The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees! Before I begin my remarks today, please allow me to say a few words by way of introduction. What I will be saying today can be fully justified scientifically. And I will try again and again to establish a relationship with science by showing that anthroposophy is in no way opposed to the justified results and conscientious research methods of the present day. But I have already allowed myself to make the relevant remarks, at least in outline, in the lecture that I was allowed to give here in the same place a few months ago. And since I can assume that a large number of the esteemed audience who were present that day are here again today, a repetition of what was said then could well seem superfluous to them. And so I will leave out what I said then about the relationship between anthroposophy and science.

Dear attendees! When we speak of the spiritual world, fundamental questions and riddles arise for the human soul, questions and riddles that are not merely theoretical, but are connected with the inner peace and joyfulness, with the whole inner destiny of the human soul, and with the ability and efficiency of the human being in life. But the nature of these difficulties that arise for the human being in relation to the spiritual world is not always considered in the right way. That a human being has a spiritual entity to claim for himself cannot really give rise to any mystery or doubt. For man knows in every moment of his waking existence that precisely that in which he feels himself in his true human dignity and in his true human nature is what he describes as his spirit. He is concerned about such riddles that arise in this direction. He is concerned, after all, with the fate of this spirit, which actually constitutes his being. Whether this spirit is something that belongs to the ephemeral, whether we can ascribe a duration to it, whether it is what emerges from material existence like a bubble, whether it is what gives meaning and value to the material. So that is essentially what it is about, not the spirit as such. Even the materialists will not deny the spirit, but only regard it as a result of the material processes of the world.

If a person feels the urge to explore the nature of the spirit, not only for the sake of science but also for the happiness of everyday life, it is because, in the face of this fate, the soul — one might say — from unconscious depths, which are actually only raised into consciousness by a scientific world view, because uncomfortable, worrying moods continually arise from them. And these are connected with a vast number of experiences that flash through our soul. I could mention many of these experiences that cause a person to worry about the spirit, but I will only give two examples, two that are precisely those that a person does not always realize, that do not always enter a person's consciousness. But it is precisely such worries that dwell in the subconscious depths, giving rise to moods and states of mind, bringing happiness or sorrow to the soul, and which intrude into everything that makes a person capable or incapable in life. When we define them, we often describe something that the simple, naive mind does not bring to consciousness, but which is rooted all the more deeply in the soul and is connected with the whole life of feeling and sensation. And from this realm I would like to give two examples.

The first is the feeling that arises at the moment when a person passes from the waking state into the sleeping state, which actually occurs every day in a person's life. The inner spiritual activity in which the human being finds his true being fades away. It becomes completely unconscious, and the human being enters the indefinite. Even if one does not always feel it, there is something in this experience that could be called the powerlessness of ordinary spiritual life. There is something in the world existence that we enter through the state of sleep and that takes away from us the state in which we recognize our human dignity and our human worth, that takes away our spiritual life. This powerlessness in the face of the spirit is the one thing that, more or less, half or wholly unconsciously underlies the riddle questions about the spiritual being.

And on the other hand, it is that which can arise when a person awakens in the morning, perhaps through the transition of the dream state, which he can only see as a sum of chaotic experiences in relation to the reality of waking life, then immersed in his physical being, serving his bodily senses, his organs. But then the human being notices — I would say — the other pole of that which raises questions about the nature of the spirit within him. He notices that, in relation to what he is as a spiritual being, he is claimed in his bodily presence. He lives in the senses, in the nervous system, in the limbs. But if we ask ourselves the simplest question: how do we move the hand, the arm? In our ordinary consciousness, we cannot account for what flows from the intention to carry out the action down into the body, what works and weaves in this bodily existence, so that ultimately raising and lowering the arm comes about. It is as if what we call our spiritual life were plunging into darkness.

Thus, on the one hand, we see the sense of powerlessness of the spiritual life and, on the other, the descent into an undefined darkness that lies within us. And when a person, through experiencing something like this, brings to mind all the soul moods and dispositions that arise from it, then the question somehow urges itself upon him: Yes, what is the truth about this spiritual life? Is there another spiritual life in which this, which seems so powerless and dark to me, is somehow rooted, that guarantees its continued existence? But then two opinions, two enemies of thought and feeling, are placed between man and this spiritual world, which fill man with illusions about the spiritual world and which feed on something in him, in the mood and state of his soul.

The first is superstition. The person who wants to come to an awareness of his connection to a spiritual world does indeed strive inward, seeking, not through his knowledge but out of his will, to surrender to all kinds of illusions, all kinds of clouds to his judgment, things that are supposed to tell him something about the spiritual world. I need only hint at these things for you to feel what sources of illusion lie in what we call the various forms of human superstition. But let us see how the superstitious person must fare in the world.

What he conjures up within himself and what is supposed to visualize his relationship to the spiritual world collides with external reality at every turn. Let us look at the processes and things around us. If we approach them according to their laws, we find that something else is true than what we believe from superstitious ideas. This leads to a certain disorientation. We stagger through life instead of feeling connected to our spirituality, to the real laws of the world. And we also become unfit because we cannot find the strength within ourselves to adapt to the laws of the outside world. A superstitious person must ultimately become an unfit person for themselves and their environment. Now, it is precisely those who, because of a certain will or a certain situation in life, must refuse to deal with the whole scientific life of the present day who fall prey to superstition. Those, then, who are little touched by the significant insights of scientific life, easily fall prey to the disorientation and unfitness in life that I have just described.

Those who truly enter into this scientific life, who conscientiously penetrate with the scientific methods what the senses, what experiment and observation can offer, are exposed to another pole of mental experience. Such people then feel how they must shape the intellect so that it may find its way unclouded and unmolested through all kinds of illusions into the realm of true reality. But then they feel further: with this intellect, which is so well suited for the realm of the [sensual] world, one cannot ascend into the supersensible world. And precisely those who take the scientific life seriously are then thrown into doubt. And these doubts, when they take hold of the serious mind, the serious soul, they descend from the intellect, in which they are initially rooted, deep into the life of feeling and emotion. And it is precisely through anthroposophical research that we recognize how intimately our emotional life is connected with the states of suffering and joy in our physicality. So that in the end what descends from the intellect into the mind as doubt extends into the bodily existence. So that a person — one may use this radical expression in this case — is thrown by doubt into a certain mental wasting disease, then into physical weakness and unfitness. Through doubt, too, he ultimately becomes unfit for life, for himself and for his fellow human beings.

Because these things affect modern man so deeply, those personalities who take the spiritual life seriously seek the most diverse means of information in order to gain a relationship with the spiritual world after all. We see how precisely these latter natures now turn to that which, because of its vagueness and lack of certainty, can never actually form the basis of real knowledge. They turn to the pathology of human nature. Because they doubt what the healthy soul and healthy body can produce in terms of knowledge about the supersensible world, they turn to the abnormal human nature and believe that, in what they can find in deviation from what normal knowledge produces, normal knowledge, can be found that points to things and processes in another world than this one, in which man also feels just as little at home and where he cannot want that the spiritual could sink into indefinite darkness. And so especially doubters from the fields of science often turn today to mediumistic phenomena; they turn to the sick human nature, out of which come all kinds of visions, all kinds of inner views, which are nothing more than hallucinations after all. For we can see, if we look impartially at the facts in this area, how the medium, who in terms of his normal life of cognition is cut off from the environment, how he, out of a morbid physicality (for a healthy nature produces a healthy capacity for knowledge), has all kinds of inner experiences, which he then communicates. It is never possible to examine these experiences with the same accuracy with which, for example, one examines those of a dream. In the case of knowledge, it is important that what is experienced from somewhere can be examined by the healthy human understanding of everyday reality. We can do this with dreams, but not in the same way with mediumistic revelations, because we do not see through them, because they do not live within ourselves. Nor can it be tested in terms of knowledge what arises from a diseased nature as visions and hallucinations. We will always find that something is wrong somewhere when visionary or hallucinatory phenomena arise from the soul life. And one can say: it is only a continuation of the despair at healthy normal knowledge in the face of the supersensible, which expresses itself in such seeking.

On the other hand, there are many natures in the present day that have not yet emerged from what education, from what we are born into, gives, but there are already a good number of natures today that, by despairing of other ways of entering the spiritual world, they now come to what I might say the most naive minds seek out to satisfy their spiritual needs. There it is, time-honored, the result of a development from ancient times up to our own, there it is. One can quite certainly feel how such confessions, and they extend into our present-day philosophy, how they really reveal something of a spiritual world. But one can actually, since they are simply there as results, since they are preserved by tradition and approach man in a certain finished form, yet give nothing but what in the present day is called belief as opposed to actual knowledge.

Those who lack the courage to penetrate to knowledge seek to justify their belief through all possible conceptual constructions. But those who approach the event with deeper insights of the soul and follow it from period to period, who not only follow the external facts of history but also follow the inner life of the soul of humanity in historical life, they find that everything that occurs today in traditions, in worldviews that exist as creeds or as philosophies, to which one then devotes oneself with a certain faith, they all lead back to old forms of knowledge, not to old forms of faith.

Dear attendees, I will certainly not be one of those who recommend such old forms of striving for knowledge for the present day. However, in order to be able to communicate how man, by nature and essence, can come to a knowledge of another world, it is necessary to discuss the way in which man in earlier epochs of humanity and how that which has been revealed as the result of such earlier paths of knowledge, how that, without our having any clarity today about what these paths of knowledge were, how that was then communicated to the course of development of mankind, how it is still there today. People would be amazed if they realized with complete historical accuracy how even the most self-evident philosophies only contain the results of those that are present on the basis of earlier knowledge.

I would like to highlight two examples of the way in which such insights were arrived at in very, very ancient times. I could also cite others, but I will choose two characteristic ones. The results of these paths of knowledge, which can no longer be ours, still live on today in tradition. Many, indeed millions of people, devote themselves to them without knowing it. For that which lives in all creeds and in all world views has once been sought by individuals on their paths of knowledge. In particular, the first path of knowledge that I will indicate is not really characterized correctly at present. For it actually characterizes only that which has remained in the ancient oriental world as old traditions, but which has remained defective and decadent, of that which was a fully justified striving for knowledge.

The first thing I would like to characterize is what is usually known as the so-called yoga path of oriental spiritual seekers. Through this yoga path – without people necessarily knowing it – which is said to deliver the results that many people devote themselves to, what was it that they strove for? This will become clear to us once we have summarized its most important characteristics. One process that the yoga scholar particularly turned to was breathing that was different from ordinary breathing.

Of course, I know, dear audience, that breathing techniques in particular can be quite detrimental to people today. But what is harmful to human nature today can be traced back to forms of paths to knowledge that were once perfectly justified in older, more primitive forms of human nature and that were really paths into the spiritual world from the essence of the human spirit at that time. The yoga scholar tried to bring into a different rhythm what otherwise takes place unconsciously in the human being, what only becomes conscious in pathological states or otherwise in some abnormal cases, what thus essentially takes place unconsciously in the healthy person. He tried to inhale, hold his breath and exhale again in a different way than in ordinary life. What did he hope to achieve in this way? He sought to bring the one element of the human soul life to a knowledge of other worlds than the ordinary ones, the element of thinking. And the yoga scholar noticed that through this abnormal breathing, his thought process was brought into a completely different orientation. Into which orientation? We can make this clear by referring to the physiology of today. When we breathe in, the respiratory current is driven through the spinal canal into the brain. This is an unconscious process for modern man. But that does not make it any less true that through the processes that take place in the body and that are the exterior for the soul-spiritual processes of life, not only everything for which the brain is the tool is drawn through them, but also that which is the refined rhythm of breathing. As we think about the world, the subtle current that arises from breathing vibrates and flows and undulates and weaves continuously in our brain and in our nervous system. By breathing in an abnormal way, the yoga scholar became aware of what remains unconscious in the breathing process during normal breathing. And he was able to follow what now flows into the brain from the breathing process,

And what came about as a result was that thinking became different. In ancient times, thinking was very much alive for humanity. In ancient times, it was the case for humanity that people did not, as we today justifiably see pure colors everywhere through outer eyes and hear pure tones through outer ears, the ancient man saw everywhere that which arose in his soul as a soul-spiritual. In the cloud, in the thunder and lightning, in the spring, in the plant, in the stone, everywhere man saw, except for the sounds that the ear gave, except for the colors that the eye supplied, and so on, everywhere man in older times saw a spiritual-soul. People today say: These were fantasies. They were not figments of the imagination, just as we perceive the blush through our eyes, so the ancients perceived what was spiritual and soulful in wave and wind, in lightning and thunder, in plants, stones and animals, in springs and streams, in sun and moon. This thinking, which was the common property of humanity in those ancient times, was of course also the thinking of the yoga scholar. But by sending the consuming breath through this thinking, this thinking became something else for him. Through the thinking that he developed as a result, he perceived a different world than through his ordinary thinking. He perceived the world that gave him, above all, the certainty of his own being.

And when we read today the wonderfully poetic descriptions given in the Bhagavad Gita, for example, about the nature and workings of the human self, they were gained through the fact that the yoga scholarship pulls itself together into a thinking that was acquired through the self-regulated breathing process. Above all, the old man, by seeing the spiritual in all things and processes of the external world, did not have his inner spiritual. Through the yoga process, he became aware of his spiritual self. And that which often resounds from ancient times, which was only changed on the outside, lives on in worldviews and creeds. And many philosophers and religious believers do not know how what they say about the human soul and the self in connection with the eternal has developed over time from ancient times, when it was the result of the training of ancient yogis. But it can be realized that these are inner exercises that were intended to lead the way up to this way of knowing in the supersensible worlds, so that one should get to know one's relationship to a different world than the one that otherwise surrounds us. On the one hand, in the direction of thinking, this was such a path of knowledge.

Another older path of knowledge was the one that is still recommended today in many cases, which is less harmful than the yoga path when applied to today's nature, but which cannot bring real knowledge today. The yoga path is inappropriate for today's human being. Because by performing a certain breathing process, one makes the organism different from what it otherwise is. The organism becomes fine and sensitive. The lightest breaths of life weave themselves into it, so that the person becomes extremely sensitive to the hard, robust outside world. The yogi therefore likes to withdraw from this. In the old days, when people sought higher knowledge from those who withdrew from life, this was possible. That does not apply to our lives today. Our modern life has come to the point where anyone who wants to give people knowledge should be fully immersed in life. We will say of the one who wants to withdraw into a hermit's life: You cannot reveal anything to us. Only when you live life with us and yet come to certain insights, then we can follow your paths of knowledge. Therefore, we need different paths of knowledge for the modern person than the old ones were. And one such older path of knowledge was that of asceticism. In turn, what was practiced as asceticism in ancient times as a legitimate path had been corrupted, and what can be read and learned about this asceticism today in many cases is not what an ancient humanity once used in its legitimate way to seek knowledge, which in many cases lives on much more than that of the yogis in today's worldviews. So what is this asceticism based on? It is based on a lowering, a relaxation of our physical body. And it was the experience of those who underwent such asceticism when they tuned down their bodily functions, when everything ran more smoothly than in ordinary life, what takes place in the physical body, so that they were filled with the experience of inner strength. The will became purely spiritual as the outer physical existence was tuned down. And such ascetics said to themselves: Yes, those bodily functions are actually nothing more than an obstacle to penetrating into the spiritual worlds. For the ordinary outer world, our body is indeed the right tool. We can only live spiritually and mentally in a world between birth and death if we can devote ourselves to what the external environment triggers in our senses in a purely physical and physiological way. Only when we can use our body normally can we truly live with the outer world. But precisely because this body, according to both the cognitive and the will side, is so well suited for the waking life between birth and death, it proves to be unsuitable for allowing people to experience inner soulfulness in its purity. Therefore, such ascetics sought to tune down the physical, so that the spiritual-soul within them would arise. And they felt bliss when it arose. And in this bliss they felt that which was otherwise incorporated in powerlessness, united with a spirit that never sinks into powerlessness, into darkness. They felt united with the spirituality of the cosmos.

If we tuned our body down, we would become unfit for the outer world. What we humans need to do today, in an age when we are surrounded by magnificent external culture, we could not do. We would become unfit if we wanted to devote ourselves to such asceticism in the old sense. Therefore, for the modern human being, the inner practice must proceed as I have described in principle in the last lecture and as you will find described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science” and in other of my writings. There I showed and in these writings I show how the modern human being practices purely in soul and spirit, not by doing breathing exercises with reference to the physical, not by tuning down the physical body but by doing exercises that are to be done purely inwardly, intimately, exercises that consist of concentration and meditation of thought, that consist of the person not devoting himself to another breathing process, but to another way of thinking. This is the difference between the old yoga method and the exercises you will find described in the books mentioned, the exercises that do not turn a person into a hermit and do not degrade his physical body. The old yoga scholar relied on breathing processes that , but which the modern human being must try by concentrating on certain trains of thought, by overcoming abstract thinking, which is otherwise everywhere in ordinary life and in ordinary science, and by doing so, entering into inner mobility.

I would like to say that our exercises are aimed at achieving the opposite of what the ancient yoga scholar wanted to achieve. He had the naive belief, shared by the rest of humanity, that the peculiarity of the time was that his thinking was inwardly alive and that he wanted to calm it. He sought the abstractness of thinking that we already have today, simply because human nature has developed further, and from which we want to escape today in order to gain knowledge of other worlds. It is remarkable that in ancient times, with all one's might, one strove for what we already have today, and that today, by turning directly to thinking, we are taking this thinking in different directions than it is in ordinary life and in ordinary science. That we inwardly enliven today's abstract thinking, which we increasingly perceive as dead thinking, so that we pass from abstract, dead thought to inwardly living thought. That is the secret of today's practice: to enliven the abstract, dead thought that is present in us in ordinary life and in ordinary science. In this way we achieve the goal today of looking into other worlds in our knowledge.

What happens in the process leads us to the characteristics of certain subtle processes. But one must decide to delve into such subtleties. If one does not want to do this, one cannot really understand the path of knowledge into higher worlds. By practicing such exercises – as I said, I will not describe them further today – a person first notices how his thinking gradually comes to life. And I will hint at what that comes to by means of an example that is appropriate for today's culture.

Suppose we look, as one is accustomed to doing if one has had a scientific education, at a - let's say - higher animal. We make ourselves clear, precisely through our abstract thinking, which is the inner conditions of life and relationships, which are the formal designs, in this higher animal. We make all this clear to ourselves as far as it is possible for today's science to gain a correct idea, so that we can visualize the essence of the animal inwardly. What we visualize in this way, we are then accustomed to relating, for example, to the formative development and inner physical essence of the human being. We then visualize how the internal organs are formed, how they function in the human being, and how the external form is developed. We then compare what we can establish about the human being, which we develop into natural laws, with what we gain about the animal. And by comparing the two, we come to form a certain idea, whether in a more or less materialistic or spiritual sense, about the relationship between humans and higher animals.

But now we ask ourselves something else, something that one actually only learns to ask when one devotes oneself to such exercises, which relate purely to thinking and bring thinking to life. Then one asks oneself: Yes, when one turns to the higher animal world with one's ordinary abstract thinking and realizes what one can realize about it, is one then able to ascend from one's idea of the animal to the idea of the human being? Can we, with our inward liveliness, do with the idea what we can do outwardly with the transformation of form that we observe in the outside world, and then compare in its various aspects and relate to one another through logical abstractions? Can we, with our inward liveliness, do with the idea what we can do with the idea of the animal to arrive at the idea of the human being? Does one thus live through in abstract thinking what is presupposed in us out there in nature, as forces of growth and of formation? No, one does not. But if [he] devotes himself to the newer, purely soul-based yoga, if he arrives at bringing this thinking of the human being to life in such a way that, by gains the idea by which he inwardly visualizes this process, then he comes with this idea, in which it is transformed in the way the outer process is to be transformed, over to the very different nature. Then he submerges himself with this living concept into things, while otherwise, if one has only abstract thinking, one stands and does not submerge into them. And so, through this modern system of exercises in relation to thinking, the human being is inwardly completely transformed. His thinking becomes inwardly something completely different and enables him to truly immerse himself in the world to which he belongs, but to immerse himself with that which he inwardly experiences spiritually. And by immersing himself, he becomes certain of this: that which lives in me as a spiritual being, which may appear to be immersed in darkness and powerlessness, is nevertheless grounded in a spiritual world. For by immersing himself in living thought, he makes himself one with the spiritual of the world, he lives together with the eternal, spiritual foundation of existence, and in this way man gets to know his eternal nature in terms of thought.

