The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This year's General Assembly of the Goethe Society on May 8, 1891 was a particularly solemn one, as it took place in the middle of the festive week dedicated to the commemoration of that momentous moment in German art when the Weimar Court Theatre was opened under Goethe's direction one hundred years ago. The connection between the two celebrations also found special expression in the fact that Prof. Suphan, the director of the Goethe Archive, was able to report on an important discovery of documents relating to Goethe's management of the theater. The meeting was extremely well attended. Their Royal Highnesses, the Grand Duke, the Grand Duchess, the Hereditary Grand Duke and the Hereditary Grand Duchess as well as the Princesses Auguste and Olga of Saxe-Weimar honored the meeting with their visit. The following foreign guests were present: Minister von Goßler, Privy Councillor von Loeper, Wildenbruch, Bodenstedt, Spielhagen, Julius Wolff, W. Freiherr von Biedermann, Privy Councillor Freiherr von Bezecny, Lud. Aug. von Frankl, Erich Schmidt, Jul. Rodenberg and many others. The meeting was chaired by Privy Councillor von Loeper, who welcomed the society and expressed his regret that President von Simson was unable to attend due to health reasons. Privy Councillor Dr. Ruland then presented the annual report, which showed that the number of members on December 31, 1890 was 2988; the Society's assets on that day amounted to 37,289 marks, of which 21,396 marks served as a reserve fund. As a Christmas gift for the members of the Goethe Society, a publication on Goethe's relationship to the Weimar theater was promised on the basis of the above-mentioned discovery of files by Dr. C. A. H. Burkhardt and Dr. Julius Wahle. Prof. Dr. Valentin from Frankfurt a.M. gave the keynote speech "On the classical Walpurgis Night". The lecturer endeavored to refute those views that want to see contradictions everywhere in Goethe's "Faust" and deficiencies in its unified composition. Despite some gaps and unevenness in the progression of the plot, "Faust" is a consistent, unified poem. It is the counterpart to Wilhelm Meister. But while in the latter work the poet allows his hero to find the goal of his striving in the real world, he places such a powerful urge for human perfection in Faust's soul that it becomes impossible to grant it satisfaction in this finite world. Faust's striving is for something infinite and eternal. But one that not only represents the sum of all that is finite, but goes into the depths of all being. Mephistopheles cannot understand the latter. He only knows the former infinity. Therefore he leads Faust from pleasure to pleasure. But what Faust seeks, he cannot grant him. This is why the role of Mephistopheles changes in the course of the play. From Faust's guide, which he was in the first part, he becomes in the second part the henchman who procures the external means for Faust's higher purposes, the latter of which he no longer even suspects. He gives Faust the key to the Mothers' apartments, but remains completely unaware of his fate in this spirit realm. In Mephistopheles' "Nothing", Faust finds the symbol of all beauty, Helena, and brings her to the upper world, but initially only as a dream image, as a shadow. She needs to be embodied, to exist in the flesh. This can only be achieved if a germ of humanity is produced from the forces of nature that is capable of cloaking the shadow of beauty with real life. This is the homunculus. It becomes Faust's guide into classical antiquity, where it dissolves in order to continue to act as the force that forms Helena's body from the elements of nature around her spirit. Thus Faust is in possession of this only one of the women; but he still cannot be satisfied, for no finite thing, whether it is in the past or the present, can satisfy him. Only when he wants to banish all magic from his path through life, when he renounces all finite, selfish pleasure and lives only in the anticipation of a happiness that he has created but no longer enjoys, does he reach that supreme moment when he wants to say: "Linger on, you are so beautiful". Faust's soul is lost to Mephistopheles, who believed he could hold on to it in his final enjoyment.

This keynote speech was followed by Prof. Suphan's presentation of the files he had found. These represent a large part of the old theater archive. They were found in a barely accessible corner of the part of the palace known in Weimar as the "Bastille" and were donated to the Goethe and Schiller Archive by His Royal Highness the Grand Duke on December 24, 1890. There are seventy-eight volumes and fascicles. One part consists of the so-called DirektionsAkten, i.e. those documents from the management of the Court Theater Commission set up in 1797. This commission consisted of Goethe, von Luck and Kirms, later Goethe, Kirms and Rat Kruse. The second part consists of the files of the branch theaters where the members of the Weimar theater performed during the summer season. 35 of the volumes in this section relate to the Lauchstadt theater and are from the years 1791 to 1814. This series contains the documents relating to the famous Leipzig guest performance of 1807. Three volumes concern the theater in Halle since 1811, seven Erfurt (1791-95 and 1815), ten Rudolstadt (1794-1805), one Jena, three Naumburg. Goethe dictated and reviewed a large number of these plays. A manuscript of the prelude "Was wir bringen" (from the hand of the scribe Geist) is among the files, as well as 44 letters from Goethe to Kirms and 34 to other people. In addition to purely business matters, the former also deal with matters of literary and artistic interest. The collection also includes letters from Schiller, such as one in which he expresses his approval of the Wallenstein performance in Lauchstädt. Karl August's relationship to the theater is evident from many of the documents. Of particular importance are those sheets that show the care with which Goethe managed the theater and how nothing was too small for him to concern himself with it.¹

After these announcements, Prof. Suphan gave a special report on the Goethe Archive and the Goethe Library. With regard to the former, it was emphasized that Goethe's natural science estate had also recently been viewed and processed for the edition. The work of Prof. Bardeleben from Jena and the writer of these lines has progressed so far that readers of the Weimar Goethe edition will probably be able to see a larger part of the discovered estate in the course of this year. It will make a significant contribution to finally making Goethe's pioneering work in the scientific field clear to even the greatest doubters. Goethe tackled morphology in such a way that he has not yet been caught up with by specialist science; in the field of osteology, there are works on the skull of mammals and the shape of animals, which introduce a method into anatomy that was only recognized as the correct one decades later by Merkel and others.

The library was augmented by purchases of valuable items, particularly of older literature, and by numerous donations. The Grand Duke donated 106 letters by Wieland to the archive, which was significantly enriched by the acquisition of Otto Ludwig's manuscript estate, which is being edited by Erich Schmidt.

Geheimrat Hofrat Ruland now presented the report on the Goethe National Museum. The museum is continuing to organize its collections, in particular Goethe's library.

The General Assembly was followed by a communal lunch, during which Minister Groß made toasts to the Emperor, Privy Councillor von Loeper to the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, Erich Schmidt to the Weimar Theater and Minister von Gossler to the Goethe Society. Ludw. Aug. von Frankl brought a festive greeting from Vienna. The festival concluded with a performance of Paul Heyse's new play "Die schlimmen Brüder" in the court theater.

• 1. The aforementioned publication of the Goethe-Gesellschaft, which will be sent to members as this year's Christmas gift, is to be entitled: "Documents on the History of Goethe's Theater Management 1791 to 1817", by C. A. H. Burkhardt and J. Wahle.

The purpose of this book is to give a description of some of the regions of the supersensible world. The reader who is only willing to admit the existence of the sensible world will look upon this description as merely an unreal production of the imagination. Whoever looks for paths that lead beyond this world of the senses, however, will soon learn to understand that human life only gains in worth and significance through insight into another world. He will not, as many fear, be estranged from the “real” world through this new power of vision because only through it does he learn to stand securely and firmly in this life and learns to know the causes of life. Without this power of vision he gropes like a blind man through their effects. Only through the understanding of the supersensible does the sensible “real” acquire meaning. A man therefore becomes more and not less fit for life through this understanding. Only he who understands life can become a truly practical man.

Aries:

How brightly his eyes are blinking;
In his head there stumbles his thinking,
By pleasures of brooding consumed.
Mid storms his fine memories following,
In wonderful images wallowing
That on branches of knowledge once bloomed,
Through mystical fever-nights loomed.

