themselves a result of the sense world. If man wishes to step out of the sense world, he must become conscious of what in him is no longer fettered by the gifts of the sense world and must be brought onto the right path by new gifts from the spiritual world. Man must see himself before the sensuous incarnation. This insight comes to the Rose Cross Brother through the encounter with the lion, the image of his own being before the incarnation. It should be noted here, just to avoid any misunderstanding, that the form of existence in which the underlying essence of man beholds itself in a spiritual way before becoming man has nothing to do with animality, with which popular Darwinism thinks the human species is linked by descent. For the animal form of the spiritual vision is one that, by its very nature, can only belong to the world of formative forces. Within the sense world, it can only exist as a subconscious element of human nature. The fact that the part of his being that is held in bondage by the sense body is still in the process of becoming human is expressed in the frame of mind in which the Brother of the Rose Cross finds himself upon entering the castle. He faces what he has to expect with an open mind, and does not cloud it with judgments that still come from the mind bound to the world of sense. Such clouding he must later notice in those who have not come with a rightful soul mood. They too have passed by and seen the “cruel lion”, for this depends only on their having received the corresponding currents of thought and modes of perception into their souls. But the effect of this spiritual vision could not be strong enough in their case to persuade them to abandon the way of judging to which they were accustomed in the sense world. Their way of judging appears to the spiritual eye of the Brother of the Rose Cross within the spiritual world as vain boasting. They want to see Plato's ideas, count Democritus' atoms, pretend to see the invisible, while in truth they see nothing. These things show that they cannot connect the inner soul powers with the world that has embraced them. They lack consciousness of the true demands which the spiritual world makes upon man when he would see it. The Brother of the Rose Cross can in the following days connect his soul-forces with the spiritual world because on the second day he admits to himself in accordance with the truth that he cannot see and do what the other intruders claim before themselves or others to see and do. The feeling of his powerlessness later becomes the power of spiritual experience for him. He must allow himself to be bound at the end of the second day because he is to feel the bonds of mental powerlessness in the face of the spiritual world until this powerlessness as such has been exposed to the light of consciousness for as long as it takes to transform itself into power.

Andreae wants to show how the seven “sciences and liberal arts”, into which knowledge gained within the sensory world was divided in the Middle Ages, are to serve as preparation for spiritual knowledge. The seven liberal arts were usually considered to be: grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. From the description in the “Chymische Hochzeit” one recognizes that Andreae thinks both the brother of the Rose Cross and his rightful companions as well as the unlawful intruders as being equipped with the knowledge that can be gained from these liberal arts. However, the newcomers possess this knowledge to a varying extent. The rightful ones, especially the Brother of the Rose Cross, whose experiences are described, have acquired this knowledge in such a way that through its possession they have developed the strength in their souls to receive from the spiritual world the unknown, which must still remain hidden for these “free arts”. Their soul is so prepared by these arts that it not only knows what can be known through them, but this knowledge gives it the weight by which it can gain experience in the spiritual world. The weight of these arts has not become the weight of the souls of the unlawful arrivals. They do not have in their souls the true world content of these “seven free arts”. On the third day the Brother of the Rose Cross participates in the weighing of souls. This is described by means of the imagination of a scale by which the souls are weighed in order to find out whether they have acquired, in addition to their own human weight, a weight equal to seven others. These seven weights are the imaginative representatives of the “seven liberal arts”.

The Brother of the Rose Cross has in his soul not only the substance that can match the seven weights, but also a surplus. This benefits another personality, which is not considered sufficient for itself, but which is protected from expulsion from the spiritual world by the true spiritual seeker. By describing this process, Andreae shows how familiar he is with the secrets of the spiritual world. Of all the powers of the soul that develop in the world of sense, love is the only one that can remain unchanged during the transition of the soul into the spiritual world. Helping weaker people according to the strength one possesses, that can happen within the world of sense, and it can also be done in the same way with the possessions that a person receives in the spiritual realm.

From the way in which Andreae describes the expulsion of the unlawful intruders from the spiritual world, it is evident that he wants to use his writing to make his contemporaries aware of how far far removed from the spiritual world and thus from true reality a person can be who, although he has familiarized himself with all kinds of descriptions of the path to this world, is still unaware of a real inner transformation of the soul. An unbiased reading of the “Chymical Wedding” reveals as one of the aims of its author to tell his contemporaries how pernicious for the true development of humanity are those who intervene in life with impulses that relate to the spiritual world in an unlawful way. Andreae expects right social, moral and other human community goals from a rightful recognition of the spiritual foundations of existence, especially for his time. Therefore, in his description, he sheds a clear light on everything that is harmful to human progress because it draws such goals from an unlawful relationship to the spiritual world.