But then, my dear audience, the doubts really begin. The path is initially like that on one side. However, one should not think that those who seek their path of knowledge in this modern sense will initially live in pure bliss by entering into a completely different state of mind than that of ordinary consciousness. What is at issue here can be gauged from the well-founded objections that can be raised from all sides against it – and I want to say quite categorically – that can be raised with a certain right, the objections that proceed from the fact that one points to a philosophy like that of Schelling or one like that of Oken: ingenious, powerful, ingenious world conceptions, emerging from a kind of living thinking. But if we enter into both with an unprejudiced human sense, in the way that Schelling or Oken formed their thoughts about individual facts, then, in a more imaginative way, these changed so that they fit into something else, so that they can submerge from being into becoming, there is only mere thinking, a mere dwelling in inner imagery. Nothing guarantees existence, reality. This is precisely what one must reproach such thinkers with: although they set thinking in motion, they cannot give it a character whereby it guarantees its reality in the immediate cognitive life of the human being. And here we may point out that whatever in anthroposophical form seeks to penetrate into the supersensible world, can do so whenever a human being endeavors to follow the path of knowledge in the right way by means of the exercises described here. He then comes to such living thoughts. He develops them by using them to try to grasp the world by immersing himself inwardly in it. But just when he has such a living thought in a particular case and wants to grasp something in all seriousness with it, then inwardly he really experiences what can be called the deepest inner soul pain, the deepest inner soul suffering. Such a thought, which can be transformed inwardly, is not without pain, is not without suffering in the soul. That is why anyone who has acquired even a little knowledge will never tell you anything other than this: Yes, what I have experienced externally as happiness, as pleasure, as satisfaction in life, for that I am quite grateful to my destiny; but what I have acquired as a little knowledge, I basically owe to the suffering that life has brought me, most of all to mental suffering. And these mental sufferings, which came over me by themselves, so to speak, also brought me the certainty that the reality of a living thought can only be experienced by inwardly living through its effect, its truth, in suffering and pain, and that real knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be attained without inner tragedy.

This could also be seen through a somewhat unbiased, more subtle way of looking at things. What about our sensory approach? Well, my dear audience, when we indulge in sensory perception, a subtle change first occurs in our sensory organ; even in the wonderfully constructed eye, small changes occur. Today, because we are no longer aware of what early man perceived – these small changes as pain – we are so organized that we experience them with a certain matter-of-fact painlessness, because we are not in them with the whole person. But what the enlivened thought brings about makes us, as a whole human being, aware that the physical human being is permeated by the spiritual. This practice makes us a sense organ, and we must gain the ability to perceive the spiritual world that we acquire through this sense organ by first going through and overcoming pain and suffering. And by overcoming it, not only does the healthy physical body remain, but the soul in us is now able to look directly into the spiritual world. But then, through this seeing, which is conveyed to us by becoming a pure sensory organ after going through the pain, what presents itself to us in this way connects with what presents itself to moving thought. One acquires a consciousness of reality about the spiritual world through the sense organs interacting with animated thinking, just as we otherwise acquire a consciousness of reality about the world of colors and sounds. But in this way, my dear audience, the modern human being also gains the ability to see into another world. In this way, he has a spiritual reality before the eye of his soul, so to speak, as a whole human being becomes the eye of the soul and, in addition to the sensual reality, the spiritual reality lies around him. For example, the human being, as he is physically formed, also appears before our soul in a different way when we have the living thought. He lives in images. And when we look at a person, what is standing there before us as an outer human form — even what is standing there as an outer human form — shows us something that is connected with the purely spiritual soul. We look, so to speak, at a spiritual soul form, just as we look with the physical eye at the bodily form. And by looking at this spiritual-soul aspect, we connect with the physical body what I call, without hesitation — even if it may cause offence — an auric aspect of human nature. We see an auric aspect; we see a spirit-soul organism. And this spirit-soul organism shows through its own nature, just as the physical organism shows when we have an adult human being before us, that it was once a small child. What we see as the auric human being points back to what we were as pure spiritual-soul beings in a spiritual-soul world before we descended into the physical world and united with that which had been prepared in the mother's body for union with the pure spiritual soul from this physical world. And not only are we pointed in this general way to that which we ourselves were when we had prepared ourselves for it, we are also pointed to in a concrete way to what the person was at that time. We gradually get to know the human being as a spiritual-soul being in the spiritual-soul world in the same way that we get to know the physical human being through our eyes and intellect. However, we have to rise to a certain level of contemplation, which consists of saying to ourselves: Yes, we look at the external world that surrounds us with all the abilities that we have in our normal life between birth and death. We see everything around us in the stars, in the clouds, in the realms of nature; but we look least into ourselves. For we know, if we are unbiased, that what we see within us is basically only a pictorial representation of what we experience in the outside world.

Between birth and death, the human being is organized around the external world. An incredible abundance of content is revealed to the human being as he turns his eyes and other senses out into this environment, from the stars to the smallest worm. But the one who is unbiased enough can intuitively see that what he carries within him is formed in an even more wonderful way. Yes, the outer world may be gloriously formed, and through science we may reveal great and powerful laws from it. If we can look into it, not through anatomy, not through what is revealed to external science, which leads to the glories of the outer world, but through inner faculties, then we will say to ourselves at every moment: That which lies within human nature reveals much more than the cosmic outer world. It differs only in external space, but not in abundance. We can only guess at this human interiority in our ordinary consciousness, but it is truly a microcosm, a small world, and however magnificent the external world may be, here within the human being it appears even more magnificent. But between birth and death we only grasp this intuitively. For when we use our senses and will, we descend into darkness. We do not see what builds up our lungs; we do not convince ourselves that what builds up our lungs is greater and more powerful. We look into our heart, but cannot convince ourselves that the inner organization of the heart is a much more powerful one than what we encounter as an organization when we seek out the relationships between the earth and the sun. We can only guess at all this. With the tools of science, however, we cannot look inside. But if we look into the world with supersensible vision — into the world in which we lived as spiritual beings before our birth, or, let us say, conception — then we find that, while here between birth and death the cosmos is our external world, to which we direct our deeds, our spiritual self before conception — the human inner being — is our external world.

We look at this human interior because we have to immerse ourselves actively in it. For example, we have to prepare for the transformation that takes place so wonderfully in the child as the brain develops. We look at what we make of ourselves out of the soul and spirit before we descend into the physical world. We not only see the human inner world, which appears dark to us between birth and death; it is not only our knowledge, it is not only what we admire when we let our sympathy and antipathy play; it is also what we have turned our actions towards before birth or conception. The human being's will nature aims at what he is then able to make of his inner organization. And, ladies and gentlemen, however unconsciously this may take place in ordinary life, it must be achieved. And what the human being experiences in the purely spiritual world through knowledge and activity is what is then, albeit unconsciously, carried out in this physical life on earth. And that is one side of the auric human being.

The other side of the auric man comes before our contemplation when we do not bring the outer form before our eyes, but that which lives in the human being's will impulses, in the human being's deeds. There we indeed learn to look at the world differently, namely at the world of human beings. One says to oneself: What people do appears to one as the world of colors appears to a blind person who has been successfully operated on. He gets to know a completely new world by opening up an external sense. In this way, a sense is opened up for us by transforming ourselves into a sensory organ as a whole human being. With this, however, we look differently at what people experience. Above all, we get to know ourselves with this sense organ, not like the ascetic who downgrades his outer physicality so as to have no obstacle for the spiritual, who caused suffering in order to come to the spiritual through the suffering of the physical; we come to the spiritual through the suffering in the soul. But through this we get to know in ourselves what is spiritual-soul in this earthly life. We learn to recognize what prepares itself as spiritual-soul and, in turn, strives out of the physical as the second auric when we go through the gate of death. We thus become acquainted with our life after death by becoming sensory organs ourselves. We become acquainted with that which passes through the gate of death as the eternal soul nature of man. We become acquainted with the forces that strive within us towards the spiritual world, towards the spiritual in the cosmos, just as we strove with our deeds and our vision before birth.

But we become aware of something else. We learn to recognize, for example, that when one person meets another, the two paths of life converge. Something develops that is of decisive importance for the fate of both. The two go from there together on their path through life. This is usually called coincidence. But if one learns — I would like to say, like the blind man, when he is operated on, learns to see colors —, if one learns to know what a person does in his life with the sense organs that he forms out of himself as a whole human being, then, from early childhood on, one follows what he does, out of sympathies and antipathies — out of sympathies and antipathies that are replaced by others. What becomes his life path always strives out of us, so we can draw the line as if planned to what has become his destiny. We see: what shapes his life comes from within him. We understand more precisely what older people, who have become wise through age, said without bias. Goethe's friend Knebel once said: “When you look back through life, life seems to be thoroughly planned, and you feel drawn to the individual decisive points as if they had emerged from a previously laid out plan for life.” Thus one can see into one's own life and recognize how it is shaped by actions arising out of likes and dislikes, out of instincts and desires. From there, the path leads to the contemplation of the thread of destiny through repeated earthly lives. We learn to recognize how what springs up in sympathies and antipathies goes back to earlier earth lives. It can only be hinted at how, in this way, by becoming completely a sense organ, one gradually gains a view of the repeated earth lives through which the thread of fate runs. One sees into the eternal spiritual through the higher sense.

Now is the time when, in a very modern way, man can find his way to those other worlds with which his soul must feel connected after all, how he can find this path for real knowledge, without becoming alienated from life but by fully engaging with it. Now he can delve into what he acquires in this way as a knower, so that he stimulates his whole being. Now what knowledge is connects with inner religious devotion, now that man finds the way in a modern way, knowledge can in turn lead to religion, now knowledge can lead to true, genuine devotion. Man reaches this goal of knowledge by a path that is full of the inner way. Before that, one had to tune down the body. Now one leaves the body as it is, so that it remains suitable for the outer life, so that one can have the trust of other people. But in the soul, by making the soul work all the harder, one nevertheless undergoes suffering; one produces suffering in an inner way, which used to be produced in an external way. And now, if such anthroposophy, as it is meant here, is understood, it can be understood that the individual can be understood if one listens to him without prejudice. Today, in a sense, every single person can follow certain rules to pave their own way into the spiritual world. But it is not necessary, for one can grasp through one's own common sense what the spiritual researcher can reveal through his vision, and understand it. Just as little as one needs to be a painter to judge the beauty of a picture, so little does one need to be a spiritual researcher oneself to find the truth of what the spiritual researcher says. For through his higher vision, this spiritual researcher is also only led into the higher worlds. He must also recognize the reality of these worlds through his common sense. Just as one checks by means of common sense that a dream does not correspond to external reality, so one must recognize, by means of a more advanced logic, the truth and reality of what the spiritual researcher fathoms in spiritual worlds, in order to fathom the true relationship of human beings to these spiritual worlds in such a way that there is no feeling of powerlessness or darkness. But at the same time, something else arises that we need very much in the present. In the present time, we are completely immersed in a flood of ideas and thoughts. Science and many other aspects of life give us these ideas and thoughts, but these ideas and thoughts are abstract and, in the sense in which they were mentioned today, dead. At most, we have thoughts of the spirit, ideas of the spirit, but the spirit does not live among us. This is what we, as modern people, must confess when we look back at past ages. Certainly, we cannot wish that they would arise again. Many things must appear quite unappealing to us that people once considered right for their way of life. And in terms of this way of life, today's people have an enormous number of hopes and illusions. But if we do not want to bring back the old days, we have to say: they lived in the spirit; for they immersed themselves in the spirit. They did not devote themselves to abstract thoughts. This spiritual life has become life for people, not just thoughts about spirituality. Today we only have thoughts about spirituality. We will again have spiritual liveliness among us. We need this, by developing thoughts about the spiritual, developing them in such a way that the concrete, the living spiritual moves into ourselves, so that we are penetrated to the innermost being not only by thoughts but by the spirit, so that we also know: spiritual beings live around us, with us, in our life of will, in our thoughts. We need the spirit not only in the form of thoughts, we need the living spirit everywhere in our midst. We must know, in turn, that we can conjure up the experience of the thought, of the living will, not just the abstract, but the concrete spiritual. If we know that the spiritual lives in us as a thought, that it lives with us as a companion, can inspire us, can fill us with enthusiasm, can open up our true human existence and human dignity, then, with such a human relationship to the world, elevated into the supersensible, into the spiritual, we can find paths that lead us to demands that are being made today with deep longing and deep tragedy and also with many illusions. But we must seek the spirit as a companion in our endeavors in the present and the future by spiritualizing our thoughts and by bringing dead thoughts to life. That, and nothing else, is the aim of anthroposophical research into the world, of the anthroposophical paths that are supposed to lead from the physical world into the spiritual world for the sake of inner blessing, for a true experience of the all-encompassing reality that is not only physical but also spiritual. And it is only in spiritual reality that man can find the satisfaction for those riddles that I mentioned at the beginning of today's lecture.

Today I should like to introduce as a sort of parenthesis a deeper, Spiritual-Scientific consideration of the subject of our preceding lecture, the threefolding of the social organism. Naturally much of the thought underlying what I want to say, you will yourselves discover gradually from the general world-conception of Spiritual Science. One can hardly present the whole foundation of the Threefold Commonwealth in each single lecture. But today, in order to obtain a deeper view, will consider from the inside, as it were, that which confronts us outwardly as the necessity of threefolding the social organism.

It is really not difficult for one who has lived to some extent with spiritual-scientific conceptions to call up in himself a feeling for the profound differences between those three spheres of life into which it is our intention that the social organism should be divided. As soon as one realizes that the Threefold Commonwealth is something to be taken very seriously, there develops in one's feelings the possibility of strongly differentiating among the three spheres. They are already fairly well known to you. First, that sphere of life which we call the spiritual life, in so far as it manifests itself or has form in what we call the physical world—thus, the entire field of the so-called (I must use a paradox) physical-spiritual life. You know of course what we have to understand by that. It embraces everything that is connected with men's individual faculties and talents. As we shall see directly the spiritual life is much more comprehensive for us than for a person of materialistic mind. We think of the spiritual life as much more material than the materialistic person does, in so far as we speak of the physical-spiritual life. That fact is ingrained already in my lectures. One can only understand the spiritual life if one starts with the realization that all material life is really concretely saturated by the spiritual: so that for us there is never a purely material something; that which reveals itself through the medium of matter is always according to its inner being also—I say also—a spiritual something. Art, science, conceptions of right, the ethical impulses of mankind—all these things, roughly speaking, come within the boundaries or the spiritual life. Above all, It includes everything that belongs to the cultivation of individual talents, thus the whole field of education and individual training.

Next, it is important to distinguish something which is connected in a certain way with the physical-spiritual life but which nevertheless is fundamentally different. That is, everything that one can described as rights-life, political life, state life. Naturally one must employ all one's powers of perception hare to see the important distinction, otherwise one will make the mistake of thinking that the rights-life is practically the same as the sense of right. But we who are accustomed, to careful discrimination must distinguish between phases of ideas of right, between—if I may so express myself—the being-inspired with ideas of right, and right as it is applied in the outer world. We will speak more fully about all these things directly.

The third sphere is the one you can most easily distinguish from the other two, the economic life.

Now, as we have said, man stands in an entirely different relation to each one of these three spheres of life. If you try with a healthy feeling to understand what the physical-spiritual life is, you will feel (try to lead your soul-faculties of perception in the direction I have indicated) that anything rooted in any degree in man's individual talents, individual faculties, leads into the innermost part of human nature, springs from the very depths of human nature. Now if one proceeds quite scientifically in the work of perceiving, then one experiences everything that comes to expression in art and science, in the impulses of education, as a psychic-spiritual something that lives and works in us, when we surrender to its activity, in such a way that we can only experience it properly if we withdraw somewhat from the outer world. Certainly we must give expression to it in the outer world; but that is different from experiencing it inwardly: we cannot as men get a true conception of that something that manifests itself in art and science, in educational impulses, we cannot grasp it inwardly, unless we are able to withdraw a little from life. One does not need, of course, to withdraw to a hermit's cell: One can be taking a walk, as far as that matters; but one must withdraw into one's self, into one's soul-life, one must live in oneself. That fact becomes apparent to the human soul as soon as it cultivates the most simple feeling for the physical- spiritual Spiritual Science must express it in these words: the physical-spiritual life is lived in such a way by our human soul that in unfolding it we do not entirely depend upon our body. In this respect, Spiritual Science—as you can gather from everything that Spiritual Science has already disclosed—takes the very opposite stand to the materialistic analysis of the human being, which nurses the delusion that when one creates within oneself something that belongs to the physical-spiritual life, one accomplishes this creation entirely through the instrument of the brain, the nervous system, etc.. We know that is not true. We know that an independent inner life must be present in man in order that manifestations of this physical-spiritual life may be possible. Something is present in man in this physical-spiritual life without there being any corresponding physical manifestation in the physical body; something transpires solely within the spiritual-psychic being of man.

It is different when we manifest those life impulses which we desire to place on a democratic basis in our Threefold Commonwealth, to which every man rives expression in relation to all other men. They appear when men allow themselves to be instruments of their bodily nature, in order to unite with each other. Not theoretical ideas of right, but impulses of right for life; not inner ethical ideas, but ethical impulses for life, that are active among men, and that are manifested in the way men meet one another, work with one another, in the way men exchange their experiences with one another. Those Rights-impulses are only present when men do business with one another, when men turn their bodily outer nature to one another, when they communicate with one another, see and live with one another in mutual experiences—in short, they can only be cultivated amid the vicissitudes of human intercourse. With respect to everything that is cultivated on the basis of our individual talents, that is, with respect to what in the sense of the above is independent of our body, we live as individual men, each one a separate personality, an entity. Except for slight distinctions that arise through differences in race and people, but which are a small matter as compared with the differences in men caused by individual talents and abilities (if one has any perceptive organ one must know that)—with that exception, we are equal as men with respect to our outer physical humanness, through which we meet men as men; through which we express ethical impulses, impulses of right. We are equal here as men in the physical world precisely through the sameness of our human body, simply through the fact that we all have a human face. This fact makes us develop for ourselves as outer physical man impulses of right, ethical impulses, on a democratic basis,—it makes us equal in this sphere. We are different one another in our individual talents, which belong to our inner nature.

With respect to the third, the economic sphere: truly one does not need to adopt a false asceticism (it is certainly contrary to the prevailing tendency of our day, that is, in the West) in order to perceive how the economic life allows men to be submerged, as it were, here in the physical world, in a stream of life in which to a certain degree they are lost as men. Do you not feel, my dear friends, that in economic life you are immersed in something that does not allow you to be so fully man as in the rights- or state-life? And it is so in still greater contrast to the life that flows out of your individual talents, out of the individual talents of all mankind. Without, as I said, adopting a false ascetic attitude, one feels with respect to the economic life that we cease to be complete men when we engage in economic activity. We are obliged to pay tribute to that part of us which is sub-human when we concern ourselves with economic life. (We have the same processes of economic life, that is, production, circulation, and consumption of commodities in spiritual production that grows out of economic life and has the same character as the circulation of commodities—and we have all of that life because, so to say, we are men and not animals. When its economic aspect comes into consideration, spiritual production has the same character as any economic activity concerned with material goods. The material goods are necessary to satisfy our bodily needs; also, spiritual,activity within the economic life—dentistry, for instance, and the like—in the end leads to this, that through an exchange of commodities the dentist, etc., is able to live physically within the economic life.) At all events, economic life is always connected with physical life, and that brings us into a certain relation with animal life, even though it is on the human plane. It submerges us in experiences which we have instinctively together with the animals. There you have as a beginning a simple healthy feeling for the different relations an individual man has to these three spheres of life.