Die Augen leuchten ihm helle,
Im Kopfe stolpert sein Denken,
Vom Glück des Sinnens ganz berauscht.
Im Sturme folgt es der Erinnerung
Des wunderbaren Traumes,
Der Blüte des Erkenntnisbaumes,
In mystisch schwüler Nacht erlebt.

Taurus:

Soon spooks through his whirring brain,
In fooling somnambulem mood,
By heart-felt enjoyment pursued,
A ghostly and galloping train,
A vision, with clarity showing
How out of the cosmos, stridently crowing,
A chorus of spirits wail in refrain.

Schon spukt im wirren Hirne,
Possierlich grüblerisch verträumt,
Vom Herzen aus mit Wohlgefühl begleitet
Im Traumgaloppe geisterwärts,
Gewichtig Schauen, kühn erspähend,
Wie aus dem Kosmos, deutlich krähend,
Ein Geisterchor sich offenbaret.

Gemini:

The Ego resplendent is sailing away
From a thinking based on mere physical clay,
On spiritual wings upborne,
Is kicked by a greatly superior scorn
From the path of ennobled living,
And cosmic ethereal striving,—
Is ousted with little delay.

Entrissen fühlt das helle Ich
Dem Denken sich, das physisch nur
Und drum vom hohen Geistestrieb
Mit einem Seelentritte mächtig
Vom Pfade edlen Strebens
Und kosmisch hohen Lebens
Wird kühnlich weggeschmissen.

Cancer:

Outside the mere body already unfolding,
By spiritual messengers properly led,
By spiritual love conveniently fed,
By wise tomfoolery starkly sped,
Is the tenebrous soul's beholding:
In the wide and infinite expanses
Of cosmical spirit it swims and dances.

Ganz aus dem Leibe fühlt sich schon,
Durch Geistesboten recht geführt,
Durch Geistesliebe wohlgepflegt,
Von weiser Torheit stark gestossen,
Der Seele dunkles Schauen
In den weiten Geistesauen
Ganz kosmisch geistgenährt.

Leo:

What sounds so tremendously gripping,
So pregnant with spirit but void of ideas,
With love universal so splendidly dripping,
That keenly his high heart hears?
Advanced to the grade of the Lion,
There is fine new regalia to try on,
—Up the steep path of knowledge he's tripping.

Was wirkt so mächtig wundersam
Gedankenlos und geistesträchtig,
Von Weltenliebe prächtig triefe>
In kühnem Herzen ihm so ahnungsvoll?
Er ist zum Löwengrade
Auf dem steilen Wissenspfade
Ja klärlich nun schon vorgedrungen.

Virgo:

And now to receive he is really prepared,
From cosmical thinking worthily wise,
From cosmical love with the universe shared,
From zig-zag lightning of spirit skies,
From the region of the hierarchies,
The initiation of his soul,
Deep, undivided, whole.

Nun muss er auch empfangen
Aus Weltgedanken würdevoll,
Aus Weltenliebe gnadereich,
Mit zuckendem Geistesblitz,
Aus der hierarch sehen
Region Die hohe Seelen-Initiation,
Ganz ungeteilt und tief.

Libra:

He lives in harmony already,
The spheric music round him playing;
He feels within his heart unsteady
The world-truth wildly swaying;
He feels inside him cosmic Scales
On which the spirits well are weighing
World problems packed in bales.

Erlebt nun schon in Harmonie
Mit aller Weltenklarheit.
Empfinden kann in seinem Herzen er
Die Schwungkraft aller Wahrheit.
In sich fühlt er die Weltenwaage,
Auf der des Daseins Rätselfrage
Von Geistern abgewogen steht.

Scorpio:

Soon come the scissors snicker snack—
“My spirit's trial,” (so he thinks)
“Explains this pricking of my back.”
“These pricks attack the soul that stinks,”
Replies with smirk a quite non-wiseman,
A mystically undersize-man,
Who at the Mystery just winks.

Da zwickt und zwackt es ihn.
“Des Geistes Prüfung, ” findet er,
“Scheint mir dies Prickeln in dem Leibe.”
“Der Stich, der trifft ihn sicher!”
So grinst verständig jetzt ein Ungelehrter,
Ein ganzlich mystisch Unverkehrter—
Den Mysterien ganz frech entgegen.

Sagittarius:

But he was in world-midnight seeing
How Homer, Socrates and Goethe too
Within his ego's deepest being
Their sharp soul-arrows shot—(at who?).
And their quite undiminished center
By karma into him did enter,
In him into still grander being grew.

Er aber hat in Weltennacht erkannt,
Wie doch Homer und Sokrates, Goethe aush,
In seines Iches Wesensgründen
Die schärfsten Seelenpfeile schossen,—
Und ihre unverfälschte Menschenwesenheit
Verkörpert wie mit Selbstverständlichkeit
In ihm zu neuer Daseinsgrösse sich.

Capricorn:

“And so you feel old Homer's genius move
Most strongly in your conscious reach?"
"Oh, no! such things I do not love,"
Thus spake with pointed speech
The Initiate. "I never for Maya strove;
Old Homer in my present incarnation
Would rest his mind in mystic meditation."

“Erfühlst du denn Homers Genie
In deinem Denken stark sich regen?”
“ O, regt es sich, ich liebt es nicht,“
So sprach mit spitzer Rede
Der Eingeweihte, “ das wäre Maja-Streben.
Homer will in meinem gegenwärt'gen
Leben All sein Genie im Mystenschlafe pflegen!

Aquarius:

“O mystic transformed Socrates, I seek
In vain a trace in you of that great Greek.
He was as wise as you are egoistic.”
“Cease slandering,” (replied the Mystic).
“That man knows most, who knows he naught doth know,”
Said Socrates. And I know nothing, so
I stand securely on Socratic peak.

Dir fehlt, o mystisch umgeformter Sokrates,
Vom klügsten Griechen jede Spur.
Dazu bist du so eitel, wie er weise war.
“ Erdrücke Lasterrede!”, sagt der Myste,
“ Nichts zu wissen, liebte ich als dieser Mann ...
Und da ich jetzo gar nichts weiss und kann,
Erfühl ich dieses Leben ganz sokratisch-mystisch.”

Pisces:

“And which of Goethe's sunbeams then doth lurk
Within you, is at present showing
Your soul the path to riper fruits of knowing?”
The Seer then grasps his sharpest quirk—
“No! Goethe's light, too bright, does but confuse!
Preferring then to dream his art, I choose
The depth of sleep in which to do my work!”

Und welcher Sonnenstrahl von Goethe,
Als Bote führt er deine Seele
Zum Reifen hoher Wissenstriebe?”
Der Seher greift zum schärfsten Redepfeile.
“ Es schuf,” so sagt er, “Goethe viel zu helle.
Drum träum ich Goethes hohe Kunst, und wähle
Des Schlafes Tiefen mir zum Arbeitsfeld.”

After Parzival stood before Titurel and had the experiences of which we spoke, an intimate and deep feeling of shame arose in him. This feeling of shame permeated him completely. He had gone through catharsis and had thought that he was now so good and pure that he could become one of the followers of the Master of all masters, the Christ. In this feeling of shame he was reminded of Christ's words: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God.” He now knew how very imperfect he was still and how much he still had to take into his striving for the good, how much he was still lacking in order to be good.

And a second feeling, a feeling of fear overcame him. He thought that he had gotten rid of that a long time ago. But it was a different kind of fear from the ones he'd known previously. It was a feeling of his own smallness and weakness as a man compared with the sublime Godly being when he let a second word of Christ live in his soul: “Become perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” These two words should live in the soul of every esoteric.