On the third day after witnessing the expulsion of the illegitimate newcomers, the brother of the Rose Cross senses that the possibility is beginning for him to use the ability to reason in a way that is suitable for the spiritual world. The possession of this ability presents itself to the soul as the imagination of the unicorn, which bows down before a lion. The lion then calls forth a dove with his roar, which brings him an olive branch. He swallows it. If one were to treat such a picture as a symbol and not as a real imagination, one could say that it visualizes the process in the soul of the spirit-seeker, through which he feels able to think spiritually. But this abstract idea would not express the soul process that is actually at stake in its full essence. For this process is experienced in such a way that the periphery of personal experience, which for the sense being extends to the boundary of the body, is extended beyond this boundary. In the spiritual realm the seer experiences beings and processes outside his own nature just as man experiences the processes within his own body through the ordinary waking consciousness. When such an expanded consciousness occurs, then mere abstract conception ceases, and imagination presents itself as the necessary form of expression of what is experienced. If one nevertheless wishes to express such an experience in abstract ideas, which is necessary in particular in the present day for communicating spiritual-scientific knowledge on a large scale, then one must first bring the imaginations into the form of ideas in an appropriate manner. Andreae omits this in The Chymical Wedding because he wishes to present, without alteration, the experiences of a spiritual seeker from the middle of the fifteenth century; in those days one did not translate the experienced imaginations into ideas and concepts.

When imaginative knowledge has matured to the point reached by the Brother of the Rose Cross on the third day, then the soul itself with its inner life can enter into the region of reality from which the imaginations have come. Only through this ability does man arrive at a new way of seeing the entities and processes of the sense world from a point of view situated in the spiritual world. He sees to what extent these flow out of their true sources in the supersensible realm. Andreae remarks that the Brother of the Rosycross acquires this ability to a greater extent than his companions. He is able to see the library of the castle and the burials of the kings from the point of view of the spiritual world. That he is able to do this depends on his being able to exercise his own will to a high degree in the imaginative world. His comrades can only see what comes to them through the power of others, without such strong exercise of their own will. The brother of the Rose Cross learns more at the “burials of the kings” than is written in all the books. The vision of these burials is brought into direct connection with that of the glorious “Phoenix”. In these visions the secret of death and birth is revealed. These two borderline processes of life only take place in the material world. In the spiritual realm, birth and death are not followed by creation and decay, but by the transformation of one form of life into another. One can only recognize the essence of birth and death by looking at them from a point of view outside the material world, from a realm in which they themselves do not exist.

The fact that the Brother of the Rose Cross penetrates to the “burials of the kings” and beholds in the image of the Phoenix the arising of a young royal power from the dead body of the old kings is recorded by Andreae because he wants to describe the particular spiritual path of a seeker of knowledge from the middle of the fifteenth century. This is a turning point in time with regard to the spiritual experience of humanity. The forms in which the human soul could approach the spiritual world through the centuries were changing at this point into others. In the sphere of external human life, this change was manifested by the emerging scientific way of thinking of the new time and the other upheavals in the life of the peoples of the earth in this epoch. In the realm of the world in which the spiritual seekers search for the secrets of existence, the passing away of a particular direction of the human soul forces and the appearance of another reveal themselves at such turning points. Despite all the other revolutionary events in the historical development of humanity, the character of spiritual insight had remained essentially the same since the times of Greco-Roman life until the fifteenth century. The spiritual seeker had to carry the instinctive mind rooted in the mind, which was the essential soul power of this age, into the field of spiritual reality and transform it there into the power of spiritual insight. From the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, this soul power was replaced by the mind, which was operating in the light of full self-awareness and liberating itself from instinctive forces. To raise this to the level of intuitive consciousness is the task of the spiritual seeker.

In Christian Rosenkreuz, as the leading brother of the Rosicrucians, Andreae portrays a personality who has entered the spiritual world in the way that came to an end in the fifteenth century. The experiences of the “Chymical Wedding” present this ending and the emergence of a new way to his mind's eye. He must therefore penetrate into secrets which the rulers of the castle, who would like to continue to administer the spiritual life in the old way, want to conceal from him. Andreae wants to characterize for his contemporaries the greatest spiritual researcher of the end of an expired epoch, but who sees through the death of this epoch and the rise of a new one in the spiritual field. He found that they were content with the traditions of the old epoch, that they wanted to open up the spiritual world in the sense of these traditions. He wanted to tell them: your way is a fruitless one; the greatest who has walked it in the end has seen through its fruitlessness. Recognize what he has seen through, and you will acquire a feeling for a new way. Andreae wanted to place Christian Rosenkreutz's spiritual path as the legacy of the spiritual research of the fifteenth century in his time, in order to show that the initiative must be taken for a new kind of spiritual research. In the continuation of efforts, as they began with Johann Valentin Andreae, the spiritual researcher still stands in them, who understands the signs of his time. He encounters the strongest resistance from those spiritual seekers who want to pave the way into the supersensible world by renewing or reviving old spiritual traditions.