Now let us approach the subject in a more deeply spiritual-scientific way. Spiritual Science must first of all observe the periods of human life, the evolution of human life between birth, or conception, and death. Whoever allows himself the possibility of perceiving the course of human life will be strongly impressed by the way in which everything that partakes of the nature of a man's individual faculties is unmistakably announced during the early days of childhood. To one who has a spiritual eye for it and who acknowledges his life experience, the special form of the child soul is easily perceptible. In what develops during the first three life-periods, from the 1st to the 7th year, the 7th to the 14th, and the 14th to the 21st year, there lies the prophecy as from an inner elementary force, of the man's future individual gifts. And not only what we are accustomed to think of as a man's individual gifts, but connected with that, whether he will be able to do much or little muscular work. That is where we are obliged to extend the spiritual further into the material than materialistic thinkers do. Through spiritual vision we see a strong connection between the nature of a man's muscular system and his individual talents. For one who can observe the human being, everything is connected with the development of the human head. Even a man's outer form, whether he has strong less or weak legs, whether he can run much: all that is seen by one who has developed his spiritual vision, from the man's head, precisely from his head. Whether a man is skillful or clumsy, one sees from his head. These so-called physical abilities of man, which are closely connected with his fitness for outer physical , manual work, are connected with the form or his head. Now you know what I have often told you about the shape of the head, basing my remarks on the most varied fundamental facts: everything that comes into shape in the human head, that gives the human head its conformation, its form, points to something before birth, to that which man brings through birth into physical life from out of the spiritual worlds—from the spiritual world itself or from previous incarnations on the earth. And so, when one sees the connection between all human individual talents, either spiritual or manual, and the formation of the human head: then one is led further in one's seeing, and one is able to trace back everything that comes from man's individual talents to his life before birth. That, you see, is what gives the spiritual-scientist such important enlightenment as to physical-spiritual life is. Physical-spiritual life, my dear friends, is here in the physical world because we as men bring something with us at birth. Physical-spiritual life, in the sense in which I have spoken of it today, does not arise out or this physical world: all of it arises out of impulses which we bring from the spiritual world through birth into physical existence. Inasmuch as we bring into physical existence echoes of a supersense existence, we create in human society here in the physical world that which comprises the physical-spiritual life. There would be no art, no science—at the most, in science, a recording of experiments—there would be no impulse for education, no education of children at all, if we did not bring impulses through birth into physical life out of our life previous to birth. That, then, is one thing.

Now let take everything in my book Theosophy, or in Occult Science, that describes the supersense world. Take especially what is said in those books about the relation that exists between human souls when they are disembodied, when they are living between death and a new birth. You know that we have to speak of quite other relations existing between souls there than those which exist here in tae physical world. You remember how I described what is experienced there from soul to soul as being reflected here in shadowy images. You remember the description in Theosophy of life in the soul-world: when I wanted to describe the disembodied life of the supersensible world between death and a new birth I had to speak of certain reciprocal influences, of soul forces and astral forces, that do not exist in the physical world. There, souls have an inner relation to one another, a relation of soul to soul which is called out by the inner force of the soul itself. Now if one is thoroughly imbued with the idea of what relation exists in the supersensible world between souls, if one fixes one's vision upon the relation quite objectively, then one makes a remarkable discovery if one draws a comparison to it in the right way. You know it depends very much on the tendency to such inner activity as this, whether one is led to knowledge of the supersense world, or even to knowledge of the connections between the supersensible world and the sense world. If one turns directly to the Rights-, State-, or political life, one finds that there is no greater contrast to the particular form of supersense life than the political or Rights-life here on the physical plane. They are the two great opposites, my dear friends, that one experiences when one ready learns to know the supersense life. Supersense life has nothing at all that can be regulated bylaws of right or outer ethical impulses; there, everything is regulated through inner soul impulses. It is just the opposite here in the physical world where everywhere state-life has to be established because through birth into the physical world we lose those deep impulses that are alive in the soul in the supersense world and that make the relations there between souls. Here, we make laws of right that will create what must be created: relations of Right—because man has lost that which in the supersense world makes the relation between souls. Those are the two opposite poles: supersense relation of soul to soul, and state-relation here on the physical plane.

In the physical-spiritual cultural life we carry from man to man something that stays with us after birth as a reflection from the supersense world. We spread, as it were, a lustre over life here by letting in the light from the supersense world, and seeking to reflect it here in art, science, and education. It is quite different with the Rights life: we have to establish that on the physical earth as a substitute for what we lose of supersense relations when we enter through birth into physical existence. That gives you an idea, too, of what certain religious documents mean (and you know how far religious documents are always penetrated by this or that absolute truth) when they speak of the authorized “Kingdom of this world”. They mean by that, that the state should not presume to any right to control that which man brings with him as a reflection of the supersense world when he comes through birth into the physical world. It should confine itself to ruling the kingdom of Rights, which is the life we need here because by our physical birth we have lost the impulses of the spiritual world. The task of the state life is to create what is necessary for human intercourse in the physical world. It has meaning only for our life between birth and death.

Let us look at the third, the economic life. Something must be said about it that is quite paradoxical: expressing it crudely, we are submerged in a sub-humanness, in engaging in an economic life. At the same time, however, something is going on in our soul when we concern ourselves with the subhuman. And that, you can experience. Think how very actively you must struggle within yourselves when you give yourselves up to spiritual culture; and on the other hand, how thoughtless men can be in purely economic life, often following mere impulses and instincts. Economic activity proceeds, on the whole, without much truly active inner thought. And in that case, we sink into a subhumanness. Our soul stays hidden in the background. Spiritual Science would say that our body is more exerted when we are engaged in a material activity than one ordinarily believes. Consider the end members of the economic process, eating and drinking: we can realize that there is not a complete balance there between bodily and spiritual activity, that the body outweighs the spiritual-psychic in activity. But then this spiritual-psychic carries on a strong unconscious activity. And within this unconscious activity a seed is hidden. We carry this seed through the gate of death. The soul can rest, as it were, when we are busy with economic life; but in what appears to outer consciousness as rest, a seed is developing which we carry through the gate of death. And if we cultivate brotherliness in economic life, as I always describe it, then we carry a good seed through the gate of death—precisely by virtue of what we cultivate in our relations with men in the economic life. It may seem materialistic to you when I say: Precisely in the brotherliness of economic life man is planting the seed in his soul for his life after death; in his spiritual culture, he is spending his inheritance from his life before birth. It may appear materialistic to you, but it is true, simply true to the spiritual-scientific investigator. However materialistic this may seem to you it is true when I say: when you are submerged in animalness take care of your humanness, for you are planting supersensible seeds for time after death.

Man is a threefold being. He has in the first place an inheritance from time before birth; then, he evolves something here that has value only for the time between birth and death; finally, he develops here in the physical world something by which he links his physical life here with lire after death. That which is manifested here as the lustre of life and the promise and interest of life, in the physical-spiritual culture, is an inheritance from the spiritual world that we bring with us into this physical world. In possessing this spiritual wealth we show ourselves as belonging to the spiritual world; we bring into the physical world a reflection of the supersense world through which we passed before our conception and birth.

You see, abstract science, even abstract philosophy, talks—naturally—always in abstractions. They talk about proving the eternity of substance, how the human substance present at birth remains and then lasts on through death. Such proofs can never be gained out of mere thinking. The philosophers have always sought them, but no proof has ever held against inner logical knowing, because the thing simply is not so. Something much more spiritual is connected with immortality. Nothing at all material, much less anything substantial, is present in any such way. What is present after death is consciousness: consciousness that looks back into this world. That is what we have to consider when we are considering immortality. We must be much less materialistic than the abstract philosophers themselves when we talk of these higher things. It is like this: we use up what I have characterized as a reflection of the supersense world , which we reveal as the ornament, the polished surface of life here—we use that up, and must make here, during our life, a new link for the chain of our eternal existence, to carry through death. Anyone who only thinks of what goes forward in this life, must conclude, if he is consistent, that the thread wears out; only when he knows that he makes here a new part of the chain that goes out beyond death, only then has he come to immortality.

And so man is this threefold being. He cultivates talents in himself that bring a reflection of the supersense world into this life. He develops a life that forms the bridge between life before death and life after death, that expresses itself in all that which has its roots only in the time between birth and death, the outward Rights, or State-impulses, etc. And in that he is submerged in economic life and is able to plant something moral in this economic life—brotherliness—he develops the seed for his life after death. That is the threefold man.

Now think of this threefold man in such a phase of evolution ever since the 15th century that he must now cultivate consciously everything that formerly was instinctive. For that reason it is necessary today that his outer social life should afford him the opportunity of standing with his threefold human nature in a threefold organism. We unite in ourselves three very distinct members of one being, the pre-birthly, the one that is active on the earth, and the after-death member; therefore, we can only stand in the social organism properly in three parts. Otherwise we come as conscious men into disharmony with the rest of the world; and we will come into more and more disharmony unless we will consider shaping this world that lies around us into a threefold social organism.

There, you see, you have the question from the inside. I am trying to show how spiritual-scientific research points out the way to the threefold social organism: how it must be wrested out of human nature itself.

Many persons nave thoughts about what I have evolved. But in open lectures and also on other occasions I have always warned you that these thoughts to which I give expression should not be confused with the thoughts of the elder Schäffle in his book On the Structure of the Social Organism, or with the dilettantism of Merey's most recent book Concerning World-mutations, and similar works. The spiritual scientist cannot be concerned with mere play of analogy, such as these books offer; it is at most unfruitful. What I should like when speaking about the social organism is that men should train their thinking.

The general training of thought today is not even adequate for natural science to be able to grasp facts that I investigated at 35, and that I presented in my book Riddles of the Soul, showing that a human being consists of three members: nerve-sense-life, rhythmic life, and metabolic life. The nerve-sense-life can also be called the head life; the rhythmic life can be called the breathing life, or blood life; and the metabolic life includes all the rest of the organism as a kind of structure. Just as this human organism consists of three members, each centred in itself, so in the social organism each of the three members works for the whole because of the very fact that it is centred in itself. The physiology and biology of today believe that man is a centralized, unified being. That is not true. Even in regard to his communication with the outer world man is a threefold being: the head life is in independent connection with the outer world through the senses; the breathing life is connected with the outer world through the air; the metabolic life is in connection with the outer world through independent outlets. The social organism also must be threefold, with each part centred in itself. Just as the head cannot breathe but nevertheless receives what is communicated by the breathing through the rhythmic system, so the social organism should not itself develop a Rights-life, but should receive bights from its State-member.
However, I said that one must not mistake what is presented here for a mere play of analogy, such as arises when one works from all kinds of hypotheses. Spiritual Science is real investigation, and does not stop short at appearances. People believe that a Spiritual Scientist just thinks something out. Before one is a real spiritual investigator one has to learn to observe the spiritual world. One has to give up thinking; that has value only for the physical world. Naturally one does not give it up for the whole of life, only for spiritual research.

I have told you one usually comes to things upside down if one sets out to describe the spiritual world by using analogies from the sense world. Spiritual research shows, for instance, that the earth is really an organism; that what geology and mineralogy find is only a bone system; that the earth is living, it sleeps and wakes like man. But one cannot go farther in the analogy. If ordinarily you ask a man: When is the earth awake and when is it asleep? he will undoubtedly answer: The earth is awake in summer and asleep in winter. And that is the opposite of what is actually the truth. The truth is, the earth is asleep in summer and awake in winter. Naturally one only finds that out if one actually investigates in the spiritual world. That is the puzzle that makes spiritual research so liable to error, the fact that when one goes with some inquiry from the physical into the spiritual world one gets perhaps the very opposite of the physical fact, or perhaps quarter-truths. One has to investigate every single case.

So it is also with the surface analogy that people draw between the three members or the human, and the three members of the social, organism. that will a man say, using this analogy? He has to say: On the outside is a spiritual life, art, science. He will draw a parallel between that and the human head system, the nerve-sense-life. How could he do otherwise? Then, when he establishes that, he will compare the metabolic life , to which I have referred in my Riddles of the Soul as the most material, with economic life. Nothing could be more upside down than that. And nothing whatever is accomplished by looking at it in that way. One must give up toying with analogies if one wants to reach the truth. People outside of Spiritual Science believe that these ideas have been obtained by a thought game of analogies. That is the greatest illusion. It is to no purpose to parallel outer physical-spiritual life with the head system. It is to no purpose to relate economic life to the metabolic system. All that is of no avail if one wants to fathom the question.

When one makes a real investigation one gets a very paradoxical result. Comparing the social organism to the human organism one comes to the truth only if one stands upside down in the social organism. One must compare economic life with the nerve-sense-life, state-life with the rhythmic system,and physical-spiritual life with the metabolic system for the laws obtaining in them are similar. That which is present in economic life as natural conditions is of exactly the same significance for the social organism as are for man the individual talents that ne brings with him at birth. As man in his individual life is dependent upon what he brings into life with him, so the economic organism is dependent upon what Nature bequeaths it in the way of existing conditions. The preliminary natural conditions of economic life—land, etc.,—are the same as the individual talents that man brings into individual life. How much coal, now much metal is in the earth, whether land is fertile or not, are as it were the talents of the social organism. And as man's metabolic system is related to the human organism and its functions, human spiritual production is related to the social organism. The social organism eats and drinks what we give it in the form of art, science, technical ideas, etc. That is its nourishment. That is its metabolism. A country that has unfavorable natural conditions for its economic life is like a man who is poorly gifted. And a country in which the people produce nothing in the way of art, science, or technical ideas, is like a man who must go hungry because he has nothing to eat. That is the reality, the truth! The social organism is our angry spiritual child. And the natural conditions of the social organism are its capacities, its talents. A comparison of the spiritual life with the human head system has meaning perhaps for one who is playing with analogies; out one reaches the correct and helpful truth only if one knows that the laws stand as I have presented them. One can know that these are the laws of human metabolism; but one must direct the same thinking to them as one directs to the social organism and then one easily gets a larger result. To tamper with spiritual things without such guiding threads is extraordinarily difficult and wearisome. Because of the fact that today analogies are often merely toyed with, on account of which there is a prejudice against this drawing of parallels between the social and the human organism, I have only just touched upon it in my book, but I tried at least to indicate it because it can be a great help to those who think healthily about it.

And so you see that today men are in a peculiar position. Natural science which has made this great progress, which has so influenced men's minds that at bottom-even though it is not conscious of social thinking orientates itself in the direction of natural science,—this Natural Science is not capable of analyzing man correctly. For instance; it says the greatest nonsense about feeling being transmitted through the nervous system. That is pure nonsense. Feeling is transmitted directly through the breathing system, the rhythmic system, and thought through the nerve-sense-system. And the will is made possible through the metabolic system, not through the nervous system in any elementary way. The thought or willing is transmitted through the nervous system. Only when you have as men a real consciousness or willing does the nervous system take any part. When you think along with your willing then the nervous system is concerned in it. It is because this is not known that the physiology and anatomy of today have made that frightful error of distinguishing between sensory nerves and motor nerves. There is no greater falsity than this differentiation of sensory and motor nerves in the human body. The anatomists are always in a dilemma when they get to their chanter on nerves and they don't get out of it. They are in a frightful dilemma because there is no difference anatomically between these two kinds of nerves. It is pure speculation. And everything that is deduced by examining the nerves is absolutely without support. The reason that the motor nerves are not distinguishable from the sensory nerves is that there aren't any motor nerves there. The muscles are set in motion by the metabolic system. And as you perceive the outer world through the senses with the so-called sensory nerves, with other nerves you perceive your own movements, your muscular movements. The Physiology of today is wrong when it calls them motor nerves. Frightful mistakes such as this exist in science, and corrupt what goes into the popular consciousness—and they have a much more, corrupt influence than one would ordinarily think.

Thus Natural Science is not so far advanced as to perceive this threefold man. We can wait for theoretical views of Natural Science to become popular; a year sooner or later will not affect men's happiness. But the thinking does not exist for comprehending this threefold man. The same quality of thinking must however exist to comprehend the threefold nature of the social organism. And there the thing is serious. We are today at the point of time when it must be comprehended. Therefore a change of thought, a new method of thinking, is essential not only for the simple man, but, truly, most of all for the learned man. Simple men at least know nothing about all those things that have been advanced in natural science in order unconsciously to conceal man's threefold nature. But the learned men are stuck full of all those concepts that today make this threefolding seem like nonsense. To the physiologist of today it is pure folderol. If one tells him that there are no motor nerves and that feelings are not transmitted in the same way as thoughts—through the nervous system—but only the thought connected with a feeling, in other words the consciousness of it—not the feeling as such as he will object strenuously. His objections are well known. Men can naturally say: Now look, you perceive music; you perceive that through your senses. No, experience of music is much more complicated than that. It is like this: The breathing rhythm meets with the sense perception in our brain, and in the contact of the breathing rhythm with the outer sense perception arises the musical-aesthetic experience. Even there, the fundamental thing is in the rhythmic system. And what brings this fundamental thing to consciousness is in the nervous system.

However, this all shows you, my dear friends, that in regard to many things we are living in a time of transitions. Every period is indeed a transition from the past to the future. That is so if one speaks abstractly and one can see that every period is more or less a time of transition. I want rather to say in what particular respect our time is a transition. it is a time of very important inner transition, in regard to important inner human impulses. To men capable of perception this shows itself clearly in a certain way. Men today are not very apt to consider incidental symptoms with sufficient earnestness.

I want to tell you of a purely spiritual-scientific perception. Naturally I can as little prove this perception to you as the man who has seen a wallfish can prove to you that it exists. He can only tell you about it. Then one has developed one's power of spiritual vision so far as to be able to have communication with human souls that are evolving between death and a new birth, then one makes indeed very surprising discoveries. This communication can only be had in thought; and when we think here in the physical body some element of speech is always present in our thoughts. Something of speech always vibrates with the thoughts. We think in words. I had the experience once of declaring energetically: “I am fully conscious of the fact that I can think without words resounding simultaneously”, and of having Hartmann answer: “That is nonsense! That is not possible; man cannot think unless he thinks in words”. Thus there are very spiritual philosophers who do not believe that one can think without an inner forming of words. One can. But in ordinary everyday thinking man thinks in words, especially when he would develop some spiritual intercourse with the dead. For you know intercourse with the dead cannot be carried on in abstractions—any more than we can think in blue. It has to be concrete, this intercourse with the dead. That is why I have said: definite pictures that are formed very concretely reach the dead, but not abstract thoughts. Because this is so we are especially apt to let speech sound innerly in our thought communication with the dead. Then we make the most peculiar discovery ( you may believe it or not, but it is a fact) that, for instance, the dead do not hear substantives. Substantives are like holes in our sentences when we communicate with the dead.

Adjectives are better, but still very weak; but verbs, words of activity, is what their understanding grasps. One learns that slowly at first. One cannot think why so much of the communication goes badly; and one gradually realizes that it is the nouns. One cannot use many nouns. And you see one comes to realize this: that in using words of activity, verbs, one cannot help but be within the words oneself. There is something personal in verbs—one lives in the activity; while a noun always becomes something quite abstract.

Therein lies the basis of the symptom of which I wanted to speak. You see that speech is something that unites us with the super-sense world only in a very limited measure; and the fact that the whole tendency of speech is more and more toward substantives brings about the possibility of our separating ourselves from the spiritual world. The more we think in substantives the more we break our connection with the spiritual world. I only wanted this fact to indicate to you that speech has a great significance for our supersense life, a fundamental significance. But speech evolves within human evolution itself. And the characteristic of the evolution of speech is that it brings men more and more to abstractions, that it takes them farther and farther away from living inner thought-life. You can become aware of this outwardly by asking yourselves, How are the Western languages formed as compared to the Eastern? Take the language that outwardly on the physical plane has progressed the furthest, the English language: it almost spends itself in words, it has least thought content. That is the progress of speech from East to West. That is an important distinction to make in connection with social folk-life.