An esoteric should kindle full devotion for divine beings in his soul. Thereby the consciousness develops that what one does isn't so good, but that one should always try to become more perfect. We should look at what's developing in one's soul. God lives in developing things. If we get to the point where we're acting in a good and noble way, then it's God in us who's good. The God who lets us act in a good and noble way is our archetype itself, that created us. We must become a complete copy of this archetype.

Be it ever so hidden, there's a selfish motive in everything we do. We must realize that we can't be selfless. It's a world karma that lets us act egoistically. But world karma is God. Everything that God is and does in the way of good is better than we could do it. An esoteric should tell himself: Let me do something that I have made it my duty to do, let me do it as hard as I can and in such a way that I tell myself that the divine element that's at work in me is doing this and I'm only the instrument of this godly element—then the higher self in its striving towards perfection is revealed to him.

There are three revelations of the higher self: Through a dream, an inkling, and through meditation. If an esoteric has lived in his meditations, if he has tried to repeatedly live in his thoughts, words and deeds in accordance with the perfection principle, if he has repeatedly tried to be good—then at some point he'll realize: If I would place all the joy and suffering that I previously thought was in me outside me, then it would be as if it surrounded me like a soul-spiritual thing; I no longer live in what I have placed outside, I'm no longer touched by the waves of pain and joy. Then a pupil must learn to stand fast in the center of his existence by living entirely in the power of the mantra: Ex Deo nascimur. Thereby the pupil inserts the higher self into his humanness; this second I isn't in us and can't be found by brooding into oneself but only by growing out beyond oneself.

Through the exercises we stimulate a force in us that otherwise works more as a memory force in us and reawakens the ideas, feelings and sensations that were aroused by past things and happenings in the outer world. The pupil gets to know this as a force only; he learns how to organize it up into the brain, so that it eventually grows toward the higher self that floats above us. The pupil now lives in this newly acquired force. All outer pains and joys now seem to be outside of his center. He stands there firmly enclosed in himself against all outer influences; he feels free in himself and free of all external things.

And the pupil feels something else. Previously he had learned the teachings about karma. Now he knows that he stands under the necessity of the effects of karma. He experiences the higher self that places him into existence through birth in this newly attained force, and he sees how what develops in his destiny in the outer world must be brought about through the active necessity of karmic force. This gives him a certain joy with respect to pain and suffering. He confronts everything with equanimity.

If a pupil has progressed this far, he then gets to contemplation and thereby to consomatio of the higher self. And now spiritual eyes and ears are organized into him and begin to function when he devotes himself to the exercises with patience, persistence and concentration. He learns to see the light world of spiritual beings and the spiritual will being who resounds towards him, audible to his opened spiritual ears. And he knows that he can't have these spiritual experiences by means of his physical organism. In his experience of the pentagram (8–27) he feels that he's placed into the whole etheric and spiritual world This drawing and occult script has a soul-awakening and a spirit-liberating effect. The pupil should repeatedly place it before his soul and he'll experience that every new forces grow in his soul thereby. We saw that Parzival who stood before Titurel in solitude had the experiences that come to expression in this occult script. The whole Christian wisdom and mystery that winds around the Grail is expressed in it. The mystery wisdom is like a greenhouse plant that was only revealed to a few mature people; what the rest of mankind received was the faith content of the various religions. The Christian wisdom of the Grail is a mystery that was revealed to all as knowledge but to no one as a content to be taken on faith. All pupils of western esotericism are Parzivals.

Lohengrin is a son of Parzival. He's a personality that doesn't come fully to expression in a body. The swan is the expression of the higher individuality that radiates above him. Lohengrin unites himself with Elsa, the human soul. She doesn't ask him where he comes from, she doesn't ponder about his nature—she takes him the way he is with thanks and humility for his gifts. But when someone maliciously suggests that he's not of noble birth, she asks him about this. Thereupon, Lohengrin has to withdraw from her. He disappears up into the spiritual world. A pupil should mainly have a feeling of thankfulness for what is given to him from higher worlds in this incarnation. He should not investigate and search or interpret these talents with his ordinary intellect. For this induces the higher self to withdraw from his soul. There's a big warning for us in Elsa's fate. We shouldn't let any outer thoughts, no feelings and sensations from the outer world into the sanctuary of our mediation and concentration, otherwise that source of strength through which we attain the growing out and up of our human forces to the higher self isn't stimulated, we can't find the higher self, it repeatedly retreats before us. We should observe the projection of the spiritual world's effects into us in contemplation, closed off from all outer impressions, alone in the deepest quiet and immersion; resting in the deepest solitude we should let them work in us quietly and chastely in order to eventually become knowers of truth, to become an instrument for the work of spiritual beings.

In order to get ahead in our esoteric life we must become more attentive to things that usually escape our everyday consciousness. We must also revise our ideas about what we'll experience. For instance we complain that thoughts storm into our meditation that bother and disturb us. If we would think about it we would see that it's progress that we've become more sensitive, because we notice that these thoughts are stronger than we are. They induce us to use more strength in our meditation, for it's luciferic beings who bring up our own thoughts in us. Luciferic beings are always in us, but they're drowned out by the surging of everyday life. When we walk through a quiet woods at night we'll hear the leaves falling, animals flitting by and distant footsteps, but in a city's bustle such quiet noises will be imperceptible.

That's how things are with our meditation also. The quiet that we create let's us notice what submerges in the everyday hubbub. All kinds of things can enter our consciousness, such as physical pains that we don't feel otherwise. We can concentrate on our body—although this is only a good idea in special cases—and look for all of its pains. One begins somewhat over the head, excludes all other thoughts and concentrates on this one point. Then one goes further down, focuses on one part of the brain, and so on. Here one will notice that one can have pains in various parts of the body. The more egotistical a man is the more distinctly he'll feel pains here and there. But we shouldn't get hypochondriacal or scared about this—we should stay cool. We also have to do this with other things, for strange and surprising things can happen to us, but we have to get to the bottom of them. The relation between members of our being changes through meditation. Even when we do it ever so badly and awkwardly we nevertheless pull the ego, astral body and part of the etheric body out of the physical body, and so we can have strange experiences in our etheric body in the moments after meditation. This body is a faithful preserver of everything we encountered in life, consciously or not. For instance as a child we may have experienced that a dog was run over by a train. Over the years we have overcome the horrible scene. But the etheric body preserved it and through our development 30 or 40 years later we can suddenly perceive the yelping and whimpering out of us, or it can even be the case that the person concerned can make yelping sounds himself and then of course is rather scared about this. This happens when the etheric body is loosened in development, appears suddenly with especially strong force and works on the physical body.

Another example: An esoteric can have pains from an inflammation of the middle ear that lead to visions of a gruesome scene, and he can't explain its origin. This comes about as follows. Pains are seated in the astral body and not in the physical body. We know that the astral body can experience great pain in kamaloca. These pains in the astral body are reflected in the etheric body. The esoteric experiences the vibrations that are generated in the etheric body thereby, but also vibrations of a similar kind that were generated in it during childhood through soul pains, when he experienced the horrible scene. He had forgotten the latter long ago, but the experience emerges from the etheric body through his esoteric training and the outer earache.