Andreae speaks in delicate terms of the insights that must arise from humanity's contemplative consciousness in the epoch that began in the mid-fifteenth century. Christian Rosenkreutz advances to a great globe, through which the dependence of earthly events on extraterrestrial, cosmic impulses penetrates his soul. This marks the first glimpse of a “cosmology” that has its beginning with the Copernican view of the world, but which sees in it only a beginning that can only give what is valid for the sensory world. In the spirit of this beginning, the more recent scientific conception continues to research to this day. In its world picture, it sees the earth surrounded by “heavenly processes”, which it only wants to grasp with intellectual concepts. In the terrestrial area itself, it seeks the forces for the essential processes of the earth event. When it examines the conditions under which the germ for a new being arises in a mother being, it looks only at the forces that can be found in the hereditary current of the earthly ancestors. She is not aware that in the formation of the germ the “heavenly surroundings” of the earth are at work in the earthly process, that in the mother being is only the place where the extraterrestrial cosmos develops the germ. This way of thinking seeks the causes of historical events exclusively in the facts that preceded these events in earthly life. It does not look up to the extraterrestrial impulses that fertilize earthly facts, so that the events of one epoch give rise to those of the next. In this way of thinking, only the inanimate earthly processes are influenced by the extraterrestrial. For Christian Rosenkreutz, the prospect of an organic, spiritual “celestial science” opens up, which can no longer have anything in common with the kind of ancient astrology that rests on the same foundations for the supersensible as Copernicanism does for the sensual.

One can see how Andreae treats imaginative life quite appropriately in the “Chymical Wedding”. Everything that comes to him from Christian Rosenkreutz as revealed knowledge, without the intervention of his own will, is brought to him by forces that find their representation in images of the feminine. The path that the spirit-seeker's own will paves for itself is illustrated by images of guiding boys, by the masculine. Whether man is a woman or a man in the sense of the senses, the masculine and the feminine are at work in him as polar opposites. It is from this point of view that Andreae characterizes. The relationship between the conceptual and the volitional is brought into the right relationship when this relationship is presented in images that recall the relationship of the masculine and the feminine in the sensory world. Again, to avoid misunderstandings, it should be noted that the imagination of the male and female should not be confused with the relationships of man and woman in the sensual world itself; just as little as the imagination of the animal form, which arises in the seeing consciousness, has to do with the animal nature to which popular Darwinism relates humanity. At present, many a person believes that they can penetrate the hidden secrets of existence through sexual physiology. A superficial acquaintance with genuine spiritual science could convince him that this endeavor does not lead to the secrets of existence, but away from them. And in any case, it is nonsense to bring the opinions of such personalities as Andreae into any kind of relationship with ideas that have something to do with sexual physiology.

Andreae clearly points out important things that he wants to include in his “Chymical Wedding” in his characterization of the “virgin”, to whom he brings the spiritual seeker into a particularly close relationship. This “Virgin” is the imaginative representation of a supersensible knowledge that, in contrast to the “seven liberal arts” acquired in the sensible field, must be taken from the spiritual realm. This “Virgin” gives, in a somewhat mysterious way, her name, which is “alchemy”. Andreae is thus saying that true alchemy is a different kind of science from those that arise from ordinary consciousness. In his opinion, the alchemist performs his operations with sensible substances and forces not because he wants to know the effect of these substances and forces in the realm of the senses, but because he wants to let a supersensible reality reveal itself through the sensual process. He wants to look through the sensual process to a supersensible one. What he does is different from the investigation of the ordinary natural scientist in the way he looks at the process.

One of the experiences of the “third day” is the complete overcoming of the belief that the way of judging to which man is accustomed in the sense world can also be a guiding force in the supersensible world in its unaltered form. In the society in which Christian Rosenkreutz dwells, questions are put which lead to a reluctance to decide on an answer. This is to draw attention to the limitations of ordinary judgment. Reality is richer than the possibility of decision, which lies in the mind trained on the sense world. After describing these experiences, Andreae introduces a “duchess”; he thus relates Christian Rosenkreutz to the supersensible kind of knowledge characterized by her, to theology. The effect of this knowledge on the human mind is characterized. It is of particular importance that after all these experiences, the spiritual seeker is still haunted by the dream in the following night, which shows him a door that he wants to open and which resists him for a long time. This image is reflected in his soul by the idea that he should not regard all his previous experiences as valuable for their immediate content, but only as a producer of a force that must submit to further efforts.

The “fourth day” is crucial for the spiritual seeker's position in the supersensible world. The spiritual seeker encounters the lion again. The old inscription that the lion presents to him essentially contains the challenge to approach the source from which inspiration flows from the spiritual world. The soul that wishes to remain in merely imaginative experience could, so to speak, only allow itself to be addressed by the spiritual world and use the strength of its own will to bring the revelations to its understanding. If the full power of the human 'I' is to enter the supersensible world, then this 'I' must carry its own consciousness into this world. The soul must rediscover the 'I' with its sensory experiences in the spiritual world. In the supersensible, so to speak, the memory of the way the sensory world is experienced must arise. Andreae presents this by placing a 'comedy' among the experiences of the 'fourth day', that is, an image of events in the sensory world. In beholding this image of the world of sense, which is gained within the supersensible realm, the “I” of the spiritual seeker is strengthened, so that he feels the close connection between the soul element that experiences in the supersensible and that which is active in the sense world through the body.