Now there is a man of our time who has developed great acuteness in his observation of human speech. This man is so clever that already he is stupid again. There is, in other words, a degree of cleverness where one begins again to be a bit stupid in the face of colossal cleverness. It is true. One may have a great respect for this cleverness but one should not value it too highly in face of the corresponding truth. This man is Fritz Mauthner, who has out-Kanted Kant in his Critique of Speech, and also in his Dictionary: observations, however, made undeniably out of the impulses of the time. Mauthner has reached something quite definite that must especially strike the spiritual-scientist: it is this, that in reality human inner soul-activity has, as it were, three stages. The first is ordinary sense perception as it is reflected in art. Mauthner believes in this as something that is real, something that is a reality. Now through sense perception one can arouse inner experiences, that lead over into the supersensible; Fritz Mauthner allows such inner experience. He calls it “Mystic experience,” “religious experience.” Beautiful; but he says:•;When man has this mystic experience he can only be dreaming. One is permitted to dream, out one is outside of reality them. Mauthner altogether doubts the possibility or reaching reality then; the only reality to him is sense perception—at most, art can reach it. As soon as one gets so far away from sense perception as to be experiencing something in mystic religious life, then one is merely dreaming about reality; one has already let reality go by. And then one can go still further, according to Mauthner.

He comes to all these convictions through a consideration of speech. He makes an analysis, a criticism of speech, especially in his philosophical Dictionary. It makes terrible reading. I have already on another occasion drawn your attention to the torture one undergoes reading these articles—and they go all the way from A to Z. One begins to read one or another of the articles; something is said. Then another sentence in which what has just been said is just a little bit qualified. Then a third sentence, and that which was just qualified is again qualified, so that one comes back a little to the first sentence again. One hedges around and around and around, and in the end—one has got nothing, even though one has read the whole article to the end. The article entitled “Christianity” is awful. A frightful torture. But it is proper, in Mauthner's sense, that it should be so. Mauthner thinks that, and he really condemns his reader to the torture; he has gone through it himself. He does not believe that man is capable, when he wants to know something, of getting anything else than just such hedging. He is an absolute skeptic. He finds nowhere in speech any other content than the speech itself. It has only an incidental value to him.

And so to him, inner mystic experience is only a dream. As soon as one gets out of speech one is inwardly dreaming. But according to Mauthner there is a third stage: one can believe that one is thinking but one is only speaking inwardly. Whether one uses this or that language, the language, the words, originated once in outer sense things. I have spoken to you before of the various opinions of learned men of how speech originated. You know that their opinions can be divided into two main classes: the Bimbam theory and the Wan-wan theory (those are the technical terms). Now Mauthner finds that everything has evolved from outer sense perception; real thoughts do not exist for man. In science he strives for real thoughts, when ne reaches the third stage. But he does not succeed there in knowing anything real. In mysticism he is still dreaming; when he in search of thought reality, for instance to natural laws, then ne is no longer dreaming, then he is fast asleep. Therefore for Mauthner all science is Docta ignorantia (learned ignorance). Those are his three stages.

Now my dear friends, as I told you, one can have a certain respect for such observation for it is not altogether incorrect—that, is, not incorrect for today. Something to which mankind tends today has been felt correctly by Mauthner. It is this: when the man of today wants to come to mysticism it is something quite different than with men formerly. The man of earlier times was still inwardly pound up with reality. The man of today has not that possibility; as a mystic he really is dreaming. And the natural laws that man finds today—well, one cannot quite endorse such crude points of view as those of certain theorizers who have analyzed the matter similarly to Mauthner, as for example the French thinker Boutroux, or Ernst Mach. But nevertheless one must say: if one sounds the content of the so-called natural laws today there are fundamentally no thoughts there; one only believes they ate thoughts; they are only combinations of facts. They are really only records. These things have been noticed by individuals, Mach, for example. Mauthner has observed thoroughly—therefore he speaks of Docta ignorantia, of a learned unknowing, of an ignorant learnedness. Yes, as human evolution is today, that is quite true. Today, in mysticism and in science alike, man has become sterile. Only, in his pride, he is not yet aware of it as having any significance. But that is not generally characteristic of humanity. Mauthner and the others believe that it is, because in reality they do not consider human evolution; they think: as the soul is today, so it was always. But really, it is only a characteristic of the present time. Their observation only has significance for the soul life of today; we do come to dreaming and to learned ignorance today, when we want to rise in these stages.,

But one must not conclude that human nature is such that it is obliged to sink either into mystic dreaming or into learned ignorance (as those do who think as Mauthner does). One must come to this conclusion: what the ancients reached in old ways must therefore be found now in new ways. That means, we must seek a new mysticism, we must not get into old mysticism. This new mysticism is sought in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. must rise to this new Imagination, to a new Inspiration, but we must rise of new methods. I have elaborated that in my book "Riddles of Humanity". Because we dream in mysticism and sleep in science the necessity is before us today of waking up. Therefore I have described the phenomenon of present day knowledge in this book as an "awakening". We must put in the place of mystic dreams a wide-awake Imagination; in the place of Docta ignorantia, Inspiration; in the sense in which I have talked of it in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. We live today in a transition period in respect to the human soul; we must evolve out of the deepest foundation of this human soul active power that leads to the spiritual. We will not find our way through the chaos of the present age unless we develop the will to evolve active inner soul powers. The spiritualists do the opposite. They perceive that nothing springs up unconsciously from within, and so they allow themselves to project spirits in outer manifestation, outer sense vision.

And a tragic phenomenon makes its appearance in the present day. We have the experience today of seeing men who a short time ago still believed that materialism could satisfy their souls become alarmed in their advancing years about materialism. That is nothing else than what the healthy soul should feel, in spite of the biology of today, or the sociology: a smell of decay, a smell of the corpse of one's soul, that one only prevents by an inner soul activity. Many do not want that activity today. And therefore the tragedy of men growing old who will not have anything to do with spiritual scientific research and who go back to Catholicism. That allows the soul to remain passive, and gives it something that it can believe is a spiritual content. It is a great danger.

That points from another angle to the transition-humanity is making in the present age. Quite secretly the human soul is going through an important stage of development. And with this transition through an important stage of development is intimately connected the necessity of learning to think anew in many other respects concerning man. Read how the individual man, when entering the supersense world, begins to divide into three parts. Read it in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Thinking, feeling, and willing that here in the sense world are fused as the natural condition for man—read the chapter on the “Guardian of the Threshold”: thinking, feeling, and willing become separate from one another when one gets into the supersense world. Mankind is going through that process today secretly in the subconscious. A threshold is being crossed there. Man divides inwardly into a threefold man in a different way than was formerly the case. Observation of this passing of men over a certain threshold teaches one that the threefolding of the social organism is dictated to us out of the spiritual foundations of existence itself. If in the future we want to find a picture of ourselves in the outside world so that we shall agree with it, then we shall have had to threefold the social organism.

You see the signs that spiritual science gives for the Threefold Commonwealth. But I again emphasize the point: once the Threefold Commonwealth is found it can, like all occult truths, be comprehended by a healthy human understanding. To find it, spiritual scientific research is necessary; but once it is found, healthy human, understanding proclaims its truth. That is also something that we must recall at every opportunity.

I have tried today to give you a deeper consideration of what in service to our time must be said today about the Threefold Commonwealth. Next Sunday we will extend this consideration and conclude it, and perhaps bring it to full inner completeness.

In these, days I must bring before you some facts which can shed light upon the great events of our time. Next Sunday too I shall have to direct your attention and your feelings to certain aspects which can throw some light upon the events which so deeply move our hearts and souls in the present time. To-day I wish to give, as it were, a kind of basis, a kind of preparation, by guiding your souls towards certain powers and forces which are active in man's historical existence. They can only be recognised through the insight given by spiritual science and are not immediately perceptible to the ordinary consciousness. Let me point out to-day certain facts of human development, certain more or less sub-conscious facts. But let us set out from the truth that what takes place, as it were, in the hidden depths of every human being, can be recognised in the successive supersensible stages of knowledge, as described in my book A Path of Initiation (Knowledge of the Higher Worlds): it can be recognised through the so-called, imaginative knowledge, inspirative knowledge and intuitive knowledge. Yesterday, in my public lecture, I emphasized that this must always be borne in mind: namely that the spiritual scientist who reveals something concerning the spiritual worlds, as a result of knowledge gained by imaginative, inspirative and intuitive perceptions, should not add anything which does not already exist, even without his knowledge in those spiritual regions in which every human soul is at home. The spiritual scientist merely draws, attention to something which always weaves and lives in the world, and he, shows how the individual human soul lives in it. Such knowledge is therefore of importance not only for those who intend to penetrate into the stream of occult experiences, but it is of importance also for every human soul, for under every circumstance it constitutes an inner reality for all, tut an inner reality which cannot be recognised by the ordinary perception in life.

Let me therefore set out from certain facts concerning human nature in general which are accessible to the imaginative perception. Every day we may observe an enigmatic process—at least it is an enigma to ordinary science—which alternates rhythmically in our life: WAKING and SLEEPING.

We already know that during, our waking state we belong to the physical world of the earth with our four parts or members, with the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego. We know that during our sleeping state, that is to say, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we exist in the physical world only with our physical body and with our etheric body and that we withdraw, as it were, into a purely spiritual world with our astral body and with our Ego. What presents itself to the spiritual perception of the spiritual investigator, may be characterised by saying: The spiritual investigator simply perceives something which, always takes place in man, for example when he abandons his physical and etheric body on falling asleep, and ascends with his astral body and Ego into regions pertaining to a higher world. The spiritual-scientific investigator simply watches a process which takes place in man, in every man, whenever he falls asleep.

We may therefore say: The spiritual investigator only observes something which would present itself to every human soul if in the state of sleep, not in the: dreaming state, it could look down upon the world so as to discover among the objects in this world its physical and etheric body, but as something which exists outside the sleeping soul. But we should not think that from, the standpoint of sleep we would see our physical body and our etheric body which we left, behind in the same way in which we perceive with physical eyes the. objects which surround, us in the physical world. In order to see the world in the way in which we perceive it from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling: asleep, we must use our physical eyes, our physical sense-organs. We do not use our senses when we arc outside our physical, body and our etheric body. If we were suddenly to become clairvoyant during our sleep, we would not perceive anything of all that we see during our waking condition, nor in the way in which we perceive it then. And then we do not perceive our physical body and our etheric body in the same way in which we see our physical form when we look into a mirror. It is quite wrong to think that we behold our physical and etheric body as if we were bending over it with our astral body and our Ego, that we view them from this standpoint and, see them as if in a mirror. This is not the case. What presents itself to the imaginative-knowledge is that everything which we are accustomed to see in our waking state of consciousness during our ordinary life disappears in the end, it really vanishes from our sight. In reality, our physical body and our etheric body then appear to us as if they were extended into a world, enlarged into a world; they appear to us as if they were connected with the whole world of the earth. We behold them ... and we are conscious of the fact that we are looking upon our physical body and our etheric body, but we behold them in such a way that to begin with they constitute for us as it were the only existing world.

Even as in our waking state we are surrounded by mountains, rivers and clouds, by the sun and the stars, etc., and look upon these as our environment, so when we are outside our physical and etheric body and look upon our environment, we behold our physical and etheric body as if enlarged into a world. We really behold this. We do not look upon anything else. And we envisage it in the same way in which we ordinarily view the different objects on the earth.

We look upon our own bodily structure as if it were a whole world. And a strange thing appears: This world which we behold, appears to us in such—away that in failing asleep we experience it in the same way in which we experience the earth in the spring: it has shed off its snow covering and brings forth green shoots, and once more prepares itself for the growth and vegetation of everything that is produced upon it; everything begins to grow and to green. When we fall asleep and behold the physical body and the etheric body enlarged into a world, we behold them in such a way that we experience them as it were like a planet that is awakening in the spring. And this continues throughout the condition of sleeping. What we see in it, the mighty pictures which really appear to us in their extension as a planet, prepare to pass over into summer, just like the earth faces Sommer, when its spring is coming to an end. This is how we pass through sleep, if we live through it in the right way.

We go as it were through the sleeping state as far as a point in which we feel: our physical body and our etheric body carry a growing, greening life to the flowering stage, indeed to the stage of the development of fruits—everywhere we behold that everything is growing and flourishing.

If I may express myself in detail I must say: To the imaginative vision the sight which thus appears, presents to be sure a paradoxical aspect. When we survey the surface of the earth with our physical eyes, we are conscious of the fact that the plants grow upwards from below; but when we observe from outside what takes place in our body, and take the vegetable world as a comparison, it is as if its roots were to penetrate into our body from above, and its flowers would grow into the body. Bo that we then experience a world that is completely upside down, and its fruits grow into us.

We then discover that these fruits which penetrate into, us really bring to expression the strengthening which is brought by sleep, this strengthening of which we are conscious. And this enables us to know (because everything which we thus perceive in the imagination are forces) that by passing over into the condition of sleep, our physical body and our etheric body which remain lying on the bed, receive forces from the whole cosmos. We behold how the forces which express themselves in pictures of plants growing out of the world, come to us from the cosmos. We behold how the cosmos sends a whole vegetation into our bodily structure. And this gives us the sure knowledge that on falling asleep we abandon our body because from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep our astral body and our Ego keep the physical body and the etheric body away from the influences of the cosmic forces. By going out ourselves, we make our physical and etheric body free for the influences of the whole cosmos, which sends in these forces—elemental, not physical forces—expressed in the above-mentioned imaginations.

Whenever we fall asleep, a connection is established between our physical and etheric body and the whole cosmos. In the waking condition, we live in the physical world, but when we are asleep our physical and etheric body live in the sphere which may be designated as the elemental world, the world of pure forces, which presents itself to us in the form of the above mentioned imaginations.

And where are we ourselves, with our astral body and our Ego? This has frequently been described and it is also contained in many books: With our Ego and our astral body we live in the world which has been described as the world of the Higher Hierarchies, among the Beings whom we designate as Angeles, Archangels, Archai, and so forth. Into these Beings and into this world penetrate the astral body and the Ego. Even as during our waking state we know of the existence of the creatures pertaining to the animal world, to the vegetable world, and to the mineral world, and stand above them, as it were, as human beings, by taking them into our thoughts, so we ourselves are now taken in by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. I might say, we are absorbed by them like thoughts.

The significant thing is that we can say: Whereas there below our physical body and our etheric body enter in connection with the forces of the whole cosmos, we ourselves become thoughts from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, as if we were real Beings woven out of the essence of thought and will. We become the thoughts of Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Even as WE think Nature, so do the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies think US.

If we wish to speak exactly, it is therefore not correct to say: When we abandon the physical body, we think the world. It is instead correct to say: We experience that we are the thoughts of the world of the higher Hierarchies. If thoughts had consciousness and could experience themselves during our waking state, this is how we should experience ourselves outside the physical body, as thoughts of the higher Beings.

And how do we experience through imaginative knowledge the moment of waking-up again? When we gradually approach the moment of waking up, we really experience it in the same way (we may again compare this Imagination with external Nature) in which we experience the approach of winter, with its destructive and paralyzing effect on the greening growing life of summer. We dive down into the physical and etheric body when we wake up, and even as the winter brings cold and frost which destroy the glory of summer, so we dive into the physical and etheric body in the same way in which the winter dives down into the earth. We destroy the forces which entered from the elemental sphere of the cosmos into our physical and etheric body like a vegetation or an animal world, we destroy them in the same way in which the winter destroys the glory of summer.

When we are awake, our presence within the physical and etheric body brings about a condition comparable to the one in which the cosmos places the earth in winter: We spread winter over our own physical and etheric being, by penetrating into it.

This shows you at the same time that comparisons often used from physical points of view are not correct from the spiritual aspect. Of course, we feel that we are connected with the whole cosmos and that our experiences are a microcosmic image of the macrocosmos. But when people wish to compare their microcosmic life with the life of the macrocosm, they like to say: When we wake up, this is like the approach of spring in our life, aid our waking life is like summer,—the autumn is like the fatigue which we feel in the evening and our sleeping life is like winter. But the very opposite is true. Summer, life is the sleeping life, and winter life is the waking life! This is the truth.

When the spiritual investigator really investigates these conditions, he discovers that by rising up with his Ego and astral body into the spheres of the higher Hierarchies, where he is thought, as it were, by the higher Beings, not only the forces of the elemental world influence his physical body and his etheric body, but that certain Beings of the higher Hierarchies also influence our physical body and our etheric body. Not only the elemental world, consisting of FORCES, but real BEINGS, the Beings of the Hierarchies, of the Higher hierarchies, are active within our physical body and our etheric body.

Here a strange thing presents itself: Namely, we can perceive that when we fall asleep we penetrate into conditions which are quite different from those of our waking state. As stated, everything which can thus be said, is based upon the fact that spiritual research allows us to watch how the process of falling asleep and of waking up takes place. And spiritual investigation discovers that from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, our physical body and our etheric body are, for example, also subjected to the influence of that Being of the Higher Hierarchies whom we must experience as FOLK-SPIRIT, as FOLK-SOUL, as the Folk-Soul to whom we belong.

When we wake up, we do not only dive down into our physical body and into our etheric body, but also into the processes which take place in them as the result of the activity of the Folk-Soul. And a peculiar thing appears—please note this carefully, for we who wish to penetrate into spiritual science must observe the connections in the world more deeply than through the ordinary external perception—the following strange thing appears: When we fall asleep, we do not only dive down into those Beings of the Higher Hierarchies that correspond to our individual development, but also into the spiritual Beings whom we must look upon as Folk-Souls from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we penetrate into the connection of all the other Folk-Souls, except into the Folk-Soul to which we ourselves belong. Let us note this carefully: During cur waking state we live immersed in the spiritual facts produced in our physical body and etheric body by OUR OWN Folk-Soul; from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live as it were together with our own Folk-Soul.

But in addition to our own Folk-Soul, there exist in the world all the other Folk-Souls of the other nations. When we fall asleep, we penetrate into the connection of these OTHER Folk-Souls; we do not dive down into one of these other Folk-Souls (let us bear this in mind clearly), but into their joint activity, into what they do together, as a community. Only our own Folk-Soul is excluded from this connection during the night.

We cannot escape entering into connection also with all the Folk-Souls that pertain to the other nations in which we are not incarnated during one particular incarnation. Whereas during the day, in our waking state, we belong to our own Folk-Soul, we belong during our sleeping state to the other Folk-Souls—but only in so far as they work together. When we are awake, we follow the intentions of the individual Folk Soul, into whose sphere we were born in a definite incarnation.

But it is possible to penetrate, even during the sleeping state, into the Being of an individual Folk-Spirit that is not our own. Whereas in our normal condition we live, when awake, within our own Folk-Soul, i.e. within his activity, and during sleep in the joint activity of the other Folk-Souls, we can dive down into an individual Folk-Soul, when we are asleep, if during our fife we are filled with glowing hatred for the activities of this other Folk-Soul. Though it may sound absurd, it is nevertheless true—and in our movement, we must learn to bear such truths calmly—it is nevertheless true that when a person is filled with glowing hatred for another nation, he condemns himself thereby to sleep with the Folk-Soul of that nation during the night, to live together with him.

Here we touch upon truths which show us that behind that veil which conceals the spiritual worlds to the ordinary observation, life begins to acquire a deeply earnest character and that it is uncomfortable, in a certain way, to be an adherent of spiritual, science. For from certain aspects spiritual science begins to treat certain matters earnestly which in ordinary life are looked upon as uncomfortable and which are mercifully withdrawn from us through the fact that in ordinary life the truth is not revealed to us. Although as followers of spiritual science we must stand with both, feet upon the ground which external life provides, we must nevertheless deal quite earnestly with such a fundamental principle, when we rise up to realms where other characteristics of life begin to reveal themselves.