Something even stranger is possible. Say we live on the other side of a house's wall with a family that liked to read and tell tall tales. Our physical ear didn't hear them, but our etheric body took them in. And in spiritual development it can happen that we experience them in our etheric body. Such things can scare us if we don't understand them. Say that someone goes to sleep in a public lecture through lack of interest. His ego and astral body are nevertheless there. Then when he wakes up it may happen that the physical body does not want to adapt itself to what the ego and astral body took in. Thereby the person is dissatisfied with himself, reproaches himself severely or even feels pain from his physical body. Or it may happen that someone takes in esoteric teachings with great attentiveness and does his exercises well, but he has to be among people who reject theosophy and esotericism either silently or openly. This has an effect on the esoteric, and it can happen after meditation that voices within him say: “That's all nonsense” or much more terrible things that give him great pain. It's the thoughts of his environment that he may not have heard with physical ears but with which he's obsessed. When we lift out the ego we take all of our good qualities with us and refine them more and more; the bad qualities we push down and they acquire a kind of independent life. Then it may happen that we begin to scold and to use expressions that we're too well trained to use in ordinary life. This then fills us with amazement and horror, and we may tell ourselves: I'm not like that at all, I'm too decent a person for that. But we should, admit that we are like that, for such things only disappear when we finally put them aside. And yet all of these experiences are steps forward, and it's just a matter of knowing their significance. It's especially important to realize that it's our own fault that it's so hard for us to press into spiritual worlds. But when we get up there we meet the one who took our sins upon him through the Mystery of Golgotha. He took our weaknesses upon him; that's a true word in the Bible, as everything in the Bible is true. And one who refuses to have his sins expiated by the Christ hasn't pressed to the depth of this truth, just as little as one who believes in it as a “good Christian” but who thinks that the matter is very simple. World evolution is very complicated and hides riddles in every little thing, and every little thing can become a whole world. The example of otitis media can teach us this. What is experienced there in the etheric body arose like a world out of a small thing.

Inspirations for the material world can also come from higher worlds. A thing that's noted too little, that many people read over when they read the life of Darwin's friend Wallace is that a thought that led to one of the most important discoveries in connection with physical heredity came to him in a feverish dream. That this thought came to him in a condition in which his physical brain was unsuited for thinking should give the materialists who consider thinking to be a function of the brain much to think about. Darwin also travelled a lot in the tropics and it's quite possible that he made some discoveries about physical conditions in a fever.

One will only notice such things when things are found in such abnormal states, as if through inspiration that can be used materialistically, when for instance someone discovers something that can make him rich. Up till then one will consider all such things to be figments of a sick fantasy. Let's continue our meditation with industry, perseverance and energy, for the help of the one who brought his impulse into earth evolution will always come to meet us. This help is always there.

The interior of the earth. Enormous crystal formations, with streams like lava breaking through them. The whole scene is faintly luminous, transparent in some parts, and with the light shining through from behind in others. Above are red flames which appear to be being pressed downward from the roof. (One hand of Ahriman is a claw and he has a cloven hoof. This is to show the audience that his identity as the Devil is being discovered. Fox has a cloven hoof.)

Ahriman (at first alone):
Now living matter falleth from above
Which I must use. It is the stuff whereof
Are demons made, and it is flowing free
Within the world of form. A man doth strive
To tear from out his being utterly
The spirit-substance he received from me.
My influence hath been till now quite good,
But now he is too near the mystic throng
Whom Benedictus through his wisdom's light
Hath lent the power enabling them to face
Awakening at the cosmic midnight hour.
O'er him hath Lucifer his influence lost,
So that Maria and Johannes could
Release themselves from out his sphere of light.
Henceforth to Strader I must closely cling;—
Once he is mine I'll catch the others too.
Johannes wore himself quite dull and blunt
Against my shadow;—now he knows me well.
Through Strader only can I get at him.
And in Maria's case it is the same;
Yet Strader will perhaps not recognize
The spirit-tangle, which to human eyes
Appears as nature, is in fact naught else
Than mine own personal spirit-property.
And so he may conceive that energy
And matter blindly struggle there where I,
Denying spirit, fashion spirit-things.
'Tis true the rest have talked to him a lot
About my being and about my realm;
And yet, methinks, I have not lost him quite.
He will forget that Benedictus sent
Him hither unto me, but half-awake,
That his belief may be dispelled that I
Am but a woven thought in human brains.
Yet I shall need some earthly help if I
Must bring him here before it is too late.
Now therefore I will call upon a soul
Who in his cleverness considers me
The fancied bogey for benighted fools.
He serves me on and off, when I have need.

(Ahriman goes off and returns with the soul of Fox, whose figure is a sort of copy of his own. He removes a bandage from Fox's eyes.)

(Aside)

Earth-knowledge he must leave here at the door.
For he must never understand the things
Which here he learns, since he is honest still;
No effort would he make, if he once knew
The purpose with which I now influence him.
He must be able later to forget.

(To Fox)

Does thou know doctor Strader, who serves me?

The Soul of Fox:
He drifts about upon the star of Earth;
He would build learned prattle into life;
And yet each wind of life will knock him down.
He listens eagerly to mystic prigs,
And is already stifled by their fog;
He now doth try to blind poor Hilary,
Whose friend, however, keeps him well in hand,
Since all these braggart spirit-whisperings
Would otherwise his business quite destroy.

Ahriman: (Aside)
Such talk as this is not what I require.
I now have need of Strader. If this man
Can still have perfect faith in his own self,
Then Benedictus far too easily
Will make his wisdom known amongst mankind.
The friend of Hilary might be of use
To Lucifer; I must act otherwise—
Through Strader I must Benedictus harm.
For he and all his pupils can achieve
Nothing at all, hath he not Strader's aid.
Mine enemies of course still have their powers,
And after Strader's death he will be theirs.
But if while still on earth his soul can be
Deceived about itself, my gain will be
That Benedictus can no longer use
Him as the leader of his coach's team.
Now in fate's book I have already read
That Strader's span of life is nearly run.
But Benedictus can not yet see this.

(To Fox)

My trusty knave, right crafty is thy wit;
Thou takest me for some dull foolish clown.
So well thou reasonest that men attend.
Go therefore and see Strader very soon,
Tell him that his machine is ill-contrived;
That 'tis not only unpropitious times
That check fulfilment of his promises;
But that his reasoning also is at fault.

The Soul of Fox:
For such a mission I am well equipped.
For some time past I have done nothing else
But think how I can unto Strader prove
How full of error his ambitions are.
When once a man hath formed a clever scheme
By dint of many nights of earnest thought
He will with ease believe that ill-success
Is due not to his thought but outward acts.
And Strader's case is surely pitiable;
Had such a man as he shunned mystic snobs,
And made fit use of his fine intellect,
His great endowments surely would have borne
Much fruit and profit for humanity.

Ahriman:
Now see to it that thou art shrewdly armed.
This is thy task: Thou art to undermine
The confidence of Strader in himself.
No longer then will he desire to work
With Benedictus, who must henceforth rest
Upon himself and his own arguments.
But these are not so pleasing to mankind,
Who will be more opposed to them on earth
The more their inmost nature is disclosed.

The Soul of Fox:
I see already how I shall begin
To show to Strader where his thought hath failed.
There is a flaw within his new machine,
Though he cannot perceive it of himself.
A veil of mystic darkness hinders him.
But I, with my clear common sense, shall be
Of much more use to him than mystic dreams;
This for a long while bath been my desire;
Yet knew I not how to accomplish it.
At length a light is thrown athwart my path.
Now must I think of all the arguments
Which will make Strader realize the truth.

(Ahriman leads out Fox's soul and again blindfolds the individual portraying the soul before he is allowed to depart.)

Ahriman (alone):
He will be of great service unto me.
The mystic light on earth doth burn me sore
I must work further there, but must not let
The mystics unto men my work reveal.

(Theodora's soul appears.)

Theodora's Soul:
Thou mayest Strader reach; but none the less
I shall be by his side; and since we were
United on the radiant path of souls,
We shall remain united wheresoe'er
He dwells on earth or in the spirit-realms.

Ahriman:
If she indeed forsakes him not, the while
He still doth dwell on earth, I stand to lose
My battle; yet I shall not cease to hope
That he may yet forget her 'ere the end.