From this insight into Andreae's appropriate mode of presentation, it can be concluded that he seriously wanted to talk to his contemporaries about a path to the spiritual world that is appropriate to the epoch of human development that began in the sixteenth century, at the beginning of which the author of the “Chymische Hochzeit” (The Chemical Wedding) feels he is. The fact that the realization of what Andreae presented to his contemporaries as ideal demands initially faced severe obstacles is rooted in the devastating impact of the turmoil of the Thirty Years War and all that it brought to recent times. But progress in the evolution of mankind is only possible if personalities like Johann Valentin Andreae counter the inhibiting forces of a certain world current with truly progressive ones.

Whether Andreae succeeded in describing to Christian Rosenkreutz a spiritual seeker who, from the path he has taken from the spiritual experiences of a bygone era, can effectively point to the new one that corresponds to the new era, can only be asserted if it is possible to show that the last “days” of the “Chymical Wedding” report experiences that open up the perspective into this new period; if Christian Rosenkreutz can carry his “I” over into this period.

The most significant experience for Christian Rosenkreutz on the “fourth day” is his presentation before the kings and their subsequent beheading. The author of The Chemical Wedding interprets the nature of this experience through the symbols that stand on a small altar. In these symbols, the human soul can see its relationship to the universe and its becoming. In such symbols, the spiritual seekers have always sought to make the soul understand how its own essence lives in the essence of the cosmos. The book points to the thought content of the human being, which, in accordance with the human organization, is an influx of objective world-creative thoughts into the soul. In the “Little Light” it is indicated how the world-creative thoughts are effective in the universe as light ether and how they become knowledge-producing and enlightening in man. Cupid's intervention by blowing out the little light refers to the view of the spiritual seeker, who sees two opposing forces in the essentiality that underlies all existence and becoming: light and love. But this view can only be correctly understood if we see in physical light and in the love active within the physical world the materially effective revelations of the primal spiritual forces. Within the spiritual power of light, the creative thought element of the world lives out itself, and within love, the creative will element. A “sphere” is among the symbols to suggest how human experience is part of the all-experience. The clock speaks of the soul's interweaving with the passage of time in the cosmos, just as the sphere speaks of its interweaving with the cosmos's spatial existence. The Brünnlein, from which blood-red water flows, and the skull with the snake, point to the way in which birth and death are conceived by the spirit-recognizer in the universe. Valentin Andreae uses these symbols in his description in a similar way to how they have been used since time immemorial in the meeting places that served such societies, through which the people admitted to them were to be initiated into the secrets of life. By using them in this way, he shows that, in his opinion, they are imaginations that are truly based on the development of the human soul and that can inspire the soul to feel the secrets of life.

The question arises: What does the “King's Hall” represent, where Christian Rosenkreuz is led, and what does he experience through the presence of the kings and their decapitation? The symbols point to the answer. The spiritual seeker should see how he is grounded in the essence of the universe with his own being. He must see what is in him in the world, and what is in the world in himself. He can only do this if he recognizes in the things and processes of the world the images of that which is active and alive in him. He comes to see what is going on in him not only through images drawn from the soul, but he sees the experiences of this soul through images that represent the evolution of the universe. The kings present themselves before Christian Rosenkreutz to show him: thus live the powers of your soul within yourself; and the experiences of the kings reflect what must happen in the soul under certain conditions. Christian Rosenkreutz stands before the events in the “King's Hall” in such a way that his soul beholds itself in them. The beheading of the Magi is an event within the development of his own soul. He has come to the “King's Hall” with the powers of knowledge, which still only have the nature that the entity was able to acquire before entering the spiritual world. However, by becoming familiar with this world, these powers of knowledge gain experiences that also relate to the material world. Not only does the spiritual world shine before the soul, but the material world also reveals itself in forms that cannot be fully grasped by those who stop at the material level of observation. One of the things these experiences reveal is the ambivalence of the human condition. The forces that underlie physical growth also show themselves to be effective in phenomena that are usually described as psychological. The power of memory and the impulses that give rise to imagination prove to be based on physical conditions that are similar to those of growth. Only the forces of growth work in such a way that they are in an ascending development in human childhood and adolescence, that they then decline and, through their decay, cause death in themselves, while the forces that form memory and imagination assume the possibility of decaying within themselves from a very early point in life. In each waking period, these forces undergo the descending development that extends to decay, which the whole organism undergoes from the second half of life until death. In each sleep period, this decay is compensated for, and memory and imagination experience a resurrection. The soul organism is superimposed on the human total organism like a parasite on a host. The soul organism can provide the conditions for memory and imagination because, in the course of the day, it undergoes the path to death that the total organism takes in the course of life on earth. In this way, for the spiritual seeker, the soul organism becomes a metamorphosis of the total organism. The soul organism appears as that part of the whole organism which brings forth the forces that reveal life from birth to death in a more intense way, so that they provide the basis for the life of imagination. Into the daily decay of the soul organism's forces, the creative thought-being of the world pours in and thus becomes a life of imagination in the human being. The essential thing is that the spiritual seeker recognizes the material basis of the soul processes as the transformed general material processes of the whole organism. The paradoxical fact is that on the path to the spirit one first sees the material conditions of soul life. This fact can be the starting point for an attempt. One can stop at the discovery that the soul processes reveal themselves in their material form. Then, in seeking the spirit, one can be driven into a materialistic world view. But if one really sees through what is at hand, then the opposite occurs. One recognizes in the material basis of the soul life the effective spiritual powers that reveal themselves through the material formations, and thus prepares the possibility of also recognizing the underlying spirit in the entire organism and its course of life.