You see, my book A WAY OF INITIATION speaks of that moment when we rise up to the spiritual world (indeed, every human being is in the spiritual world, it is simply a question of his being able to recognise a world which always exists round about him),—when that easy union, that unity of our being in which We live here in the physical world, ceases to exist. Divisions arise; but in addition to the division mentioned in that book, the one which may be observed after the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, there are other divisions, one for example, which is of deepest significance for our whole life of feeling. We should recognise that although we must do our duty fully towards the nation to which we belong in one particular incarnation and give it our love unstintingly, this nation stands within the whole process of evolution of the earth. We should realise that in view of the fact that through our Ego and our astral body we are also SPIRITUAL beings, we belong to the whole, of humanity and should therefore have impulses which we share with the whole of mankind. Spiritual science does net admit that we should, live in the world in a one-sided manner; these two sides of our being must be harmonised. We should realise that in our present incarnation we can love the nation to which we belong even though we are spiritual scientists, we can love it as deeply as any patriot, but the same time wo must bring this love in harmony with the feelings which unite us with the WHOLE of mankind.

Spiritual science above all unites us with the whole of mankind because it reveals to us that through our Ego and our astral body we are connected with humanity as a whole. To establish harmony between contrasts—this is what spiritual science more and more demands from those who dedicate themselves to it with earnestness and with worthy feelings. And it is harmful to mistake spiritual science for that unclear mysticism which always seeks to mix up the demands of external physical life with the truths to which we should ascend when we penetrate into the spiritual world. For that unclear mysticism which seeks to bring into ordinary life the things which spiritual science reveals in a true light, that unclear mysticism will, for example, never be able to harmonise the love for one's own nation with the love for the whole of mankind and it will lead instead to a vague mystical cosmopolitanism.

This, may be compared, as I have, done, with that equality wh.is always advanced by vague theosophists, the equality of all religions on earth. In an abstract way, it is possible to say that the truth is of course, contained in every religion. But this is the same as saying: On the table there are pepper, salt, cayenne and many other spices; they are all the same, for they are condiments. So, I may put cayenne into my coffee or sugar into my soup, this does not matter, for all condiments are the same Exactly the same, logic is applied by people who vaguely talk in a mystical way of the equal essence in all religions, instead of penetrating into the true essence of everything that appears in the evolution of the earth. The essential thing is to avoid emphasizing again and, again that all nations are, as it were, expressions of the universally human; it is instead essential to recognise the. specific task of each nation, as given, by the folk-soul. Fundamental points for this may be found in the lectures published long ago, which, were given several years before the war, so that they were not influenced by the present events and consequently it cannot be said that they are the result of war influences! I mean the lectures comprised in the cycle “THE MISSION OF THE SINGLE FOLK-SOULS IN CONNECTION WITH THE NORTHERN GERMANIC MYTHOLOGY.

In the present time above all it is important to reflect over such earnest things, so that the harmony between universal love and. the love for one's nation may be found. We need not recoil from describing the characteristics of each single nation, in so far as it is a nation, for the individual human being always, rises above his nation, but you will see from the remarks which I made that.it is necessary.to give such a description without any hatred. Even as we cannot recognise the true nature of a plant if we hate that plant,—for in that case we would describe our hatred—so it is not possible.to recognise the characteristics of a nation if we describe the qualities which we dislike in that nation, or if our description includes things inspired by our feelings of antipathy.

Those who are able, to rise to the standpoints of spiritual science should ceaselessly endeavour to gain insight not only into the uniform essence of the world, but into the harmony of its manifold characteristics. We should be able to feel warmest love for the nation to which we belong, in this warmth of feeling we need not be behind any other person, yet at the same time we should, be able to unite this with everything which unites us with humanity as a whole, with our feelings for the whole of mankind, as a great all-encompassing being

As stated, we shall deal more fully with these things the day after tomorrow how let me explain that when we pass over from the waking to the sleeping condition, when we are taken in and received by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, we really cast off the physical body and the etheric body which connect us with one particular incarnation. We therefore cast off our national character when we are asleep. When we are asleep, we are simply “human beings,” endowed with all the qualities which we must have through all the experiences gained as human, beings. But at the same time, when we observe from the spiritual-scientific standpoint what takes place with man both in his waking and sleeping conditions, we perceive that when he is asleep, when he lives in the spiritual world with his Ego and his astral body and also his physical body and his etheric body belong to the great cosmos, that then the single life which takes its course, as it were., within the compass of the skin, ceases, for our narrow individual self becomes extended to the great Self.

Consider now that, as a rule, in the course of twenty-four hours we always pass through a summer and a winter condition. Also, the earth passes through these conditions of summer and winter, but in the course of one year. Why does the. Earth pass through these states during the course of one year? Because the earth is, like man, a living Being? but upon another stage of the world of the Hierarchies. If we observe the whole earth physically, such as it exists, round about us, it is only the body of the earth, and even as man bears within him soul and spirit, so the earth also has its soul and its spirit. Our sleeping and waking conditions alternate in the course of twenty-four hours, whereas the earth sleeps and wakes during the course of one year. The earth is awake from autumn to spring, and it is asleep in the summer. We may therefore say that in the summer we are embedded in a sleeping earth. It is not true that the earth Is awake in the summer and asleep in the winter; this trivial comparison taken from ordinary life is hot correct. It is instead correct to say that with the approach of autumn the earth begins to wake up as a soul-spiritual being, and that it is most wide awake in the middle, of winter. The Spirit of the Earth is most deeply engrossed in thought in the middle of the winter, and with. the approach of spring, his thoughts gradually begin to ebb away, and in the summer the Spirit of the Earth is sound asleep; when life outside is budding and growing it is sound asleep.

As human beings, we are not only connected through our physical body with the body of the. Earth, but we are also connected with the Spirit of the Earth. Many lectures have shown you that through the Mystery of Golgotha the Spirit Whom we designate as the Christian Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, united Himself with the Spirit of the Earth. Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Spirit of Christ lives in the Spirit of the Earth. Consequently, if people wish to celebrate a festival expressing the fact that the Spirit of Christ lives in the Spirit of the Earth, what should be the right season for it?—Not summer, but winter would be the right season for such a festival, the very heart of winter. This festival is the Christmas Festival.

For this reason, the Christmas Festival and everything that develops from it is celebrated in the middle of winter. This proceeded from the real knowledge of the people who in the past fixed the Christian festivals of the year. The Christmas festival was fixed in accordance with occult truths, not with historical facts, because in regard to what now constitutes humanity, man is in the winter time united with that condition of earthly existence which is most wide awake, because his own soul-spiritual part is embedded in the soul-spiritual part of the earth. In the winter, he lives together with the waking earth.

And what do we find in the case of past races of whom we know that they built up their service to the world and their knowledge of the world upon a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? They must above all have based themselves upon that which lives in the SLEEPING Spirit of the Earth. In contrast to the men of more modern times, these ancient peoples must have risen to the truths received in unconscious inspirations in the form most suited to them, when the Spirit of the Earth was immersed in deepest sleep, when it withdrew almost completely in sleep. We therefore find among these peoples whose cults and knowledge were drawn out of a more sleeping, dreaming state, the MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL, in contrast to the Christmas Festival which is suited to a more modern human race.

What was continued in an external way and what our materialistic, age did not understand at all, has its truly deep foundation in a spiritual, reality. Now we live in an age in which people should again begin to think and to feel in a different way from that of past epochs. The task of the past epoch was to make us familiar with the sphere of materialistic thinking and feeling. And the past centuries had to bring human souls in contact with materialistic thought and feeling. Indeed, the development of the earth had to pass through this materialistic epoch. And it is wrong if we only criticize materialism, for materialism had to enter the., evolution of the earth. But now we live in an epoch in which materialism must be overcome, an epoch in which a SPIRITUAL conception must enter the human souls. This is the more or less distinct or unclear feeling of all those who feel attracted, by our spiritual-scientific goals, by our spiritual-scientific world conception. These souls feel that the time has approached in which the spiritual world should be grasped consciously, whereas in the past it had to be perceived in a dreamlike way. Spiritual science exists for the purpose of understanding the world in a conscious way.

The past epoch was therefore the epoch of materialism. You see, because humanity had to dive down, as it were, into materialism, the strong impulse which leads it up again, had to be active above all during the age of materialism. This is the Christ Impulse. The preparation began when the Christ Impulse entered the development of the earth. During the 14th/15th century it was in its most active stage, but when the Christ Impulse approached humanity was already preparing itself for its dive into materialism. The Christ Impulse existed in the evolution of the world as an objective fact, yet the people, who lived in the time when it appeared, were least of all able and ready to grasp it. Now we live in an epoch in which we must begin to understand what took place.

What do we see? We may study the strange course followed by the Christ Impulse in the historical development up to the present time. We see that when the Christ Impulse entered the evolution of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha it was not grasped at all by those who lived at that time. Let us try to form a picture of what people did in their cleverness! We find that all hinds of theological systems arose during the first Christian centuries which immediately followed the Christ Impulse. People began to dispute as to the way in which they were to think of the Trinity, and so forth. Throughout these, centuries there were endless theological disputes, and It would be the worst possible mistake to study the influence of the Christ impulse by studying these theological disputes which lasted for so many centuries. The people who were disputing over the Christ Impulse did not understand anything of the way in which the Christ Impulse stands at the very centre of evolution.

Let us try to understand how the Christ Impulse really worked. Let me indicate a few facts as an illustration. Let us take an event which took place in the 4th century, in the year 312 A.D. on the 26th of October, an event which changed, as it were, the future map of Europe completely. It took place when Constantine called the Great, the son of Constantius Chlorus, moved against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome and gained a victory over him, whereby Christianity also became victorious in an external way in the Occident. For Constantine raised Christianity to the rank of official religion of the State. But was it his own cleverness which inspired all these deeds? Were the events which then took place the outcome of his cleverness? We cannot say that this was the case. For what occurred? Maxentius, the emperor of Rome, on hearing that Constantine was approaching, first consulted the Sibylline Books, so that he tried to grasp the world's events in a dreamlike way. What these Books revealed to him, was interpreted as follows: The right “deed would be done” by the one who being the ruler of Rome would leave the city and wage battle outside the walls of Rome. This was the most unusual advice which could be imagined. For Constantine had a far, far stronger army than Maxentius; nevertheless, he could not have won had Maxentius remained within the walls of Rome, But Maxentius followed the advice of the Sybil line Books and moved out of Rome. Also, in Constantine's army, the victory was not gained by the generals, but Constantine had a dream in which he saw the symbol of Christ, and in obedience to this dream he ordered that the Cross, the symbol of Christ, should be carried in front of his armies. He made his subsequent deeds depend on the revelations of that dream.

This battle, which gave a decisive aspect to the whole map of Europe of that time, was not waged by generals, nor determined by human cleverness, but by dreams and prophecies. If the events had followed the course dictated by human consciousness, and not influences coming from sub-conscious depths, everything in Europe would have taken on a different aspect.

Theologians were quarrelling over the true essence of Christ—whether He was born in Eternity together with the Father or whether he was born in Time, whether He was of equal rank with the Father, and so forth. But their thoughts did not contain anything of the Christ Impulse! The Christ Impulse worked in the sub-consciousness of human beings. It did not work through the Ego, but through the astral body. The Christ Impulse was a reality, and it worked in such a way that people did not need to understand it. This is the important and essential fact. The way in which the Christ Impulse worked, is as independent of the way in which people grasped it, as a thunderstorm is independent of what people learn in a laboratory concerning the electrical machine, and so forth.

This time has now come in which we must immerse ourselves CONSCIOUSLY into the influence of the Christ Impulse. In the historical events, however, the Christ Impulse is active as a force.

Let us pass over from this example to one which belongs to a later epoch. Here we must consider something which I already explained to you. It is important to know, in connection with the materialistic epoch, that when people wished to immerse themselves in the spiritual world, they could do this best of all in the winter. In that epoch, we therefore come across the conception that during the Thirteen Nights in the middle of winter specially gifted natures could obtain the gift of inspirations from the spiritual world. Every nation has legends which tell us how specially gifted people, who do not pass through an Initiation, but obtain inspirations through their own nature, through elemental forces which work in them, become inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve to the Three Kings' Day (Epiphany), during the Thirteen Holy Nights. Recently, a Very beautiful legend was discovered in Norway, the legend of OLAF ASTESON, who went to a church on Christmas Eve and began to sleep. He slept until the 6th of January, and when he woke up, he was able to relate in pictures the events which took place in the soul-realm—the Spirit-realm as we call it. He expressed them in pictures, but he had experienced all this during the Thirteen Nights. Such legends may be found everywhere. They are not simply legends, for in fact there always existed specially gifted people who passed through a kind of Nature-Initiation. Elemental forces were, active within them in this natural initiation, which we can only attain through the will, by faithfully following the indications given for the path leading to initiation.

We may therefore say: During the materialistic epoch, we can always come across people who were able to unite themselves with the Spirit of the Earth in the middle of winter, when the Spirit of the Earth is most wide awake, and they were thus able to receive inspirations. This was the epoch in which the Christ Impulse that had united itself with the earth, could not work through human consciousness. We must think of specially receptive souls, who could receive inspirations from the spiritual world. And we find that such souls receive the impulses which inspire their deeds, they receive their inspirations from the spiritual world, in the Thirteen Holy Nights, until the 6th of January. This was necessary, and it appeared again and again in small and great events that in the course of history there were people with such a spiritual disposition that when the right moment arrived for them, when they could live through these Thirteen Winter Nights, a spiritual impulse entered into them, and in that epoch this was above all the Christ Impulse. During the materialistic epoch, natural initiations which did not depend on conscious human activity, took place most easily of all in these Thirteen Holy Nights. And whenever such initiations appear, we find that they took place during these Thirteen Nights.

There is one event which induces even those who are least inclined to recognise the spiritual world (and to-day very few people are inclined to do so), to admit that in the 15th century Spiritual Powers really entered the course of history through the medium of a young girl, the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc. It can be proved historically that also in this case the whole map of Europe took on a different aspect because tie Maid of Orleans aided the French in the war against the English people who reflect over such things will discover that in accordance with human plans, everything would have followed a different course if the shepherd maiden had hot interfered—and through her, the forces of the spiritual world. The Maid of Orleans was only an instrument for the forces which were then at work. The influence which worked through her was the Christ Impulse.

But a natural initiation was required for this, and such an initiation could only have taken place, as it were, during the Thirteen Nights until the 6th of January. The Maid of Orleans must therefore have been in a kind of sleeping condition from the 24th of December to the 6th of January, and been specially open to the spiritual influences which are active just in that period. We must therefore assume that the Maid of Orleans must have lived through the period from the 24th of December to the 6th of January in a not fully conscious state and received the Christ Impulse. And the Maid of Orleans indeed passed through such a condition in a very marked way! It cannot be experienced more markedly than during the sleeping condition which precedes birth, during the last days in which a child lives in the mother's body, just before birth. External human consciousness is then not able to take in anything, for it lives in a sleeping state, and when the child within the mother's body reaches the end of its time and approaches birth, this is the best condition of sleep this last period in the mother's body. The Maid of Orleans was actually born on the 6th of January, and this is the great mystery connected with her: that she passed through a Nature-Initiation during the thirteen days which preceded her birth. Specially sensitive people assembled in the village on the 6th of January on which the Maid of Orleans was born, said that something special must have happened; they felt that something special had occurred in their village: The Maid of Orleans was born, she passed through a natural initiation during that sleep In her mother's body, that sleep which was so significant to her, the sleeping condition just before her birth.

This shows us that spiritual Beings are really at work below the threshold of consciousness, behind the events which are accessible to human consciousness. It shows us the meaning of a history that only reckons with information gained by documents and external reports! But the Gods work along different paths and use other means: They place a Maid of Orleans into the world, through her special Karma in that particular incarnation she is able to take in the Christ Impulse and work through it. At the right moment, the Gods allow the Christ Impulse to flow into the development of humanity. Of course, both factors had to be there: for we must consider the special individual Karma of the Maid of Orleans. This must be added. Not every child born on the 6th of January could fulfil the same deeds.

We can therefore really say: The Christ Impulse worked through forces in man which did not rise up into human consciousness. Only now we again live in an age in which we should take in consciously the impulses which sought to enter the historical development by other ways than the conscious one.

I wished to call up in you a feeling of how the sub-conscious powers really work, and that external history, studied upon the foundation of documents and external records, is really quite superficial. In the present time, it is good to study history. For now, above all we can see that great, mighty and heroic events are taking place, joined to deeds of Sacrifice. But at the same time, we can see that the events of our time are accompanied, as it were, by the effects of the crassest materialism, by that consistent form of materialism which seeks to explain everything which is now taking place.as the result of merely external conditions. This is evident through the fact that one nation makes the other responsible for the present events. People wish to judge everything from outside, and they seek in others the guilt for what is taking place. But also in the present time the true cause and reasons for what is taking place should be sought in the depths of subconscious events. But we shall speak of this the day after tomorrow.

The present epoch can more than any other admonish people to follow spiritual impulses of knowledge, also in view of the blood which is shed on the battlefields. When peace will spread out its wings over the countries now at war, people will make a discovery; They will discover that such tremendous conflagrations in the history of the world cannot be explained by drawing in external causes! They will discover that it is not possible to explain them. To-day people still say—particularly the cleverest people: “It is not right to speak of the things which gave rise to this war let history speak of this.” And they think that they are particularly clever when they say: “In 50 or in 100 years' time, history will reveal the true causes of this war.”

But what we now designate as history will never be able to explain the causes of the present events: People will see that a historical survey cannot grasp the true cause. Other aids will have to be drawn in: This is particularly evident through an occult observation of the present time.

What is one of the most evident facts in the present time which is so fraught with destiny? Oh, one of its most obvious facts is undoubtedly the one that so many young people are passing through the portal of death! We know what takes place with them when they pass through the portal of death. We know that a human being first goes out of his physical body with his etheric body, his astral body and his Ego, and that after, e.g. relatively short time he sheds his etheric body and continues his pilgrimage with an extract of the etheric body. But can you not imagine that there must be a difference between an etheric body shed between the 20th and 30th year of life, an etheric body which might still have continued its functions in life for many decades, and an etheric body cast off at a later age? Yes, there is a great difference! When a person dies as a result of illness or old age, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But, in the case of a young person—and countless young people are^-now passing through the portal of death—the etheric body has not yet been able to fulfil all that it might have fulfilled.

Let me now give you a concrete example of what takes place with an etheric body torn away violently, as it were, from its physical body. Of course, many examples can be given. But let me give you an example which we actually experienced here at Dornach last autumn. We experienced it at the site where the Goetheanum stands. A family that lives near the Goetheanum had a little son aged seven, really a wonderful little boy. He was so good that when his father had to leave for the front, little seven year old Theo told his mother: “Now I must work specially hard, for I must help you in things, where father used to help you.” One, evening after a lecture a person belonging to our circle came and told us that little Theo was missing since that evening.—One could only suppose that, there must have been an accident. On that evening, through circumstances which in ordinary life, are designated as a “coincidence,” a furniture van had passed through a lane, through which no van had passed for years, and through which no van ever passed since. At a certain spot, it overturned. Little Theo was in the small house called the Canteen, where the friends who work on the Building get their meals. He would have left sooner, but by a strange coincidence he was held up by someone and instead of going out by the usual door which would have led him down a certain path, he went out through another door and passed by the furniture van at the very moment when it fell over. The van fell on top of him. This is an example, which clearly shows how Karma works.