... I have frequently spoken to you here of that important event which came to pass in the last third of the nineteenth century, the event through which a special relationship was established between the Archangelic Power, that Being whom we call the Archangel Michael, and the destiny of mankind.

I have reminded you that since November, 1879, Michael is to be the Regent, as it were, for all those who seek to bring to humanity the right forces necessary to their healthy progress.

My dear friends, in our day we know that when such a matter is indicated, the indication refers to two different things:—first, to the objective fact, and second, to the way this objective fact is connected with what men are willing to receive into their consciousness, into their will. The objective fact is simply this, that in November, 1879, beyond the sphere of the sense world, in the super-sensible world, that event took place which may be described as follows:—Michael has gained for himself the power—when men come to meet him with all the living content of their souls—so to permeate them with his power, that they are able to transform their old materialistic intellectual power—which by that time had become strong in humanity—into spiritual intellectual power, into spiritual power of understanding. That is the objective fact; it has taken place. We may say concerning it that since November, 1879, Michael has entered into another relationship with man than that in which he formerly stood. But it is required of men that they shall become the servants of Michael.

What I mean by this will become quite clear to you through the following explanation.

You are aware that before the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished upon earth, the Jews of the Old Testament looked up to their Jahve, or Jehovah. Those who, among the Jewish priests, looked up in full consciousness to Jahve, were well aware that they could not reach him directly with human perception. The very name, Jahve, was held to be unutterable, and if it had to be uttered, a sign only was made, a sign which resembles certain combinations of signs which we attempt in the art of Eurhythmy. The Jewish priesthood, however, was well aware that men could approach Jahve through Michael. They called Michael the countenance of Jahve. Just as we learn to know a man when we look into his face, just as we draw conclusions about the gentleness of his soul from the gentleness of his countenance, and about his character from the way he looks at us, so the priesthood of the Old Testament, through the atavistic clairvoyance which flowed into their souls in dreams, desired to gain from the countenance of Jahve, from Michael, a knowledge of Jahve, whom it was not yet possible for mankind to reach.

The position of this priesthood towards Michael and Jahve was the right one. Their position towards Michael was right because they knew that if a man of that time turned to Michael, he could find through Michael the Jahve-power, which it was proper for the humanity of that time to seek.

Other Soul-Regents of humanity have appeared since then in the place of Michael; but since November, 1879, Michael is present again and can become active in the soul-life of those who seek the paths to him. These paths to-day are the paths of spiritual scientific knowledge. We may speak of “the paths of Michael”, just as well as of the “paths of spiritual scientific knowledge”.

But just at the time when Michael entered in this way into relationship with the souls of men, in order again to become their inspirer for three centuries, at this very time the demonic opposing force, having previously prepared itself, set up the very strongest opposition to him, so that a cry went through the world during our so-called war-years, in reality years of terror, a cry which has become the great world-misunderstanding which now fills the hearts and souls of men.

Let us consider what would have become of the Jewish people of the Old Testament, if instead of approaching Jahve through Michael they had sought to approach him directly. They would have become an intolerant people, a national self-seeking people concerned with the aggrandizement of their own nation, a nation thinking only of itself. For Jahve is the God who is connected with all natural things, and in the external historical development of mankind, he manifests his Being through the connection of generations, as it expresses itself in the essential qualities of the people. It was only because the ancient Jewish people desired at that time to approach Jahve through Michael, that they saved themselves from becoming nationally so egoistic that Christ Jesus would not have been able to come forth from among them. Because they had permeated themselves with the Michael power, as this power was in their time, the Jewish people were not so strongly impregnated with forces given over to national egoism, as would have been the case had they turned directly to Jahve or Jehovah.

To-day Michael is again the Regent of the World, but it is in a new way that mankind must become related to him. For now Michael is not the countenance of Jahve, but the countenance of Christ Jesus. To-day we must approach the Christ-impulse through Michael. In many respects humanity has not yet struggled through to this. Humanity has retained atavistically the old qualities of perception by which Michael could be approached when he was still the intermediary to Jahve; and so to-day humanity has a false relationship to Michael. This false relationship to Michael is apparent in a very characteristic phenomenon.

During the years of the war we heard continually the universal lie: “Freedom for individual nations, even for the smallest nations.” This is an essentially false idea, because to-day, in the Michael period, the all-important matter is not groups of men, but human individuals, separate men. This lie is nothing else than the endeavour to permeate each individual nation not with the new force of Michael, but with the force of the old, the pre-Christian time, with the Michael-force of the Old Testament. However paradoxical it may sound, there is a tendency among so-called civilized nations at the present day to transform what was justifiable among the Jewish people of the Old Testament, into something Luciferic, and to make of this the most powerful impulse in every nation.

People wish to-day to build up the republics of Poland, of France, of America, etc., upon methods of thought suited to Old Testament times. They strive to follow Michael as it was right to follow him before the Mystery of Golgotha, when men found through him Jahve, a national God. To-day it is Christ Jesus whom we must strive to find through Michael, Christ Jesus the divine leader of the whole human race. This means that we must seek for feelings and ideas which have nothing to do with human distinctions of any kind on the Earth. Such feelings and ideas cannot be found on the surface. They must be sought where the spirit and soul-part of man pulsate—that is, along the path of Spiritual Science. The matter lies thus; that we must resolve to seek the real Christ upon the path of Spiritual Science:—that is, upon the Michael-path. Only through this striving after spiritual truth is the real Christ to be sought and found; otherwise it would be better to extinguish the lights of Christmas, to destroy all Christmas trees, and to acknowledge at least with truth, that we want nothing that will recall what Christ Jesus has brought into human evolution ...

There have always been great searching minds. There have always been epochs in which the human mind sought to penetrate into the deepest questions; at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was particularly astonishing. In the German thinkers, we find the highest level of training. But precisely these important ones have become the least known. One man stands at the top: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Who knows and still reads his “Addresses to the German Nation” today?

Fichte's world view is a difficult one, so let us first take a look at Immanuel Kant. Kant, so to speak, set firm limits to human knowledge. He sought the thing in itself. He did not penetrate into its depths. Fichte went beyond him in a way. The Age of Enlightenment began with Kant. He said: “Man, you shall dare to use your own reason.” This caused the old belief in authority to falter. Stirring memories of the spirit of enlightenment came from France. Rousseau's spirit had a powerful effect on Kant. Materialism appeared there first, and the spirit of enlightenment also made itself felt in Germany; but something else was added there.

Lessing, in his “Education of the Human Race”, showed how he had been seized by this spirit of enlightenment; but with him, for the first time, we encounter a new idea, the idea of re-embodiment. He said: “Is not all eternity mine?” Through many lives, man walks the path to perfection. We see how Goethe showed us the great idea of re-embodiment in great images. That was Fichte's “deed”: Fichte showed in his teaching of science that man has to find the “I” within himself, and it was precisely this that was difficult for man to grasp. Fichte said: The great thing is that man himself says “I” to himself. No one can call out “I” to us from the outside. It is the only name that only we can give ourselves; it is the designation of our unique nature in relation to nature. It is there that the God in man begins to speak. With this, man has begun to ascend to ever higher levels. In 1800, Fichte wrote “On the Destiny of Man”. One should not read it, but live it, let it take effect on oneself. He suggests observing our inner life, immersing ourselves in the inner power of our nature in order to come to the certainty of our eternal essence. In his booklet “Instructions for a Blessed Life” he shows that the I has always lived in us and will always live in us. In such German writings you receive the best theosophical training.