Christian Rosenkreutz is thus confronted with the important experience that an alchemy taking place in the natural process reveals to him. The material processes of the whole organism are transformed before his spiritual eye. They become such that the soul processes shine through them like the light that reveals itself in the external process of combustion. But these soul processes also show him their limits. They are processes that correspond to what leads to death in the whole organism. Christian Rosenkreuz is led before the “kings” of his own soul being, before his powers of knowledge. They appear to him as that which the whole organism metamorphoses out of itself. But the life forces of growth are only transformed into powers of knowledge by absorbing death into themselves. And therefore they can only carry the knowledge of what is dead within them. Death is integrated into all processes of nature in that the inanimate lives in everything. The ordinary process of knowledge is directed only towards this inanimate. This process grasps the inorganic because it is dead; but it only grasps the plant and every living thing to the extent that they are tinged with the inanimate. Every plant contains inorganic processes in addition to what it is as a living being. These grasp the powers of knowledge in the ordinary view; they do not grasp the living. This only becomes visible insofar as it presents itself in the inanimate. Christian Rosenkreutz observes the death of his “soul kings”, his powers of knowledge, as they arise from the metamorphosis of the material forces of the whole organism, without the human being passing from natural alchemy to artificial alchemy. This must consist in man's giving his powers of knowledge a character within the soul that they do not have through mere organic developmental processes. What is essential in the ascending growth, what death has not yet gnawed at, must be awakened in the powers of knowledge. The natural alchemy must be continued.

This continuation of natural alchemy forms the fifth day's work of the “Chymical Wedding”. The spiritual seeker must penetrate with insight into the processes that nature brings about in bringing forth growing life. And he must introduce this natural creation into the powers of knowledge, without allowing death to prevail in the transition from the processes of growth to the processes of the soul. He receives the powers of knowledge from nature as dead entities; he must give them life by giving them what nature has taken from them when she has carried out the alchemical transformation into powers of knowledge with them. When he sets out on such a project, temptation draws near to him. He must descend into the sphere in which Nature works, conjuring up life out of that which, by its very nature, strives towards death, through the power of love. In doing so, he exposes himself to the danger of his vision being seized by the instincts that prevail in the lower realm of matter. He must come to know how an element akin to love lives in matter, which is imprinted with death, and which underlies every renewal of life. This process of the soul, exposed to temptation, is meaningfully described by Andreae in that he lets Cupid drive Christian Rosenkreutz before Venus. And it is clearly indicated how the characterized spiritual seeker is not held back from his further path by temptation, not only through his own soul power, but through the rule of other powers. If Christian Rosenkreutz had only to walk his own path of knowledge, he could also conclude with temptation. That this is not the case points to what Andreae wants to describe. Christian Rosenkreutz is to point the way from a past epoch to a dawning one with his spiritual path. It is the forces at work in the course of time that help him to permeate his “I” with the powers of knowledge that correspond to the new era. In this way he can begin the ascent to the “Tower” by taking part in the alchemical process by which the dead powers of knowledge experience their resurrection. Thus on this ascent he has the strength to hear the siren song of love without falling prey to its temptations. He must allow himself to be influenced by the spiritual elemental force of love; he must not allow himself to be misled by its manifestation in the sensual realm. In the Tower of Olympi, the dead forces of knowledge are brought into line with the impulses that in the human organism only come into play in growth processes. It is pointed out how Christian Rosenkreutz is allowed to participate in this process because his soul development is to take place in the sense of the changing temporal forces. He goes out into the garden while he should be sleeping, looks up at the starry sky and says to himself: “Because I had a good opportunity to reflect more deeply on astronomy, I found that on this particular night such a conjunction of the planets is taking place, the like of which cannot soon be observed elsewhere.”