I have often used a simple comparison in order to show how frequently people mix up cause and effect! A man is seen walking along the banks of a river. Suddenly he falls into the water. A stone is found at the place_; where the man fell into the river. The man is drawn out of the water but he is already dead. On investigating matters, people will give the following account of the accident in the full belief that they are telling the truth: The man stumbled over the stone, fell into the river and was drowned. Yet it would have sufficed to examine things more carefully and one would have discovered that death was not due to the fact that the man fell into the water, but he fell into the river because he was dead, for he had had a stroke. Consequently, the case was quite different from what people imagined it to be. Thus, we see how easy it is to mistake cause and effect, and particularly in ordinary science cause and effect are always mixed up.

In Theo's case, Theo himself was the cause of the accident; it was he who caused the van to pass by at a certain moment and he attracted the van so that it fell on top of him. This should he borne in mind as the secret of the whole case.

But let us now consider the continuation; A human being who dies accidentally in the very prime of life! If one's heart is intimately united with the whole work on the Building at Dornach and if at the same time one has the possibility to observe the influences which work in this Building, it is possible to say: The etheric body so violently torn away from little Theo, now lives in atmosphere of the Goetheanum Building, and the most beautiful forces of inspiration for the work connected with it, can be gained by uniting one's soul with the enlarged etheric body, extended as it were, to a small world, which lives in the atmosphere of the Goetheanum. I shall never hesitate to admit unreservedly that many things which I was able to discover at that time in connection with our Building, I owe to the fact that I turned my own soul to the etheric body of little Theo that was active in the atmosphere of the Building. Of such kind are the connections in the world. The real individuality of the human being passes on, but the etheric body that might still have sustained life for many decades, remains behind.

Consider now how many etheric bodies soar above us in the spiritual atmosphere and will also soar above those who come after us! They are the etheric bodies that remained behind, the etheric bodies of those who passed early in life through the portal of death in the present epoch so heavily laden with destiny. We do not speak here of the paths trodden by the INDIVIDUALITIES, but of a special spiritual atmosphere created by the etheric bodies that remained behind. The human beings here on earth will live in this atmosphere. They will be submerged in an atmosphere which is filled by these etheric bodies whose life-forces were sacrificed, in order that humanity may progress through the tragic events which are taking place particularly in the present time.

It will be necessary however to feel what these etheric bodies desire, for these etheric bodies will be the best inspirers of mankind in the future. A beautiful age of spirituality might dawn, if true understanding, an inner understanding of the heart, is brought towards these etheric bodies, if people listen to what they wish to say. All these etheric bodies can in the future aid humanity to rise up to spiritual heights. For this reason, it is so important that there should be souls on earth who are able to feel what is penetrating into the atmosphere of the future, through the medium of these etheric bodies. You learn something, concerning the nature of these etheric bodies not only by recounting that man consists of a physical body, of an etheric body, of an astral body and of an Ego, but also by learning to know the secret of the influence exercised, by these etheric bodies and of how this influence will work in the future.

Those who are already now followers of spiritual science prepare the souls so that they become receptive for the messages of these etheric bodies. Let us therefore turn our souls to the spiritual world, for in so doing, we prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel the heritage of the dead, to feel what the dead demand from mankind in the future. If spiritual science can stimulate human souls in such a way that they can turn their spiritual sense towards the spiritual worlds, the effect which grows out of the blood/courage/suffering and sacrifice will be great and powerful indeed. Let me therefore recapitulate at the end of this lecture the feelings which can animate us, when our souls, which follow spiritual science, are directed towards the great events of our time:

Aus dem Mut der Kampfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassenem,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird er wachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen geistbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich

Translation

From the courage of the fighters
From the blood of the battles,
From the sorrow of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a spiritual fruit,
If souls, spiritually conscious, direct
Their understanding towards the Spirit-realm.

Uebersinnliche Mensch und Die Fragen der Willensfreiheit und Unsterblichkeit nach Ergebnissen der Geisteswissenschaft. (Free Will, Immortality. Lecture given at Stuttgart, Germany, April 24, 1918)

All serious investigation of man has always taken as its starting point the recognition that his being is spiritual. For it is quite obvious to anyone, a philosopher, for example, studying the nature of man that the kind of science that operates within the world of the senses is not able to reach the real essence of man, or at least, if it is thought that this essence can be comprehended by an understanding limited by the senses and bound by the normal operation of the human brain, as is more or less believed by the materialistic form of monism, then we find that our need for a deeper kind of knowledge remains unsatisfied and we are left with the feeling that something further is needed to show that the real being of man is to be found outside the world of the senses. I would like to bring to your notice one of the very first thinkers in the spiritual evolution of humanity who, through tremendous effort in his own thinking, even told his students at the university and those who heard his lectures elsewhere, how in the inner life of the soul one can get away from the situation which prevents the recognition of what the being of man really is and come to a point where this is possible. This is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. And he tried in what one might call a paradoxical way to show his audience what kind of activity the soul had to develop in order to find its way from the sensible to the super-sensible. For instance, he said to the audience at the beginning of his lectures, “Try to think the wall.” Well, of course, this was easy. The audience tried to put itself into the position of thinking the wall. Then after he had let the people think the wall for a while he said, “Now try to think the person who has been thinking the wall.” Fichte knew what he wanted, and even contemporary witnesses have described the scene—how the effect was immediate and convincing, how the audience was completely nonplussed when they tried to think the person who had thought the wall, and how their thinking was in a way paralyzed when they were unable to reach the goal put before them.

Goethe always studied these questions concerning the theory of knowledge from a particularly human viewpoint, that is, he was most concerned with those things in life which bear fruit, and there is a saying of his, which is greatly illuminated by Fichte's demand and the results it had, and this is that Goethe said he managed to lead a sane and wise life because he avoided thinking about thinking. Goethe always sought to be aware of the real nature of life wherever his soul was engaged and he felt that the attempt to think thinking put a person, keeping to the ordinary means of thinking, into an impossible position. Despite this, anyone beginning to investigate the super-sensible worlds can only rely on the thinking at the outset, for he very soon sees that what the senses can teach him or what can be achieved by combining sense phenomena only raises questions that lead man away from his real being. In his thinking he is within himself, and in employing the power of his soul to penetrate the inner activity of his thinking he can expect to find something that will lead him to the real being of man.

Now it is very odd that the further we get, the more effort we make with our thinking as employed in ordinary life, the greater our doubts become of finding in it a gateway into the world where the real being of man is. In fact, at last we become convinced through this experience of our thinking that—if I may use a somewhat crude expression—we can no more think thinking than we can wash water.

And yet, the real method, the real way of penetrating to those worlds where the real being of man can be known, or, as we shall see later, be experienced, is by way of the thinking. However, this method does not use the thinking as we do in everyday life or in science, but thinking is developed in a particular way so it becomes quite a different power in the soul from what it was before. And this is the basis for understanding any investigation of the super-sensible worlds—that we learn to experience how the thinking can be developed into something quite different in the soul from what it is in ordinary life and science.

Now I have often described the main essentials that have to be undertaken in order that the thinking becomes a different power in the soul from what it was before, and so today I shall not go into the things that the thinking has to perform to get, as it were, outside itself and become this new power in the soul. I shall just mention a few things to characterize what is actually achieved when this comes about. You can find a more detailed description of how the thinking is handled in my book, Knowledge of Higher Worlds and also in the second part of my Occult Science. Today I would only like to emphasize that there are certain inner exercises that the thinking has to undertake. These concern only the soul and consist in taking particular mental images into the consciousness and in being related to them in such a way that the soul is really able to experience something within the thinking. This can happen only when the thinking is inwardly permeated by something that is not normally present. The experience then achieved is the first step toward investigating the super-sensible worlds. It comes about by strengthening the thinking by meditation (the various kinds of meditation and concentration are described in the books mentioned above), and it makes us aware that the kind of thinking employed in ordinary life and science is not suitable for the investigation of super-sensible worlds. In particular we notice that in using our ordinary thinking we do not become conscious of the forces that lead us into the super-sensible worlds. And such exercises of the thinking, and a real inner experience of it, convince us more than any purely materialistic theorizing that a bodily instrument, the physical organism, is necessary in order that we can think as we do in ordinary life between birth, or rather conception and birth, and death. And because the bodily organism is necessary, because our thinking is dependent upon the bodily instrument for all that it achieves, our thinking cannot free itself from its connection with the physical world, and we cannot use this thinking for penetrating any world except the one in which it is not possible to find the being of man. We see that because our thinking is bound to the physical instrument we are prevented from penetrating into the super-sensible worlds. We observe this when we stop all outward perception in meditation, when we intentionally blot out the operation of our senses and bring to a standstill all our inner feelings and sensations, devoting ourselves inwardly in meditation entirely to a certain thought, in order to concentrate all the powers of our soul upon this thought, and thereby strengthen our thinking.

It is precisely in our meditation that we learn how we make use of the body in order to think, and our experience brings us a greater conviction concerning the dependence of the thinking upon the physical organism than any theoretical materialist could do. But we also notice that in living within the physical organism, the latter makes something possible that could not exist without it, that the thinking is given something it could not have were there no physical organism. I hope I may be permitted to make such a paradoxical statement. Its truth will become apparent as we proceed. What we notice is what has to remain of the thought afterward if our soul life is to be sound, and this is the memory of it. It is essential in our soul life that in addition to our thinking we must also have memory. If a person were not able to hold on to what he thinks he would not, for our ordinary physical world, be a normal person. Everything depends upon our being able to preserve our thoughts in our memory. And now we observe in our inner methodical training of our thinking that the physical organism is necessary in order that memory of our thinking is retained. But here we also notice that our thinking can be released from the physical organism—only not the kind of thinking that becomes memory.

What I have just said leads the scientist of spirit on a particular path. It leads him to realize that memory, as it normally exists in the human being, is a power that is only significant in the physical world and that it has to be separated from the activity of thinking. Just as the chemist arrives at the mysteries of the material world by separating substances from one another in the laboratory, so, too, the scientist of spirit has to proceed with the various functions of the soul, but his spiritually-scientific analysis consists in purely inward processes of the soul, and this is even more the case with the synthesis, the putting together again of what has been separated. Thus the necessity arises of separating the activity in thinking which leads to the normal memory, from the actual activity of thinking itself. But how can we do this?—This is the question which now arises: Analogous to the way certain substances are treated so that constituent elements that are dissolved in it can be extracted from it, how can we extract that part of the thinking that leads to memory so that something finally remains? This comes about by constantly dwelling on certain thoughts and pictures for a very long time, even if only for a very short period each day, and by laying the emphasis in this not on seeing that a memory remains, but on observing what we do when we are occupied in thinking. Then we observe that something lives in this thinking activity, which, it is true, we also always have in everyday life and in ordinary scientific investigation, but which remains unconscious, does not reach into our consciousness. I will make this clear by the following: Let us assume we perform an external action connected with our profession or business. In doing it we are constantly producing the same thing. A person has to choose a job which leads him to perform the same action every day. This is the main thing, for our everyday lives at least, to make something which can be produced by our action. The result is the main thing. But alongside this, something else frequently takes place and even when it concerns an external action, we can regard it as something most important and essential in our ordinary lives. In carrying out the same task every day we become more skilled, our hands become more alive so that we not only produce the necessary product, but we also intensify our own activity. Perhaps we do not often notice this intensification of our activity. But we can do so.

What I have described here about ordinary life, where it naturally has quite a different significance, must be applied by the scientist of spirit to the inner experience of his thinking, of the kind of thinking that he employs in meditation, when he immerses himself in a state of forgetfulness so far as his surroundings and various experiences are concerned. And he will then find, as long as he does not overdo the individual meditations—I shall speak further about this later—that in constantly and intensively pursuing such an inner development of his thoughts he will come to observe not the thoughts but the activity itself that works in his thinking. He observes that there is such an activity of thinking through the intensification of his own experience. And it is in feeling this activity of the thinking, in strengthening this activity so that he can be conscious of it in a way that does not come about in ordinary life and science, that he fashions something in his soul that he can then separate off from the memory-activity of his thinking. For the continuation of such exercises as have been described brings about a quite definite result. And this result is that a person, in these moments which he himself controls, can immerse himself to such an extent in a new activity, which the thinking now produces, that in this new activity memory actually disappears, and he is left solely with an experience of his activity. In developing and experiencing his thinking in this way, the thoughts themselves vanish and he lives entirely within his thinking activity. The curious thing is that having grasped this point where we live solely within our inner activity, we notice that in this inner activity of the soul we are without memory as we know it in normal life. Something else is present. I would like to use an illustration to show how our whole soul life is now altered by what happens in our thinking.

There is a well-known occurrence in the life-story of the poet Grillparzer. I am not mentioning this in order to prove that Grillparzer, as far as his capacity enabled him, took the same view as is put forward here, but because his experience provides us with a lever for what has to be produced rather more artificially if we wish to rise to an investigation of the super-sensible being of man.

Grillparzer had conceived the whole outline of his Golden Fleece. He had thought out the plan, the individual events and how they were related, in short, he had conceived his drama, The Golden Fleece, in thoughts. But the remarkable thing happened that later he forgot the form in which he had conceived it. He was absolutely unable to remember it. But, lo and behold! one day at the piano as he played a piece that he had played at the time he had conceived The Golden Fleece, his memory suddenly came to life again, and the whole thing was once more present in his mind. How did this come about? Well, it shows us that the inner activity, which was the same both times he played, enabled him to find the same thought content that he had before. As I have said, this is a step toward the kind of thing we are discussing here, but only a step. We have only to proceed further on the same path in the appropriate way.

For the peculiar thing that the one meditating, the scientist of spirit, arrives at is that on the one hand he feels his ordinary memory dying away—though naturally only for those times when he is practicing spiritual investigation—while on the other something else can arise that is not of the nature of memory but comes about in another way. This is the activity in which he has immersed himself. This activity constantly reappears. And then, when we have accustomed ourselves for a while to separating the activity of thinking from the thoughts that remain as memory, we notice that the whole mood of our soul life has become different under the influence of these exercises. When we have reached a certain point in the development of our soul through these exercises we notice something that can fill us with dismay—we notice that we can experience things where no memory of them remains. And because they leave no memory behind, they remain as processes of our experience, constantly in movement, in a way real dreams, but dreams that have great power over our inner soul life. And so in this kind of “empty” consciousness that is unable to preserve any memory of what it has thought, we very soon become aware how our own experiences come to us as if from outside us, in the way that sense perceptions come to us. This does not come about through the activity of the memory, nor through our normal effort to produce thoughts. The impression we get is more or less of our whole life as far back as the moment to which we can normally remember. Our thoughts appear as real entities; they appear to be alive. They do not appear as they normally do in our memory, but they approach us as living beings. Our thinking altogether assumes quite a different character under the influence of these exercises. It really becomes quite a different power in the soul. And I would like to add a further illustration to show the surprising way this change in our thinking activity can work.

Imagine that a statue stands before us—it has a definite form. Then imagine that the moment could arrive when this statue would begin to walk, to live. We would then experience something that goes against the laws of nature. Naturally this could not happen. But I want to use this illustration because something comes about in our soul life which can be compared to this. With the thoughts we have in ordinary life and that result in memories, we have in our inner experience the impression that these thoughts have to be passive copies that imitate the outer world, that they do not have their own inner life and that if they were to lead their own lives, then our soul life would, through this inner life of our thoughts, lead its existence in pure phantasy, in dreams, hallucinations and even more serious states. In our ordinary soul life our thoughts really do have something that can be compared with the forms of a statue. Here I have no intention of saying anything against the value of sculpture. That would of course be stupid. But we can nevertheless compare a dead statue with the kind of logic that operates in our ordinary thinking where we are not conscious of the actual activity in our thinking, of that which joins our thoughts together, which unites and divides them. Whereas the statue is unable to take on life, to become active, our inner logic, the inner weaving and life of our thoughts can be taken up into our consciousness, can become inwardly alive; in the same way an inner, living and logical being can arise out of the “logic” of the statue, a being that we feel to the extent of having the impression that we are in a quite different world. From this moment onward we know that what in the first instance freed itself from the memory, the actual activity of thinking, has now freed itself from dependence upon the physical organism.

The scientist of spirit is aware at this important point in his development that he has released his thinking activity from the physical organism, that his soul, inasfar as it moves in thoughts, has left his bodily organism, and that he is no longer in his body.

However paradoxical this may appear, it is true. This experience of the scientist of spirit has been characterized in earlier lectures here, and it can frequently be referred to because it describes something that has a shattering effect on the soul when it reaches the point I have just been talking about. For we cannot get away from the fact that the development which the scientist of spirit goes through involves inner upheavals and the surmounting of difficulties which we should know something about. This has no objective value. But if we are to speak about the ways and methods employed in investigating the super-sensible being of man, we should not omit this aspect. But now I must add that the way the science of spirit works, as I have been describing it here, can come into being only in our own time. For everything that comes into being in the course of the cultural evolution of humanity has naturally to appear at a particular moment. The scientific way of thinking was made possible three or four centuries ago by the inner conditions of human evolution existing at that time. Likewise, before our time it would not have been possible to train the powers of the soul in the way I have described. There had first to be a training of several hundred years in scientific method before thinking could acquire the necessary power to undertake such a development.

In earlier times, hundreds or even thousands of years ago, there were always people who penetrated into the spiritual worlds, though they proceeded along a different path and used different powers for their development, using methods that are no longer suited to humanity as it has evolved today. These methods have to be changed, just as the way we look at nature has changed during the course of time. Nevertheless, the observers of the spirit in the past also reached the point referred to here, where they were embraced by this living, weaving power of thought, the objective power of thought that permeates everything. And they described the moment when the soul can have this shattering experience as the soul's approach to the gate of death.—This whole experience makes us aware that having cultivated the activity of thinking to the extent that it has been transformed in the way I have described, we actually enter into this living state of thinking. Alone, we are faced with an inner—not a physical—danger. This is the danger of not being inwardly able to carry what is otherwise our normal everyday self-consciousness into the world we now experience. It is the danger of entering a world where we are powerless in our souls to take our self-consciousness with us, where at first we seem to lose ourselves so that we actually reach the state of approaching the gate of death. But in approaching it, it is as if we had left ourselves behind. This losing ourselves, this no longer feeling in possession of ourselves, is a shattering experience. And in becoming completely one with it, we get to know something further—that the self-consciousness that we have, which arises at the moment to which our memory stretches back, the moment when we are aware of ourselves as an ego, this self-consciousness is really more bound to the physical organism of the body than the other powers of the soul, so that when we loosen our connection with the bodily organism we face the danger of not being able to say “I” any more, of losing ourselves. We recognize what is taken from us when we go through the gate of death, when death really divides the spirit-soul nature from the physical-bodily nature. We really achieve what I would call a theoretical but living experience of what death is from an objective, spirit-soul viewpoint.

This is a shattering experience. And this is why those who knew something about it called it the approach to the gate of death. But now we have actually to follow the path that has been described as leading to this significant experience. Only in following the exercises described in my book Knowledge of Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science can we understand how these exercises are fashioned out of the experiences of the soul. In addition to this we also proceed along another line of development which runs more or less parallel to the first, and which prevents us from losing ourselves when we approach the gate of death with our consciousness. The scientist of spirit has therefore to undertake something else if he is not to lose himself at this point but rather can take himself with him into this other world. On the one hand we have seen that in order to reach this point we have to develop our thinking, to separate the power and activity of thinking from the power in the thinking that leads to memory, but now on the other it is necessary to develop the activity of our will, again with the help of certain exercises of the soul.

And here it must be said that this development of the will involves separating something from it that belongs to it in normal life, that—to use an expression from chemistry—something must be extracted from it. Of the normal activity of our will, especially when seen from the scientific viewpoint, we know that however filled with ideals we are, the will remains full of emotions and the like, which motivate it. These have to be present or the will would not function in ordinary life.