Novalis was an eminently theosophical spirit; he died at the age of 29 as a mining engineer. He himself felt that his mathematics was a great poem. In this he recalls Pythagoras' saying that there is music of the spheres in it. Novalis sensed the movement in the universe as harmonious tones. For him, the starry world was a world built according to mathematical principles — just as the harmonies that one perceives in music can also be calculated. He also sensed and thought the layers of the earth. It was clear to Novalis that man must develop his inner senses. In “The Apprentices of Sais” he clearly stated that man is related to God and the whole world – Pictures: Hyacinth, a beautiful boy, loves the beautiful Rose Child. He owes the realization of the human ego to Fichte.

Another thinker: Schelling. In his 1809 publication “On Human Freedom”, he seeks to bring out Jakob Böhme's ideas. He is concerned with the interesting research into the origin of evil. I can only hint at a comparison today: everyone will see harmony at the bottom of everything. But how does disharmony come about? How can man come to freedom? By also having the possibility of doing evil. Schelling says: the divine good is like sunlight. When light throws light into darkness, it awakens shadows. The light would not be able to develop its power if there were nothing to cast the shadows. — Jakob Böhme calls it the counter-throw. Darkness is precisely the nothing. The something, the good, can only be understood by the fact that evil is a nothing, only a shadow. Schelling also called human beings, as a physical body, a perfection. Hands, for example, are perfect and independent, but can scratch themselves if they turn against each other. — Conversation: Clara and Benno. He had been silent for a long time, then Frederick William IV appointed him to the University of Berlin. Then he wrote “Philosophy of Mythology” and “Philosophy of Revelation”. He speaks there of ancient mysteries. What is a mystery? If we go far back behind Homer to the culture of the Greek secret schools, temple cults, we see that the disciples first had to observe the external drama, the God who descends into nature, who is hidden in all four realms, who only awakens in man. In the human breast is the place of the resurrection of God. This was not art, religion, science, it was all three at once: beauty, religion and piety. It was only later that truth, beauty and piety, science, art and religion separated. The mysteries illustrated this. In Schelling you can find the most beautiful in his “Mystical Revelations”.

Heinrich Kleist: “Käthchen von Heilbronn”, “Prinz von Homburg”. The former cannot be understood if one denies hypnosis and does not look deeper into the soul life. Kleist delved deeply into Schubert's philosophical lectures, which he heard in Dresden at the time, about dreams and the interior of the soul, and through this he gained those thoughts.

Justinus Kerner found a way to study the abnormal soul life with the seer of Prevorst. She came into a spiritual and mental environment in that state. This has many concerns. While the physical body rested during sleep, the soul perceived conditions in its environment. Kerner said: “For her, the state of constant illness is a constant dying.” Eckartshausen presents everything in an idealized way up to a certain point.

Ennemoser was somewhat superficial.

This chain of theosophical thinkers provided deep insights into the further development of humanity, showed the eternal core of being in individuality, and demonstrated re-embodiment.

What significance does the personality have for the being? It gains experience in thinking, feeling and willing. It does not discard this experience when it dies like a garment; no, life was a school for it, and what it took in during its lifetime, it takes with it as treasure into its new existence. A human being would have lived in vain if that were not the case. Thus, with each life, the individuality becomes richer. Everything that the personality has collected is the pearls of a pearl necklace. The personality is the tool for developing out of life. Earth life is what makes us more perfect. The personality lays the foundation for development.

Certain Western views underestimate the personality and believe that we simply shed our personality at death. No, we take its fruits with us. It is valuable to learn what the personality means. And all those spirits are masters at describing the personal. The mission of the German spirit at that time was to emphasize what is pure and beautiful and noble in the personality. And this is precisely what Theosophy shows: beautiful, pure and lofty thinking. Each age has its task and mission. That was the mission of German philosophy. The great minds have been almost completely forgotten, and it is our duty to learn from them. The most wonderful fruits can be gained there. Then one will truly understand the energy that emanated from those minds. “Man can do what he should, and when he says, 'I cannot,' he will not.” There were two great eras: the first when the Vedanta philosophy emerged in Asia in the post-Vedic period, the second at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany. On both occasions, the human mind experienced its greatest depth. During this time, will and strength were directed towards the ideal.

Nature is a great living thing,
And everything is fruit, and everything is seed.

For the development of human spiritual life, there is a self-contained period between the demand, sounding from the Greek striving for knowledge, “know thyself” and the confession, “ignorabimus”, which was derived from the natural scientific view of the world in the last third of the nineteenth century.

The ancient Greek sage found the human soul in harmony with life only when knowledge of the world culminated in knowledge of the human being, revealed in self-awareness.

The modern thinker who believes that science has pushed him to his confession denies man precisely this culmination of his mental state. When Du Bois-Reymond spoke his “Ignorabimus,” the belief lived in him that all human knowledge could only move between the two poles of matter and consciousness. But these two poles elude human knowledge. We shall be able to recognize the manifestations of matter in so far as they can be expressed in terms of measure, number and weight; but we shall never be able to know what lies behind these manifestations as “matter in space”. Nor shall we be able to recognize how the experience arises in our own soul: “I see red”, “I smell the scent of roses”, and so on, that is, what takes place in our conscious life. For how could one grasp that a mass of moving carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the brain is not indifferent to how they move, how they have moved, how they will move. We can grasp how the substance in the brain moves, we can define this movement according to mathematical concepts; but we cannot form any idea of how the conscious sensation arises from this movement, like smoke from a flame.

Should man go beyond these “limits of his knowledge,” he would have to proceed from knowledge of nature to knowledge of the spirit. And where the talk of the spirit begins, knowledge ends and must give way to faith. That is the ignorabimus (“we shall not know”) confession.

It cannot be said that the modern state of mind has gone beyond this confession of ignorance in the recognized quest for knowledge. Certainly, all sorts of attempts have been made to do so; but these are limited to pointing out this or that path to knowledge; however, they do not muster the energy to actually follow these paths with real knowledge in practice. One or other recognizes that in forming his ideas man experiences something that bears within it an independent, non-material entity; but one does not summon up the energy to live so energetically in this spiritual way of experiencing ideas that one passes from the realization that “ideas are spirit” to an understanding of the real spiritual world, which reveals itself in ideas only as on their surface.

One only arrives at the experience: when natural phenomena approach man, he answers them from within with ideas. But one does not grasp life in ideas themselves. One looks at how one is stimulated by nature to form ideas; but one does not place oneself in the inner experience that is woven into ideas themselves.

Anthroposophy is the first to take this step. And one recognizes it as such because in its experience of ideas, the ideas do not remain ideas but become a spiritual form of perception. Anyone who only sees through the spiritual essence of the ideas must stop at seeing in them spirit-like images of the nature of being, in which he has to content himself with the only incomprehensible content of the spirit. Only he who brings to inner experience the soul activity unconsciously at work in the forming of ideas stands before a spiritual reality through this experience. And this experience can be pursued with a full consciousness, just as it belongs to the mathematician when he pursues his problems. From the habits of thinking that one has acquired from sensory observation and experimentation, one fears today to immediately fall into the nebulous and fantastic if one does not have, when forming ideas, the support of what the senses say, what the measuring methods, what the scales reveal. This does not lead to the conscious activation of the inner soul power that flows through the formation of ideas, and in the experience of which one encounters the spiritual just as much as one encounters the spatially extended through the sense of touch.

What is described by anthroposophy as a thought exercise leads to this experience. And because every step of this experience is carried out with the same deliberation as in the field of natural research, measuring and determining weight, anthroposophy can be described as an exact spiritual research. Only those who do not understand the exact nature of their endeavors will lump them together with the nebulous forms of mysticism that so many people are fascinated by today.

Some people also claim that precisely because anthroposophy starts from experience, it should not ascribe to itself the character of knowledge. For knowledge is only present where there is a transition from experience to the derivation of the one from the other, to logical processing and so on.