In the experiences of the sixth day, the imaginations are described in detail, which bring to life in the soul of Christian Rosenkreutz how the dead powers of knowledge, which the organism develops in the ordinary course of its life, are transformed into the powers of supersensible insight. Each of these imaginations corresponds to an experience that the soul undergoes in relation to its own powers when it experiences how that which previously could only penetrate into itself with the dead becomes capable of awakening living knowledge within itself. Another spiritual seeker would describe the individual images in a different way from Andreae. But what matters is not the content of the individual images, but the fact that the transformation of the soul forces takes place in the human being by having the process of such images as a reflection of this transformation in a sequence of imaginations.

In The Chymical Wedding Christian Rosenkreutz is portrayed as the spiritual seeker who senses the approach of the age in which humanity will direct its gaze at natural processes differently than in the one ending with the fifteenth century, in which humanity no longer, when observing nature, , in this observation itself the spiritual content of natural things and natural processes, in which it can come to a denial of the spiritual world if it does not consider a path of knowledge possible by which one can see through the material basis of the soul life and yet still absorb the essence of the spirit into knowledge. To be able to do this, one must be able to spread the spiritual light over this material basis. One must be able to see how nature proceeds by shaping her forces of activity into a soul organism through which the dead is revealed, in order then to divine from the nature of nature itself the secret of how spirit can be juxtaposed to spirit when nature's creative activity is directed towards the awakening of the dead powers of knowledge to a higher life. In this way, knowledge is developed that is placed in reality as spiritual knowledge. For such knowledge is a further sprout on the living being of the world; through it, the evolution of reality continues, which prevails from the very beginning of existence up to the life of man. Only that which is present in nature in a germinal state and is retained in the working of nature itself at the point where, in the metamorphosis of existence, the powers of cognition are to develop for the dead, is developed as higher powers of cognition. That such a continuation of natural activity beyond what it itself achieves in human organization leads out of reality and into the formless is not an objection that will be raised by anyone who understands the development of nature itself. For this consists everywhere in hindering the progress of the growth forces at certain points, in order to bring about the revelations of the infinite possibilities of form at certain stages of existence. In the same way, a formative potential is also held within the human organization. But just as such a potential is held within the green leaf of the plant, and yet the formative forces of plant growth then go beyond this form in order to bring forth the green leaf in the colored petal at a higher level, so too can the human being progress from the form of his powers of knowledge, which are directed towards the dead, to a higher level of these powers. He experiences the reality of this progression by becoming aware within himself of how he thereby takes up the soul organ in order to grasp the spirit in its supersensible revelation, just as the transformation of the green leaf into the colored floral organ of the plant prepares the ability that is realized in the formation of the fruit.

After the completion of the art-alchemical process, Christian Rosenkreutz was appointed “Knight of the Golden Stone”. One would have to go into great detail in a purely historical account if one wanted to point out the name “güldener Stein” and its use from the relevant serious and the far more fraudulent literature. That is not the intention of this essay. However, it is possible to point out what can be gained from a study of this literature as a result of this use. Those serious personalities who have used the name wanted to use it to point to something in which dead stone nature can be viewed in such a way that its connection with living becoming is recognized. The serious alchemist believed that artificial natural processes could be brought about, in which dead, stony matter is used, but in which, if they are properly observed, something of what happens when nature itself weaves the dead into the living becoming can be recognized. By observing very specific processes in the dead, the aim was to grasp the traces of creative natural activity and thus the essence of the spirit that prevails in the phenomena. The symbol for the dead, recognized as a manifestation of the spirit, is the “golden stone”. Anyone who examines a corpse in its immediate present essence becomes aware of how the dead is incorporated into the general process of nature. But the formation of the corpse contradicts this general process of nature. This formation could only be a result of spiritual life. The general process of nature must destroy what has been formed by spiritual life. The Alchemist is of the opinion that ordinary human knowledge of nature as a whole involves something of which it only grasps as much as is present in a corpse. A higher knowledge should be found for natural phenomena, which relates to them as spiritual life does to a corpse. This striving is for the “güldenen Stein” (the golden stone). Andreae speaks of this symbol in such a way that one can see that he believes that only someone who has gone through the experiences of the six days he describes can grasp how to proceed with the “güldenen Stein”. He wishes to intimate that anyone who speaks of this symbol without knowing the nature of the transformation of the powers of knowledge can only have a mirage in mind. He wishes to portray Christian Rosenkreuz as a personality who can legitimately speak about something that many speak about without authorization. He wishes to defend the truth against the false talk about the search for the spiritual world.

Christian Rosenkreuz and his comrades, after they have become the true workers with the “golden stone,” receive a symbol with the two sayings: “Art is the handmaid of nature” and “Nature is the daughter of time.” In the spirit of these guiding principles they are to work out of their spiritual knowledge. The experiences of the six days can be summarized in these sentences. Nature reveals her secrets to him who, through his art, is able to continue her work. But this continuation cannot succeed for anyone who, for his art, has not first eavesdropped on her in the sense of her will, who has not recognized how her revelations come about through her infinite possibilities of development being born out of the womb of time in finite forms.