Now in order to progress along the path parallel to the first one, the scientist of spirit has to do exercises which enable him to separate the will from all those things that have to be present within it, because there must be motivation that stems from our physical nature, from our ordinary soul life, and so on—this kind of motivation, which for our ordinary life appears to be the most essential and most valuable, has to be separated from the will. Of course, this separation should not affect our ordinary lives or we would become quite useless or even worse, but such a will that is free of our everyday will should be brought about only in those moments when we wish to investigate the spiritual worlds. And here again there are exercises to achieve this. You will also find these in the books I have mentioned.

Whereas the aim of the thought exercises is to strengthen the thinking, to immerse ourselves in the experience of our thoughts that we place in the center of our consciousness, the aim of the will exercises is to gain an increasing control in shutting out the normal activity of the will, and to command an inner peace in the whole life of the soul. Our ordinary soul life is filled with the remains of the motives of our will, our cares and other feelings, in short, all those things that arise out of our ordinary soul life. The object of the exercises is to learn to suppress all this consciously.

Here the scientist of spirit brings something about which in ordinary life can only come about unintentionally. In order to describe this I must refer to our experience in ordinary life of the 24 hour cycle with its changing rhythm of waking and sleeping. It is not necessary now to go into what happens when the transition from waking to sleeping occurs. But everyone knows from his own trivial observation of life that the activity of our senses disappears in a particular order without any direction on our part—it would serve no purpose to describe this further here—and that even what finally remains, an inner feeling of ourselves, a consciousness of our own life,—that even this disappears too. Then we remain in a state of unconsciousness.

The scientist of spirit now discovers that when a person is in this unconscious state he is nevertheless within the being of his soul. He discovers this when in undertaking a particular development of his will he learns to produce a condition which on the one hand is similar to the state of sleep, but which on the other hand is so radically different from it that one could even say it is the very opposite of the state of sleep. The development of the will is aimed at eliminating all the activity of the senses, a condition that is normally achieved only in deep, unconscious sleep. This involves the same thing with the activity in our thinking, in our feeling, and in everything connected with the motives in our will.—The whole life of our senses and of our soul has to be suppressed by our own conscious intention. Having acquired the requisite power to achieve this we notice that we are able to bring our physical, organic life to a standstill. In sleep we achieve this without any effort on our part, but now we no longer need to remain unconscious, we do not enter into sleep, but experience the transition in a conscious state. The power that enables us to suppress our organic activity also enables us in another way and at the same time to lift our spirit-soul consciousness, which is now our activity of will, out of our body, so that we are no longer, as in sleep, withdrawn from our body in a state without consciousness—I do not have to explain all this today, as nothing in our discussion depends upon it—but we are fully conscious in sleep and are aware that we are no longer in that which lives in us, but that nevertheless our consciousness has not disappeared. Consciousness is fully present, including self-consciousness and the ability to know ourselves as an ego.

The reason this state is radically different from the state of sleep is that in sleep we have no consciousness, but here we leave the body consciously in such a way that we are able to look at the latter as we would look at a table or any other object. Thus we withdraw consciously from our body and are fully aware that we are outside it because we are able to perceive it as an object outside ourselves, just as we normally see physical objects outside ourselves.

To anyone who has never heard anything about these things or can gain no understanding of them, they can naturally appear only paradoxical and unreal. Despite this, it is a real process, much more real than the processes normally at work in the soul. By means of it the soul now manages to experience itself in the will to the extent of complete consciousness.

And now our experience goes further, but in describing it, we are bound to make it appear purely pictorial, as if only a symbol or perhaps even an allegory were meant. But this is not the case, for our inner experience is absolutely real. In this state where the will is detached from our normal soul activity, and where it is conscious, we come to experience something in us that is always there, not as substance, but as spirit-soul consciousness. We become aware of a second person in us that is always present in everyone, though it cannot be brought to light by our normal consciousness. Of course, if we were to say in the normal way that each person bears a second person within him, we would frequently be understood to mean something pictorial or contrived. This is not what is meant here. We really do become aware that we carry a second person within us that really has a consciousness and is witness to all the activity of our will in normal life.

We are never alone. In the depths of our being there is a true being evolving, watching what we do, a being that is in constant activity and which we gradually come to know when we do the exercises that have been described. But before we can make closer acquaintance with this being we have to overcome another shattering experience in our souls. The other similar experience I described as the approach of the scientist of spirit to the gate of death. This one can be described as follows: In our spirit-soul experience we become aware of what weaves in the world as pain and suffering. We experience the basis, the being, of this pain and suffering. We come to know for the first time what pain and suffering are in the soul. This we must do. For in experiencing this pain and suffering we develop the ability to grasp this inner conscious being in us as an immediate inner spirit-soul experience. We can say that a person who has an open heart and mind for what surrounds him in the world will in many respects find much that is beautiful, exalted in it and will see it as the flower of the world. A person who undertakes the exercises described knows that the flower of all the beauty, the exalted nature and the glory of the world rises as if out of the ground, the earth, of the pain that weaves through the world.

Of course people can come forward with their human wisdom and say that such a statement could make one despair of the wise direction of the world, even of the wisdom of God, for why has God not seen to it that the beautiful, the wonderful, the exalted can appear without this foundation of pain?—Such people produce objections out of their human wisdom without having any deep feeling for the iron necessities of existence. Anyone who asks why the exalted, the beautiful, the flower, cannot exist in the world without the basis of pain is more or less in the same position as a person who demands of a mathematician that he should draw a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees. Necessities simply exist. They do not contradict the wise guidance of the world.—All the exalted nature and beauty of the world evolves out of what we experience in the depth of our souls as pain, just as the flower of a plant has to evolve out of its root. This leads us to a deeper conception of life and of the world, it shows us in which fundamental elements of life beauty, exaltedness and wisdom have their roots, and that these could not exist, that the power to experience them could not exist, if we were not to acquire this power which is present only inasmuch as it grows out of pain.

Now the question arises: Why is it that we experience pain just at the moment when we permeate this inner observer, this inner consciousness of the soul with life? Why just then?—Although this is more difficult to understand, I would nevertheless like to describe it as exactly as possible. It begins when, having developed the will, we experience in our newly-evolved activity of the will what the inner observer is that weaves and lives within us. Our first experience of it seems to contradict all we have experienced in our soul life since we have been able to think. It is rather like—only to a far greater degree—thinking something through most carefully, and then someone comes and disproves our argument, showing it to be untenable. What rises up out of the depths of our will is felt just like such a living refutation.—A very remarkable and odd experience! It is just this something that comes about in the life of the soul, that begins like the pain of a refutation of our own soul life, that finally evolves and intensifies to the experience of our feeling the flowing stream of pain that moves over the mother earth of existence. It is this experience of pain which makes what rises up out of the will increasingly more concrete and more real.

We then come to a full realization of what this is. We gradually come to understand why it appears like this in the form of pain, for we now become aware of what normally cannot be experienced at all in the way of thinking and willing in our everyday lives, namely, what lies at the root of our ordinary experience, what actually has evolved in the depths of the soul throughout the whole of our life, and which we grasp when we have begun to become scientists of spirit. We experience part of our soul life that is normally hidden and what remains with us when everything is removed from our soul life that is bound to the instrument of the physical body. We experience the part of us which goes through the gate of death, which when we die goes on into the spiritual world. And because this part of us that goes into the spiritual world is not at first fit to live in purely spiritual surroundings, is not suited to the life we have developed, but simply exists in it without being properly adapted to it, it therefore appears to us at first in the form of pain and suffering. In the form that it develops it is really destined for another kind of experience. So now we know how the part of us that goes through the gate of death when our body disintegrates is present in the soul, and lives in the soul as its immortal core. In our inner experience we are like a plant feeling how it gradually prepares the forces in its growth that lead to the formation of the seed in the flower, which having lived a different life in the earth, can then develop into another plant of the same kind. We become aware of a new seed of life within us.—And just as the seed grows out of the forces of the plant and can become a new plant, so, too, we now experience that this seed of life, enclosed at first within pain, can lead to a further life on earth. The only difference is that whereas the plant can be destroyed by the conditions existing in space and time so that not every seed develops into a new plant, there are no such conditions or hindrances in the spiritual world when we have passed through the gate of death, but we proceed through the spiritual world and appear in a further life on earth. Then we have to seek out another body with which to unite ourselves, and which we fashion in joining ourselves to what is produced by our father and mother. We take what exists through heredity and impress our own organization upon it so that we can enter into a new life on earth.

In following this path I have described, the scientist of spirit comes upon two factors in his inner life of the soul. The one is that he feels the danger of losing himself, the other that he acquires consciousness in his otherwise unconscious thinking. The consciousness which he normally possesses is in danger of becoming lost. But the other kind of consciousness which arises out of the will can now be employed in entering into the world. At first we experience only pain in this seed of life in the will, but if the exercises are continued in the right way we discover that the pain in fact reveals mysteries of the world to us, for what really happens is that we take this consciousness which lies in the soul into a condition which we normally experience as emptiness, and which, if we could feel it, makes us powerless, but that now it ceases to be pain and we awaken to a life which may be compared to the awakening of the senses when they have been fashioned in the embryo and are then able to perceive the physical world.

When these two factors I have described are united, they become a new sense organ, which Goethe calls the “spirit eye” and the “spirit ear.” This is now really present. Our thinking, which has been developed to the point described, is united as activity within this new consciousness. A fully developed spirit-man, now existing entirely outside the physical body, is experienced by the soul within itself and lives together with it, and this spirit-man now lives within the spiritual world. In being within the spiritual world the spirit-man possesses a higher stage of memory, not the kind of memory that arises when thoughts reappear, but when what is present in the spiritual world appears before us as living being.

Then also everything we have experienced in time before we were joined to a physical body, before our previous death and conception and birth, all this appears before us as living being. The experiences of former lives on earth come into view. A higher kind of memory arises. Paradoxical as it may seem, this is something that can be developed. In the young child, faculties that are needed in ordinary life are not yet present and have to be developed. These make us competent in life. The new memory leads us to a perception of ourselves as spiritual beings within the spiritual world. We experience ourselves as spirit within the spiritual world. And just as we are surrounded in the physical world by physical beings that are of the same nature as our physical organism, in the spiritual world as spirit-man we are with beings of a spiritual nature. Such spiritual beings never appear in physical life. They have their tasks in the spiritual world and do not alternate their lives like human souls between a spiritual life between death and birth and a physical life between birth and death. We experience all this as a spiritually objective world before us. We must in no way imagine that this world is a mere repetition of the physical world.—I will discuss this aspect in greater detail on another occasion, I would only stress now that the whole way in which the spiritual world is experienced is different.

Now since people compromise themselves today when dealing with truths about the spiritual world, I will also have to compromise more than is normally the case with the prevailing approach to life when I now give you a further illustration. Let us assume that in our spiritual experience we are concerned with a human soul that passed through the gate of death many years ago. It can then happen, in the way that one spirit perceives another, that we can feel this soul of the dead affecting us. But it is not as some would imagine that we see a very much refined material picture, or the sort of nebulous ghost as imagined by trivial and superstitious kinds of clairvoyance, but in a quite different way the spiritual enters the consciousness which has arisen out of the stream of our will. In order to characterize how the spiritual is now experienced, I must say the following: Assume that as human souls we have thoughts. The thoughts live in us. Assume that a thought could experience itself, in which case it would say: I am in the human soul. The thought would not be like something that we copy from the outer world, but would realize that it exists in a world; it would know this. Thus the connection with the spiritual world is much more real than the connection with things in the visible world, though it is a different kind of connection. What lives in the spiritual world enters our consciousness so that the latter, which we ourselves have just now taken into the spiritual world in the way described, becomes aware of other consciousnesses he now meets. Our consciousness is now aware of living with spiritual beings.

We can therefore be aware of a soul that wishes to help us or draws toward us from the spiritual world—it can be a human soul or a soul that has never incarnated in the physical world—and such a soul we experience as living within our own consciousness. We see then that in our everyday lives we really have the spiritual world living within us in our consciousness. But because ordinarily we are not aware of this, we do not normally find these spiritual beings in our usual consciousness. But when we have something spiritual to carry out, where inventiveness is required, we can feel that the activity of the soul of a person who died long ago flows into our consciousness.

It is only natural to cite personal experiences in connection with this, though not out of any immodesty. There was, for example, the soul of a person who died many years ago, and who had quite special artistic gifts which were taken through death and then gave help when certain artistic things were being done. Having acquired this spiritual perception we are able to distinguish between what originates in ourselves—although we could please our pride and vanity more by ascribing it all to our own gifts—and what lives in us that originates in the spiritual world and the beings belonging to it.

And if someone says this could all be an illusion, hallucination, then we would reply that there are also certain types of philosophy which maintain that everything we see is only a creation of our eyes. We have only to think of Schopenhauer's statement “The world is only idea.” This had such an effect on one person that he told Goethe that when he closed his eyes the sun was not there—A more recent scientist who is by no means averse to including the more marginal areas of research in his work, commented that we have long since discovered that the man is dead and can no longer open his eyes, yet the sun is still moving through the universe.

I know all the various kinds of objections that can be brought against this, but it is nevertheless essentially apt. In the science of spirit we learn to distinguish between what is real in the world and what is merely thought out or simply experienced in the soul. Only life can teach us about the world of senses. In our spirit-soul experience only our own soul can be the arbiter and can recognize the reality of the beings and events that we perceive. If we can do this, then all the objections vanish, just as the objections of the philosophical idealists vanish in face of the realities of the physical world. Even in the physical world reality can only be experienced. There is no logical proof that can be advanced; only in life itself can we learn to distinguish the real from dreams and hallucinations.

Thus, too, in the spiritual world we learn to distinguish what is dreamed from what really is.

Today I only wanted to go as far as to show how through the investigation of the spiritual world we can acquire knowledge of our own spiritual being that belongs to this spiritual world. This particular way of looking at the spiritual world, which is based on an inner development of the soul, could only arise in the age of science as we now know it, which has been a kind of preparatory training for the further development of the soul. And it is quite understandable that having immersed itself for a time in the greatness of the scientific way of thinking, humanity has rejected the possibility of the soul attaining real knowledge of the spiritual world.

Every person, whether he is a scientist of spirit or not, can take in knowledge of this spiritual world and appreciate the degree of truth it contains. This is no different from being able to value the truths and products of chemistry for our ordinary lives without actually being chemists. The scientist of spirit completely understands when those who are immersed in ordinary science and have become familiar with the faculties of the soul that share in it, who have learned to use and develop these faculties for a method of investigation that has resulted in the tremendous successes of modern science (which the science of spirit fully recognizes)—he completely understands when such people must believe for a while that it is not possible to have a science beyond the one bound to the development of the senses and of the brain, that is, which is founded on the kind of thinking that is bound to the physical organism.

But what we can experience proves that the province of real knowledge can be widened to include the spiritual world, and that we really can investigate our spirit-soul being which proceeds through births and deaths in repeated lives on earth. A brilliant scientist of the 19th century, Du Bois-Reymond, quite rightly emphasized that the approach to knowledge which has led science to its great successes does not lead us beyond the sphere of nature perceptible to our senses, and therefore could not fathom the depths of existence. He was able to express this inability to know, this “not knowing,” because he himself was immersed only in the faculties of knowledge that can comprehend the outer world of the senses. And he said that if we wanted to undertake something in order to get beyond the natural world, we would enter into supranaturalism, that is, we would immerse ourselves in the spiritual world. But then he said, Where supranaturalism begins, science comes to an end. He did not yet know—and there is good reason why he could not know—that the faculties of our mind which are sharpened and strengthened in observing nature cannot lead to the spiritual world, but that these same faculties first have to transform our thinking and our will so that they can evolve differently from the way they do in ordinary science. Then they have to bring themselves to life, to acquire strength, in order to penetrate up into the spiritual world.

And so we must admit that, from one viewpoint at least, what Du Bois-Reymond said was right—that we cannot penetrate to the spiritual world with those faculties of acquiring knowledge which have brought success to natural science. But we can develop these very same faculties by a purely inner and spiritual method to lead us into the spiritual world. Then our knowledge does not remain purely passive (though in this form it has contributed much to science), but becomes something living. It is like the transition from the statue to living logic, to inner life, when the soul itself becomes living logic which can be permeated by what it finds flowing out from the will. Thus we can only experience what the spirit is when knowledge is awakened to life which lives as living knowledge in the living world of the spirit, when knowledge is awakened to life which normally is bound to the world of the senses and to the physical organs, but which now leads the human being to living knowledge. It is in turning knowledge into living knowledge, in discovering a new man, an inner being in us that we rise to the spiritual world, in which we live as spiritual beings among spiritual events and other spiritual beings. In this way we rise to the world where our true origin, our true task and our true purpose lie.

The human soul can develop; its present state can be changed by training, especially of the etheric body. People who are ahead of others in their inner development are called initiates. The path they walk and teach is that of secret discipleship. Our root race, the Aryan, descends from the most highly developed sub-race of the Atlanteans, the Proto-Semitic, which last inhabited approximately the area of present-day Ireland. The island of Poseidonis mentioned by Plato can be seen as the last remnant of the sinking Atlantis. Manu, a leader of the Atlanteans, led the most mature people to the east. From there they migrated to the area of present-day India. An ancient culture arose there. This primeval Indian culture antedates the time when the Vedas originated by a long way. It was still somewhat dream-like and purely inward-looking. The state of mind of the ancient Indian was quite the opposite of our own today. He regarded everything external and visible as maya, as illusion, and reality was only the Brahman and what could be grasped by the Brahman.

A next culture emerged further west. This second culture is the proto-Persian, whose inaugurator and main leader was the great Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The Persians already reconciled spirit and matter and began to transform and reshape the material world through the human spirit.

A third culture emerged even further to the west, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian culture. Here, people focused even more on the material world, the external sciences emerged, the study of natural forces and their laws. From time immemorial, this ancient science of our earth has said the following: The earth is also a being that is subject to re-embodiment. It has gone through earlier stages and will have further embodiments in the future. There are said to be seven planetary conditions or “planets” through which the earth develops. The names of these “planets” do not refer to our present planets, but to past or future states of the earth. These states are related to those of the planets from which they take their names. The first embodiment of the earth is called “Saturn”. Then follows the Sun, and after that the Moon. Mars and Mercury are the names given to the first and second halves of the development of the Earth. The remaining conditions are Jupiter and Venus. These seven embodiments of the Earth are intimately connected with the development of man and are therefore reflected even in everyday life in the names of the days of the week:

Thus, the world of stars was closely linked to everyday life. The ancient Egyptians were able to determine exactly when the Nile would flood and then recede after the Dog Star appeared, and they could organize their agriculture accordingly.

A fourth cultural epoch is the Greco-Latin one. The ancient Greeks and Romans not only believed in the laws of wisdom, but they also tried to impress this wisdom on things. This is how their works of art were created. The deed of Christ, the Mystery of Golgotha, takes place in the midst of this culture.

We ourselves live in the fifth cultural period of the fifth root race of the fifth Earth period. This is the Germanic-English-American culture. Its main task is the conquest of the physical plane. The subsequent sixth cultural period will have the task of leading the outer culture back to a higher spiritual life and that is what theosophy is working towards. The future task of the entire culture is to reconnect with the spirit. Each epoch has its special tasks. Present-day science has set aside Ptolemy's world system as false and recognized Galileo and Copernicus as true. For the astral plan, however, the Ptolemaic system is correct, since one has to start from completely different perspectives there. The sixth cultural period is still in a germinal state in Eastern Europe. It will be the bearer of the spiritual culture of the future.

There will come a time when man will have overcome the dualism of the sexes. Lower abilities, sexual drives, will be transformed into higher ones. It is not a matter of destroying the drives, but of ennobling them. For example, fantasy is a result of the ennobling of the spirit; it is an effect of the already purified passions. The higher development of the imagination leads to clairvoyant vision. As initiates can already do, so in the future all people will be able to perceive the soul content of their fellow human beings. Today, the word can pass on spiritual experiences through the air, later one will bring forth living beings through the word, and finally the word itself will be creative: then people will be magicians of the word.