Those who say this have failed to notice how all the soul activities through which modern man justifies his scientific approach pass through anthroposophy into experience. In this experience, one does not abandon the scientific approach in order to move on to a fantastic soul activity; rather, one takes the full scientific approach into the experience.

In every step of the types of spiritual knowledge described in this weekly from various points of view – imagination, inspiration and genuine intuition – the full fundamental character of science lives on, only in the realm of the spirit rather than in the realm of nature.

When Du Bois-Reymond made his confession “We will not know”, he had before his soul how man experiences inwardly: “I see red”, “I smell the scent of roses” and how, beyond this experience, “matter haunts space” and man cannot approach it. He cannot do so along this path either. But when he brings the formation of ideas to conscious experience in the imagination, then he opens the spiritual perception to the spirit, which then reveals itself in inspiration, and the person unites as spirit with the spirit in intuition. In this way, the person finds the spirit. But if he experiences himself in this way, he does not enter through the surface of the rose into the rose through the experience of “seeing red” or “smelling the scent of roses”; but he comes to experience what shines towards him from the rose as red, what streams towards him from the rose as the scent of roses; he finds that he has come to the other side of the red radiance and the scent of roses; matter ceases to “haunt space”; it reveals its spirit, and it is realized that belief in matter is only a preliminary stage to the realization that it is not matter that haunts space either, but spirit that reigns. And the concept of “matter” is only a provisional one, which is justified as long as its spiritual character is not understood. But one must speak of this “justification” after all. For the assumption of matter is justified as long as one faces the world with the senses. Anyone who, in this situation, attempts to assume some spiritual essence behind the sensory perceptions instead of matter is fantasizing about a spiritual world. Only when one penetrates to the spirit in one's inner experience does that which initially 'haunts' one as matter behind the sense impressions transform into a form of the spiritual world, to which one belongs with the eternal part of one's being. This transformation is not dream-like, but vividly and precisely imaginable.

It is a frequently mentioned fact that it is exceptionally difficult to obtain an understanding concerning the spiritual-scientific movement with our academic leaders in scientific circles. This is a fatal fact that science is today surrounded by such a big belief in authority. Everything that is scientific exercises such an impressive power in all directions that a spiritual movement has a hard furrow to plough if the predominating part of the scholars, one can say, almost any academic circle treat such a movement like our spiritual-scientific one in such a way, as if it were dilettantism, blind superstition or anything else.

It may be deplorable, but understandable in any case, if one hears the judgements of such academic circles about theosophy or spiritual science. If one examines these judgements, it is obvious that they belong to the judgements that were obtained without any expertise. If we then still ask the so-called public opinion, as it is expressed in our journals, we need not to be surprised, if it faces the theosophical movement not quite understanding. For this public opinion is controlled completely by the impressive power of the scientific authority and is completely dependent on it.

There are different reasons, which make this clear to us. We can see one of these reasons concerning the German cultural life simply in the fact that the academic circles, actually, left an important impact on our German cultural life, a culminating point of our deepest life of thought completely out of consideration. Indeed, you find some notes about this in any manual of philosophy, in any history of literature; but a really penetrating understanding of this most significant side of our cultural life and of that which around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries the most important German thinkers performed does not exist. In particular, there is a lack of understanding how these results of the German life of thought are rooted in the general German cultural life a hundred years ago.

If this fact were not such a one, if our academic circles were concerned with that deepening of the German life of thought around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries, there would be, for example, an understanding of Fichte's, Schelling's, and Hegel's great life of thought among our philosophers. The compendia of philosophy would not contain only single inadequate extracts of the works, but one would know what generally thought achieved in Germany. Then one would also obtain access to the spiritual-scientific movement from the point of view of scholarship.

Of all pre-schools of theosophy or spiritual science which one can go through today this school of the German thought of the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries is the very best for the present human beings. Indeed, it is not accessible to anybody, because how should the bigger national circles understand the great German thinkers really if the university circles, the academic circles lead the way to this understanding so little, if they do so little to cause a real popularity of these thinkers. One is not allowed to reproach the big audience, those who should turn to theosophy that they are not able to do it. To those, however, whose occupation it would be to let flow in the spiritual treasures of the West in the national culture, to those must be said that they fulfil their obligations in this respect in no way.

I do not name unknown names to you, but I maybe have to represent the peculiar fact that one can relate names, which you find in every philosophical compendium, with theosophy. It is peculiar that one likes to say that it is senseless to use the title “Secret Doctrine.” The Western researchers, for example, who concerned themselves with Buddhism, have repeatedly denied that Buddhism contains a secret doctrine that anything would exceed what you can read in the books.

It is not at all surprising that such academic circles assert such things. For one can conclude from it that the most important things have remained a secret doctrine to them. How should they know that there is a secret doctrine, because they have never found access to it! The most important that was performed in connection with the great German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte is to the majority, also even today, a deep secret doctrine. It is true, as deplorable as it may appear, the German spiritual life of the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries originated from the so-called Enlightenment. We may characterise this Enlightenment with a few words. It was a necessary event in the modern spiritual development. The most significant spirits of the 18th century had taken up the cause of it. Kant says, enlightenment simply means what can be summarised in the sentence: “Dare to use your own reason” (first by Horace: sapere aude). This enlightenment was nothing else than an emancipation of the personality, the relief of the personality from the traditions. What one has thought for centuries, what everybody has taken up from the common spiritual substance of the people should be checked. Only that should be valid which the single personality affirms. You know, great spirits developed from the Enlightenment. One only needs to remind of the name Lessing to call one of the best. Everything that is connected with the name Kant is nothing else than a result of the Enlightenment.

Someone who has broken with this Enlightenment in a peculiar way is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If I say, he has broken in peculiar way with this Enlightenment, and then you do not believe that I am determined to represent Fichte as an opponent of the Enlightenment. He has broken in the way that he examines all results of the Enlightenment and has continued building on its basis, but Fichte went quite thoroughly beyond that which is only enlightenment, beyond the trivial. Just Fichte gives somebody who has the possibility to become engrossed in his great lines of thought something that one can obtain among the newer spirits only from him.

After we have heard many merely popular talks, we want to hear a talk today, which seems to be far off the usual way, which our spiritual-scientific talks take in this winter. I will endeavour to show something as comprehensibly as possible that took place in the German life of thought, actually, at that time, around the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries. It can only be sketchy what I have to say. At first this German life of thought impeded the access to the real spiritual world and then to the living and immortal essence of the human being. Today I cannot go into the worth or worthlessness of Kant's philosophy. The official philosophy calls Kant the destroyer and regards his system of theories as a philosophical action first-rate. Today I would like only to remind of a word which is known perhaps also with those who do not have the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the matter, to the word of the “thing in itself.”

The human cognitive faculties are limited in the sense of Kant's philosophy. They cannot penetrate to the “thing in itself.” Whichever ideas and concepts we form, whatever we get to know in the world, we deal with phenomena and not with the true “thing in itself” in the sense of Kant's philosophy. This is always concealed behind the phenomena. With it, blind speculation is encouraged—and we have seen it in the spiritual development of Germany very well—which wants to define and restrict the human cognitive faculties in all directions. However, at the same time the trend of the human being to penetrate to the true, to explore the depths of existence should be stopped.

It should be shown that the human being cannot automatically approach the primary sources of existence. Now it may be true that such an attitude was necessary in the course of the spiritual life of the 18th century. However, Kant's philosophy put big obstacles in the way of the further development of the spiritual life. Indeed, I know very well that there are people who say, what did Kant different from all those great spirits who have always emphasised that we deal with phenomena that we cannot come to the “thing in itself!” That is apparently right, however, it is wrong. The real spiritual researchers of all times state quite different that the world only consists of phenomena.