The relationship in which Christian Rosenkreutz is installed as king on the seventh day characterizes how the spiritual seeker now stands in relation to his transformed cognitive abilities. Attention is drawn to the fact that he himself gave birth to them as the “Father”. And his relationship to the “first gatekeeper” also appears as such to a part of his own self, namely to the one who, before the transformation of his powers of knowledge as the “Astrologus”, was indeed in search of the laws but who was not equal to the temptation that arises when the spiritual seeker comes to a point such as that at which Christian Rosenkreutz found himself at the beginning of the fifth day when he stood before Venus. He who succumbs to this temptation cannot enter the spiritual world. He knows too much to be completely removed from it, but he cannot enter either. He must stand guard before the gate until another comes who succumbs to the same temptation. Christian Rosenkreutz initially believes that he has succumbed to it and is therefore condemned to take over the office of the guard. But this guardian is, after all, a part of his own self; and by surveying this part with his transformed self, he has the opportunity to overcome it. He becomes the guardian of his own soul life; but this office of guardian does not prevent him from establishing his free relationship with the spiritual world.

Christian Rosenkreutz has become a knower of the spirit through the experiences of the seven days, and he is allowed to work in the world through the power that has come to his soul from these experiences. What he and his companions accomplish in their outer life will flow from the spirit from which the works of nature itself flow. Through their work, they will bring harmony into human life, which will be a reflection of the harmony at work in nature, overcoming the opposing disharmonies. The presence of such people in the social order should be a continually active cause for maintaining the health of life in the social order itself. Valentin Andreae points to Christian Rosenkreuz and his companions as an answer to those who ask: What are the best laws for the coexistence of people on earth? Andreae answers: Not what one expresses in thoughts, that it should happen in one way or another, can regulate this coexistence, but what people can say who strive to live in the spirit that wants to express itself through existence.

In five sentences, what guides souls that want to work in the sense of Christian Rosenkreutz in human life is summarized. It should be far from them to think in a different spirit than the one that is revealed in the work of nature, and they should find the human work by becoming the continuers of the works of nature. They should not place their work in the service of human desires, but should make these desires mediators of the works of the spirit. They should serve people lovingly so that the active spirit may be revealed in the relationship between people. They should not be deterred in their pursuit of the value that the spirit can give to all human work by anything that the world can give them in terms of value. They should not fall into the error of mistaking the physical for the spiritual, like bad alchemists. Such people believe that a physical means of prolonging life or something similar is a supreme good, and forget that the physical has value only as long as it proves itself through its existence as the rightful revealer of the spiritual that underlies it.

At the end of his description of the “Chymical Wedding”, Andreae hints at how Christian Rosenkreutz “came home”. In all the externals of the world he is the same as he was before his experiences. His new situation in life differs from the old one only in that from now on he will carry his “higher self” within him as the ruler of his consciousness, and that what he will accomplish can become what this “higher self” may work through him. The transition from the last experiences of the seventh day to the finding of oneself in the familiar surroundings is no longer described. “Here about two quart of leaves are missing.” One might imagine that there are people who would be particularly curious about what should have been on these missing pages. Well, it is that which can only be experienced by those who know the nature of the transformation of the soul as their own individual experience. Such a person knows that everything that leads to this experience has a general human significance that is shared as one shares the experiences of a journey. The reception of the experience by the ordinary person, on the other hand, is something very personal, is also different for each person and cannot be understood by anyone in the same way as by the person who has experienced it. The fact that Valentin Andreae omitted the description of this transition to the familiar situation can be taken as further proof that the “Chymische Hochzeit” expresses true connoisseurship of what is to be described.

The preceding remarks are an attempt to characterize what is expressed in the “Chemical Wedding”, merely from such a consideration of its content as it arises from the author of this presentation. The judgment should be substantiated that the writing published by Andreae should point in the direction that one should follow if one wanted to know something about the true character of a higher kind of knowledge. And as a fact, these remarks would like to show that the special kind of spirit knowledge that has been demanded since the fifteenth century is described in the “Chymical Wedding”. For anyone who understands the content of this writing in the same way as the author of this exposition, it is an historical account of a spiritual current in Europe that goes back to the fifteenth century and is directed towards gaining knowledge about a context of things that lies behind the external phenomena of the world.