The information about the occult training comes from a deeply rooted science. Two qualities are fundamental for this, which a person must have. He must be able to endure what is called great loneliness, and he must gain a certain basic mood of devotion. As for the first, loneliness in the midst of active life is meant for a few minutes a day, when one devotes oneself to meditation and concentration. This alone gives the soul inner strength. In the beginning, inner emptiness and sadness will arise, but these must be overcome. All people who have achieved a great deal have used this inner solitude for their concentration. The second main requirement is devotion, looking up with reverence to something higher. If you want to ascend, you must first be down and feel down. The Indian secret training requires complete submission of the disciple to his guru. The Rosicrucian initiation is the right one for the present-day man of the West. Before that, the Christian initiation arose. All three types of initiation are basically an expression of the same initiation, but the methods must change with the times.

The human soul is capable of development, its present state may be changed by training, particularly by a training of the etheric body. People who precede others in their inner development are called Initiates. The path which they tread and teach is that of occult schooling.

Our root-race (5th post-Atlantean epoch), the Aryan, descends from the most highly developed sub-race of the Atlanteans, the original Semitic race, that lived approximately in the region of present-day Ireland. The island Poseidonis mentioned by Plato may be considered as a last remnant of descending Atlantis. Manu, a leader of the Atlanteans, guided the most mature men to the East. From there, they wandered into the region of present-day India. An ancient civilisation arose: This ancient Indian civilisation arose long before the time of the Vedas. It still had a dream-like, altogether inner character. The soul-constitution of the ancient Hindoo was the very opposite of our modern one. To him everything external and visible was Maya, Illusion; he saw reality only in Brahman and in what could be grasped by Brahman.

A second civilisation arose further west. This second culture is the ancient Persian one, whose inaugurator and chief guide was the great Zarathustra, or Zoroaster. The Persias were already able to harmonize spirit and matter and. began to work and to transform the physical world through the human spirit.

A third civilisation arose still further west, namely the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian culture. Man's gaze turned still more towards the physical world, the external branches of science arose, with the study of the forces of Nature and of their laws.

From the very outset, this ancient primeval science revealed the following truths concerning our earth: The earth too is a being subjected to reincarnation. It passed through earlier stages and in future it will pass through further incarnations. One speaks of seven planetary conditions or Planets", through which the earth passes in its development. The names of these "Planets" are not identical with our present planets, but refer to past or future condition of the earth. But these conditions are related to the planets after which they are named. The first incarnation of our earth is called. "Saturn". Then comes the "Sun", followed by Moon"; "Mars" and Mercury" are the designations for the first and second half of the earth's development. The conditions which will follow are "Jupiter" and "Venus", These seven incarnations of the earth are intimately connected with man's development and are therefore even mirrored in ordinary life; names of the days of the week.

Saturday - Saturn
Sunday - Sun
Monday - Moon
Tuesday - Zeus-day, Mardi - Mars
Wednesday - Mercredi, Mercury
Thursday - Wotan-day, Jupiter
Friday - Freya-day, Vendredi, Venus

The world of the stars is thus closely connected with ordinary life. The ancient Egyptians still arranged their whole civilisation in accordance with the stars, the affairs of State, agriculture, and so forth. The genius of the Dog-star, Sirius, was the one who indicated the inundations of the Nile, when that star appeared in a special constellation. A fourth epoch of culture is the Graeco-Latin one. It imprints on matter the Wisdom of things. This is how works of art arise. In the middle of this epoch falls the deed of Christ; the Mystery of Golgotha.

We ourselves live in the fifth epoch of culture, of the fifth root-race belonging to the fifth age of the earth. This is the Germanic-English-American culture; its chief task is the conquest of the physical plane. The task of the subsequent sixth epoch will be to lead external civilisation again to a more spiritual life. Its standard-bearer is Anthroposophy. The future task or civilisation as a whole consists in becoming reunited with the Spirit.

Every epoch has its particular tasks. Modern science has rejected the Ptolemaic world-system as erroneous and has adopted the world-systems of Galilei and Copernicus: but for the astral plane the Ptolemaic system is correct; for there one sets out from quite different perspectives. The sixth epoch of Culture still reposes as a seed in the East of Europe; it will be the carrier of the spiritual culture of the future.

A time will come when the human being will have overcome bi-sexuality. Lower forces, sexual instincts will change into higher ones. It is not a question of destroying any instinct, but of refining, ennobling them. Thus phantasy is a product of spiritual ennoblement, the result of already purified passions. When phantasy reaches a higher stage of development it leads to clairvoyant imagination. In future all human beings will be able to perceive as Initiates do now, the soul-content of their fellows. To-day the word can transmit spiritual experiences through the medium of the air; in the future spiritual beings will be produced through the word, and finally the word itself will become creative; then the human beings will be magicians of the word.

The indications on occult training come from a deeply-founded knowledge. There are two fundamental qualities which man must have; he must be able to bear what one calls great loneliness, and he must gain a certain fundamental mood of devotion. In regard to the first, the loneliness of a few minutes each day is meant, in the middle of the active life of daily living, minutes dedicated to concentration and meditation. Even this can give inner strength to the soul. At first there will be an inner feeling of emptiness and sadness; but this must be overcome. All people who achieved a great deal require this inner loneliness for their concentration. The second fundamental requirement is devotion, the capacity to look up to something with feelings of reverence and devotion. Those who wish to ascend to higher stages of development must first be below and feel that they are there below.

The occult training of India calls for a complete submission of the pupil to his Guru. The Rosicrucian Initiation is the right one for Modern people of the West.

Before that there was the Christian Initiation. All three kinds of Initiation are in reality the expression of one and the same initiation, but the forms of initiation must change with the times.

[ 1 ] In your philosophical poem “Nature”—so rich in thoughts—you have given expression to the basic mood asserting itself in modern man. This mood arises when he permits himself to be influenced by certain ideas about nature and spirit extant in our time and if he has a depth of feeling sufficient to make him recognize the discord between those ideas and the ideals of his heart and mind. Indeed those times are gone when a thoughtless, shallow optimism, relying on the belief that we are children of god, distracted man from perceiving the discord of nature and spirit. Those times are gone when it was possible to be so superficial as to lightheartedly look away from the thousands of wounds from which the world is bleeding. Our ideals are no longer superficial enough to be satisfied by a reality so often shallow and empty.

Yet, I cannot believe that it is impossible to find a means of elevating oneself above the deep pessimism that stems from such a recognition. Such an elevation becomes possible when I look into the world of our inner being, when I approach the essence of our world of ideals: a world complete and perfect in itself, which cannot gain, cannot lose anything through the ephemeral nature of outer things. Are not our ideals,—if they are truly living entities (individualities)—beings existing in themselves, independent of the favors and disfavors of nature? May the lovely rose be defoliated by the merciless thrusts of the wind,—it has fulfilled its mission, for it has brought joy to a hundred human eyes. May it please murderous nature tomorrow to destroy the entire starry heavens: through millennia men have looked up to it with reverence, and this suffices! No! Not the transient existence, but the inner essence makes them perfect. The ideals of our spirit comprise a self-sufficient world that must live out its own life and cannot gain anything through the cooperation of a beneficent nature.

[ 2 ] What a pitiful creature man would be if he were not able to gain satisfaction within his own world of ideals, but instead, would first need the cooperation of nature? What would become of divine freedom if nature, keeping us in a harness, guiding us, were to tend us and care for us like little children? No! She must deny everything, so that if good fortune comes to us it would be the product of our own free self. May nature destroy every day what we are building, so that every day we may look forward joyfully to creating anew—we don't want to owe anything to nature, but everything to ourselves.

[ 3 ] This freedom—one might say—is but a mere dream! While we deem ourselves free, we are heeding the iron necessity of nature. The most exalted thoughts are nothing other than the result of nature acting blindly within us.

[ 4 ] Oh, we should finally admit, that a being that knows itself (or: knowing itself) cannot be unfree. By investigating the eternal laws of nature we are separating out of it the substance which lies at the foundation of its manifestations. We see the fabric of laws ruling over the objects of nature, and that brings about necessity. In our cognition we possess the power to detach the lawfulness out of the objects of nature. Should we be will-less slaves of these laws nevertheless? The objects of nature are unfree because they cannot recognize these laws; they are governed by them without knowing of them. Who should force them on us, since we penetrate them with our reasoning? A being that knows cannot be unfree. Such a being first transforms what is law into ideals, and then accepts them as self-given laws.

We should finally admit that the god—imagined by effete humanity to dwell in the clouds—lives in our hearts, in our spirit. He fully divested himself of his being and poured it out completely over mankind. He did not want to retain anything of his own will because he wanted mankind to be a race that rules itself in full freedom. He emanated into the world. Man's will is his will, man's goals, his goals. By implanting into mankind an (entire being-ness) he gave up an existence of his own. A “god in history” does not exist. He ceased to be for the sake of the freedom of mankind, for the divine-ness of the world. We have taken into ourselves the highest potency of existence, therefore no external power, only our own creations can give us satisfactions. All lamenting about an existence that does not satisfy us, about this hard world, must vanish in the presence of the thought, that no power in the world could satisfy us if we ourselves did not bestow upon it the magic power through which it can gladden and elevate us. If a god from outside our world were to bring us the joys of heaven and we had to take them as he prepared them, without our participation, we would have to refuse, because they would be the joys devoid of freedom.

[ 5 ] We have no right to expect satisfaction from powers outside of us. Faith promised us reconciliation with the evils of this world, brought about by a god from outside this world. Such faith is in the process of fading away, a time will come when it will not exist anymore. But that time will come when mankind will not have to hope anymore for a redemption from outside, because mankind will recognize that it must bring about its own bliss, just as it afflicted deep wounds upon itself.

Mankind is the guide of its own destiny. Even the achievements of modern natural science cannot convince us otherwise. These achievements were acquired through conceptions of the outer side of things, while cognizance of our own world of ideals is attained through penetration of the inner depth of the matter.

[ 6 ] Since you, admired poetess, have been applying such vigorous pressure to the sphere of philosophy you might not be disinclined to hear what it has to say in response; and with this

[ 1 ] I am very respectfully yours,
Rudolf Steiner

There's a nice remark by Hegel: The deepest thought is united with the figure of Christ, with the historical and outer one, and that's the great thing about the Christian religion, that for all of its profundity it's easy to understand in an outer way, and yet also challenges one to get into it more deeply. Thus it's for every stage of development and also satisfies the highest demands.

The fact that the Christian religion is understandable to every stage of consciousness is clear through the history of its development. It must be the task of spiritual science in general to show that this religion invites one to penetrate the deepest teachings of wisdom that mankind has. Theosophy is not a religion but an instrument for understanding religions. It's related to religion in about the same way that our mathematical theory is related to ancient math books. One can understand mathematics out of one's own intellectual forces and the laws of space without referring to Euclid's geometry book. But when one has taken in geometric teachings one will treasure that old book all the more, that first placed these laws before the human spirit. That's the way it is with theosophy. Its sources are not in documents and aren't based on tradition. Its sources are in the real spiritual worlds; that's where one must find them and grasp them in that one develops one's spiritual forces, whereas one grasps mathematics as one tries to develop one's intellectual forces. The intellect that enables us to grasp the laws of the sense world is carried by an organ, the grain. We also need corresponding organs to grasp the laws of spiritual worlds. How did our physical organs develop? When outer forces worked on them, sun forces, sound forces. That's how the eyes and ears developed out of neutral, dull organs that did not permit a penetration of the sense world at first and only opened slowly. Our spiritual organs will also open when the right forces work on them.

Now which forces storm in our spiritual organs that are still dull? During the day forces press into a modern's astral body that work against his development, and that even kill organs he had before he got his bright day consciousness. A man used to perceive astral impressions indirectly. The surrounding world spoke to him through pictures, through the astral world's form of expression. Living, differentiated pictures, colors float around free in space as an expression of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy. Then thee colors laid themselves around the surface of things and objects received firm contours. This happened when man's physical body became even firmer and more differentiated. When his eyes opened completely to physical light, when maya's veil placed itself before the spiritual world, man's astral body received impressions from the surroundings via the physical and etheric bodies and transmitted them to the ego, from where they entered men's consciousness. Thereby he became continuously active. But what worked on him in this way wasn't plastic, formative forces that corresponded to his own nature; it was forces that consumed and killed him to awaken his ego-consciousness. Only at night when he dived down into the rhythmic spiritual world that was homogeneous to him did he strengthen himself anew so that he could send forces to the etheric and physical bodies again. The life of the single ego, ego-consciousness arose from the conflict of impressions, from the killing of the astral organs that worked unconsciously in man before. Death out of life, life out of death. The snake's circle was closed. Now the forces that rekindled life in the dead remnants of previous astral organs and molded them plastically had to come out of this awakened ego-consciousness.

Mankind moves toward this goal, it's guided towards it by its teachers, leaders and great initiates, whose symbol is the snake. It's an education towards spiritual activity, and therefore it's a long and difficult one. Great initiates could make the task easier for themselves and men if they would elaborate the astral body when it's free at night, so that they imprinted astral organs into them, worked on them from outside. But that would be a working within the dream consciousness of a man, an intervention into his sphere of freedom. Man's highest principle, the will, would never develop. Man is led step by step. There was an initiation in wisdom, one in feeling, and one in willing. Real Christianity is the integration of all initiation stages. The initiation of antiquity was the annunciation, the preparation. Man slowly and gradually emancipated himself from gurus. Initiation at first took place in a complete trance consciousness, but there was a way to imprint a memory of what had happened outside the physical body, into the latter. That's why it was necessary to separate the etheric body, the carrier of memory, and also the astral body. Both of them dived down into the sea of wisdom, into mahadeva, into the light of Osiris. This initiation took place in the deepest secrecy and seclusion. No breath of the outer world was permitted to push in between. The man was as if dead to the outer world, the delicate seeds were cultivated away from blinding daylight.

Then initiation stepped out of the darkness of the mysteries into the brightest daylight. The initiation of all mankind took place historically—symbolically to begin with—at the stage of feeling in a great, mighty personality, the carrier of the highest unifying principle, of the Word, that expresses the hidden Father, that is his manifestation, that since it took on human form it became the son of man and could be the representative for all mankind, the unifying band for all I's: In Christ, the spirit of life, the eternal unifying one. This event was so powerful that it could go on working in every human being who lived by it, right into the appearance of stigmata, right into the most excruciating pains. Feeling was shaken to its depths. An intensity of feeling arose that had never flooded the world in such mighty waves before. The sacrifice of the I had taken place for all in the initiation on the cross of divine love. The physical expression of the I, the blood, had flowed in love for mankind and it worked in such a way that thousands pressed to this initiation, to this death and let their blood stream out in love, in enthusiasm for mankind. How much blood flowed out in this way was never sufficiently emphasized, people are no longer aware of it, not even in theosophical circles. But the waves of enthusiasm that flowed down in this blood and ascended have fulfilled their task. They've become mighty impulse givers. They have made men ripe for an initiation of will.

And this is Christ's legacy.

There's a nice remark by Hegel: The deepest thought is united with the figure of Christ, with the historical and outer one, and that's the great thing about the Christian religion, that for all of its profundity it's easy to understand in an outer way, and yet also challenges one to get into it more deeply. Thus it's for every stage of development and also satisfies the highest demands.

The fact that the Christian religion is understandable to every stage of consciousness is clear through the history of its development. It must be the task of spiritual science in general to show that this religion invites one to penetrate the deepest teachings of wisdom that mankind has. Theosophy is not a religion but an instrument for understanding religions. It's related to religion in about the same way that our mathematical theory is related to ancient math books. One can understand mathematics out of one's own intellectual forces and the laws of space without referring to Euclid's geometry book. But when one has taken in geometric teachings one will treasure that old book all the more, that first placed these laws before the human spirit. That's the way it is with theosophy. Its sources are not in documents and aren't based on tradition. Its sources are in the real spiritual worlds; that's where one must find them and grasp them in that one develops one's spiritual forces, whereas one grasps mathematics as one tries to develop one's intellectual forces. The intellect that enables us to grasp the laws of the sense world is carried by an organ, the brain. We also need corresponding organs to grasp the laws of spiritual worlds. How did our physical organs develop? When outer forces worked on them, sun forces, sound forces. That's how the eyes and ears developed out of neutral, dull organs that did not permit a penetration of the sense world at first and only opened slowly. Our spiritual organs will also open when the right forces work on them.

Now which forces storm in our spiritual organs that are still dull? During the day forces press into a modern's astral body that work against his development, and that even kill organs he had before he got his bright day consciousness. A man used to perceive astral impressions indirectly. The surrounding world spoke to him through pictures, through the astral world's form of expression. Living, differentiated pictures, colors float around free in space as an expression of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy. Then these colors laid themselves around the surface of things and objects received firm contours. This happened when man's physical body became even firmer and more differentiated. When his eyes opened completely to physical light, when maya's veil placed itself before the spiritual world, man's astral body received impressions from the surroundings via the physical and etheric bodies and transmitted them to the ego, from where they entered men's consciousness. Thereby he became continuously active. But what worked on him in this way wasn't plastic, formative forces that corresponded to his own nature; it was forces that consumed and killed him to awaken his ego-consciousness. Only at night when he dived down into the rhythmic spiritual world that was homogeneous to him did he strengthen himself anew so that he could send forces to the etheric and physical bodies again. The life of the single ego, ego-consciousness arose from the conflict of impressions, from the killing of the astral organs that worked unconsciously in man before. Death out of life, life out of death. The snake's circle was closed. Now the forces that rekindled life in the dead remnants of previous astral organs and molded them plastically had to come out of this awakened ego-consciousness.

Mankind moves toward this goal, it's guided towards it by its teachers, leaders and great initiates, whose symbol is the snake. It's an education towards spiritual activity, and therefore it's a long and difficult one. Great initiates could make the task easier for themselves and men if they would elaborate the astral body when it's free at night, so that they imprinted astral organs into them, worked on them from outside. But that would be a working within the dream consciousness of a man, an intervention into his sphere of freedom. Man's highest principle, the will, would never develop. Man is led step by step. There was an initiation in wisdom, one in feeling, and one in willing. Real Christianity is the integration of all initiation stages. The initiation of antiquity was the annunciation, the preparation. Man slowly and gradually emancipated himself from gurus. Initiation at first took place in a complete trance consciousness, but there was a way to imprint a memory of what had happened outside the physical body, into the latter. That's why it was necessary to separate the etheric body, the carrier of memory, and also the astral body. Both of them dived down into the sea of wisdom, into mahadeva, into the light of Osiris. This initiation took place in the deepest secrecy and seclusion. No breath of the outer world was permitted to push in between. The man was as if dead to the outer world, the delicate seeds were cultivated away from blinding daylight.

Then initiation stepped out of the darkness of the mysteries into the brightest daylight. The initiation of all mankind took place historically—symbolically to begin with—at the stage of feeling in a great, mighty personality, the carrier of the highest unifying principle, of the Word, that expresses the hidden Father, that is his manifestation, that since it took on human form it became the son of man and could be the representative for all mankind, the unifying band for all I's: In Christ, the spirit of life, the eternal unifying one. This event was so powerful that it could go on working in every human being who lived by it, right into the appearance of stigmata, right into the most excruciating pains. Feeling was shaken to its depths. An intensity of feeling arose that had never flooded the world in such mighty waves before. The sacrifice of the I had taken place for all in the initiation on the cross of divine love. The physical expression of the I, the blood, had flowed in love for mankind and it worked in such a way that thousands pressed to this initiation, to this death and let their blood stream out in love, in enthusiasm for mankind. How much blood flowed out in this way was never sufficiently emphasized, people are no longer aware of it, not even in theosophical circles. But the waves of enthusiasm that flowed down in this blood and ascended have fulfilled their task. They've become mighty impulse givers. They have made men ripe for an initiation of will.

And this is Christ's legacy.