There is, however, a fairly extensive literature on the effectiveness of Johann Valentin Andreae, in which the question is discussed whether the writings published by him can be considered real proof of the existence of such a spiritual current. In these writings, this current is presented as the Rosicrucianism. Some investigators are of the opinion that Andreae was only indulging in a literary joke with his Rosicrucian writings, intended to ridicule the dreamers who show themselves wherever higher knowledge is spoken of in a secretive way. Rosicrucianism would then be a fantasy of Andreae's, intended to mock the ravings of giddy or fraudulent mystics. The author of these remarks does not believe that he should approach his readers with much of what has been said in this direction against the seriousness of Andreae's intentions, because he believes that a proper consideration of the content of the “Chymical Wedding” makes it possible to form a sufficiently well-founded view of what is intended by it. Certificates taken from a field outside this content cannot change this view. Those who believe that inner reasons can be recognized in their full weight hold that external documents should be evaluated according to these reasons, and not the inner according to the outer. If, therefore, these remarks are made outside of the purely historical literature on Rosicrucianism, this is not intended as a negative judgment of historical research itself. It is only meant to indicate that the point of view adopted here makes a detailed discussion of Rosicrucian literature unnecessary. Only a few more remarks should be added. It is well known that the manuscript of the “Chymische Hochzeit” was completed as early as 1603. It was not published until 1616, after Andreae had published the other Rosicrucian writing “Fama Fraternitatis R. C.” in 1614. This writing, above all, has given rise to the belief that Andreae only spoke in jest of the existence of a Rosicrucian society. This belief is supported by the fact that Andreae himself subsequently referred to Rosicrucianism as something he would not want to advocate. Some of his later writings and notes in letters, which he made, cannot be interpreted in any other way than that he only wanted to tell a tale about such a school of thought in order to “fool” the curious and enthusiastic. However, in the exploitation of such testimonies, it is usually disregarded what misunderstandings writings like those published by Andreae are subject to. What he himself later said about them can only be correctly judged when one considers that he was compelled to speak after opponents had appeared who heretically denounced the designated school of thought in the worst possible way, that “followers” had appeared who were visionaries or alchemist swindlers, and who distorted everything that was meant by Rosicrucianism. But even if one takes all this into account, if one wanted to assume that Andreae, who later showed himself to be a more than pietistic writer, soon after the appearance of the Rosicrucian writings had a certain shyness about being considered the confessor of what was expressed in these writings, one cannot gain a sufficiently well-founded view of this personality's relationship to Rosicrucianism through such considerations. Yes, even if one wanted to go so far as to deny Andreae's authorship of the “Fama”, one would not want to do so with respect to the “Chemical Wedding” for historical reasons.

The matter must also be considered from another historical point of view. The “Fama Fraternitatis” was published in 1614. Let us leave open for the moment whether Andreae intended this writing to address serious readers, in order to speak to them of the school of thought known as Rosicrucianism. But two years after the publication of the “Fama”, the “Chymical Wedding” was published, which had already been completed thirteen years earlier. In 1603, Andreae was still a very young man (seventeen years old). Did he, as such, already have the maturity of mind to play a prank on the starry-eyed enthusiasts of his time by mocking them with a construct of his imagination in the form of Rosicrucianism? And even if he was willing to speak of a Rosicrucianism that he seriously believed in in the “Fama,” which, incidentally, had already been read in manuscript form in Tyrol in 1610, how did he, as a very young man, come to write the “Chymische Hochzeit,” the document that he then published two years after the “Fama” as a message about the true Rosicrucianism? The questions regarding Andreae seem to become so entangled that it becomes difficult to find a purely historical solution. One could hardly object to a mere historical researcher who tried to make credible that Andreae had found the manuscript of the “Chymische Hochzeit” and the “Fama” - perhaps in the possession of his family - and had published them in his youth for some reason, but later wanted nothing to do with the school of thought expressed in them. But if this were a fact, why did Andreae not simply make it known?

From a spiritual scientific point of view, one can come to a completely different conclusion. From Andreae's own judgment and maturity at the time he wrote the “Chymical Wedding”, one does not need to deduce its content. In terms of content, this writing proves to be one that was written out of intuition. Such a work can be written by people who are predisposed to do so, even if their own judgment and life experience do not speak into what is written down. And yet what is written down can still be a message from a reality. The content of the “Chymical Wedding” demands to be understood as a message about a real spiritual current in the sense indicated here. The assumption that Valentine Andreae wrote it intuitively throws light on the position he later took up to Rosicrucianism. As a young man he was predisposed to give a picture of this spiritual current without his own mode of cognition playing a part in it. But this mode of cognition developed in the later pietistic theologian Andreae. The intuitive side of his nature receded in his soul. He himself later philosophized about what he wrote in his youth. He does this as early as 1619 in his writing 'Turris Babel'. The connection between the later Andreae and the intuitive writer of his youth did not come clearly before his soul. If Andreae's attitude towards the subject-matter of the “Chymical Wedding” is considered in the light just indicated, one is compelled to consider the contents of this writing without reference to what its author himself expressed at any time about his relation to Rosicrucianism. Whatever of this spiritual current could reveal itself at Andreae's time, revealed itself through a personality suited for the purpose. Those who are convinced from the outset that it is impossible for the spiritual life active in world phenomena to be revealed in this way will indeed have to reject what is said here. But there could also be people who, without starting from superstitious prejudices, come to the conviction of such a form of revelation precisely through calm consideration of the “Andreae case”.