No true spiritual researcher has ever denied that in such a way, as we investigate the world with senses, understand it with the intellect, it offers us only phenomena. However, higher senses are to be woken in us that go beyond the usual, which penetrate deeper into the sources of existence, can, and must lead slowly and gradually to the “thing in itself.” No Eastern philosophy, no Platonic philosophy, no self-understanding worldview penetrating into the spirit has ever spoken of the world as Maya in another sense. They always said only, to the lower human cognition, a veil is before the “thing in itself,” to the higher human cognition this veil is torn, the human being can penetrate into the depths of existence. The Enlightenment reached a blind alley concerning the question in certain respects, and this is characterised best of all with a remark which you find in the preface to the second edition of Kant's main work Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and with which the Enlightenment can be caught at its despondency because it does not want to advance further.

One reads: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith.” This is the nerve of Kant's philosophy and of that thinking to which the 18th century came and beyond which our philosophical scholarship has not yet come which still suffers from it. As long as it suffers from this illness, philosophy is never destined to understand theosophy. What does that mean: “I had to override knowledge to create space for faith”? Kant says, the thing in itself remains concealed, consequently also the thing in our breast. We do not know what we ourselves are; we can never come to the true figure of the things. As from uncertain worlds the so-called categorical imperative sounds: you shall do this or that.—We hear it, we cannot prove it, however. We just have to believe it. We hear about the divine being. We have to believe it. Just as little as we know about the destiny of the soul, about immortality and eternity. We must believe them. There is only faith in these matters that connect the human being with the divine, because no knowledge can penetrate into the divine. The human being believes knowledge if he presumes to penetrate into the divine. This divine is thereby falsified, is cast in a wrong light due to wild speculation.

Therefore, Kant wanted to save all spiritual for the mere faith and apply cognition—what one can know—only to the external impressions, to the appearance. Whatever you may read and study, otherwise, about Kant's philosophy, this thought is the essentials that it depends on. This thought became the essentials in the further development of Kant's thinking. However, someone who broke with this thought definitely out of a courageous attitude was Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814).

It is a peculiar thing that the theosophical thinkers of modern India, the renovators of the Vedanta philosophy made an astounding discovery—namely that the Germans have a great thinker, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. An Indian says this who writes under the name Bhagavan Das (1869-1958). I have got to know German theosophists who have only found out from him that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is a deep German thinker.

You can experience a lot in this regard. Weeks ago, I was in a South German city. One of the theosophical friends there said to me, now we have a university lecturer here who means, it would be good if people studied Fichte, because he got the idea that many deep thoughts were in Fichte.—That is a strange confession of a German university professor! If more than one century after Fichte a German university professor makes the discovery that Fichte achieved something great, throws a characteristic light on this kind of German scholarship.

Fichte represented the doctrine of the ego, of the human self-consciousness not speculatively, but out of the whole depth of his being, among his Jena students in the last decade of the 18th century. He did not represent it in the same way as we do it today from the spiritual-scientific point of view. He represented it in such a way that a number of persons would have come to theosophy if they had educated themselves according to his great conceptual demands; they would have come to it in a healthy way, illumining the real inside brightly. Not without reason his speeches inspired the Jena students in those days. For the following lived in him. Although he walked on the heights of thought, although he spoke in the purest, clearest, and logically sharpest thoughts, a quite warm and deep immediate personality and being expressed themselves in his thoughts at the same time. He himself pronounced the word that characterises him deepest that everyone has a philosophy, depending on which sort of a person he is.

If one expresses this trivially, one could say, it does not depend on whether anybody can think logically well or badly, because one can reason a hollow philosophy very logically, it does not depend on astuteness but on the internal experience, on that which one has fathomed with all his soul forces. This expresses itself in the language. If one is also a flat materialist, nevertheless, he can be a sharp logician, and on the other hand, someone can be a spiritualist and be logically weak. One proves no worldview, but the worldview is the expression of the innermost human being, the inner experience. Fichte pronounced this not only, but lived it also. Kant stimulated him. However, as one is stimulated by that to which one can add the drawback in his inside—because there the deepest organs emerge in the human being—, nevertheless, this was clear to Fichte.

Now follow me, I would like to say, for a short moment into the icy, but not less important regions of thoughts from which Fichte got the being of self-consciousness. I do not describe with his own words, because this would be too difficult here, but in outlines, which do not contain less truth. I would like to say what he conjured before his Jena students at that time: there is one thing for everybody in which the “thing in itself” announces itself to him, in which he expresses himself. That is his own inside. Look into it and you discover something that you can discover nowhere else at first.—We see that Fichte knew that not anybody discovers what he has to discover there, because he says a very nice word, even if it is rude to most human beings. He says, if the human beings were able to come to real self-knowledge, they would find the most significant in themselves. However, a few are successful, because they rather regard themselves as pieces of lava on the moon than as self-conscious beings.

What is self-consciousness for our time? One shows it as a conglomerate of cerebral atoms. However, one does not strive for recognising himself; one does not do this. There is no great difference whether one says that it is a conglomerate of cerebral atoms or molecules or a piece of lava on the moon.—Here Fichte draws attention clearly to the fact that that knowledge of the inside which only wants to observe how it is not the right knowledge of the inside. For the nature of the human being differs in its inside from any other being. By which does it differ? It differs by the fact that decision and action belong to the nature of the human being. From this icy region of thoughts, we want to come to flowery fields soon. Fichte calls self-knowledge not brooding in oneself, not looking into oneself, no, Fichte regards it as action. This word leads you from the wrong self-knowledge to the true self-development. The human being is not able to look simply into himself in order to recognise who he is. He has to give that to himself, which he shall become. He must become engrossed in the divine of the world and get the sparks from the divine with which he has to kindle his self perpetually. We look at a stone. It is what it is. We recognise it. We look at the plant. It is what it is. We look at our own body, our etheric body, and astral body. They are also that which they are. The human being is only that which he makes of himself, and self-knowledge is an intimate activity, no dead knowledge. While Fichte uses the (German) word “Tathandlung” (~ self-conscious action and result of the action), he says something that only the old Vedanta philosophy says in this significant kind. He reached the point that just the theosophists seek again. Often and often, I have said here that theosophy wants to show how the human being soars the divine, how it should stimulate the divine strength slumbering in the human being with which then he also becomes aware of the divine round himself. Fichte completely strives for the same. The wrong self-knowledge, he says, consists of the fact that one says, look into yourselves and you find the god in yourselves.

The right self-knowledge says something completely different. It says, if you brood in yourself, it is in such a way, as if you look into your own eye. However, this is not the task of the eye. We get to know the light with the eye. Thus, we also get to know the light of the ego with the soul. One can compare the eye with waking the inner self. As little as you find the soul in the organism, the light in the eye, just as little you find the god in yourselves. However, we find the possibility to develop the organs to find this god. The activity in the ego, which develops our spiritual organs, is the being that the human being gives himself. This is the “Tathandlung,” this is Fichte's self-knowledge. From this point, Fichte advances gradually. If you completely settle down, you educate yourselves to his thoughts, then you find a healthy access to theosophy, and nobody has to regret it one day if he settles down into the clear lines of thought of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, because he finds the way to the spiritual life.

However, there is a peculiar fact. When Johann Gottlieb Fichte has ascended to these etheric heights of thought, he lacks the view to which he did not come at that time, which the spiritual-scientific worldview brought back like a solution of the world riddle: the teaching of karma and reincarnation. If you see this, then you know to apply it to your own development. The human beings would like to judge all times, according to the same pattern. However, the human spirit is in perpetual development, and every age has other tasks. That century whose end forms in conceptual respect Johann Gottlieb Fichte had the task to emancipate the human personality. This was the good side of the Enlightenment. However, the personality is that member of the human nature, which just does not return, as well as it is. Our deepest essence that expresses itself within the personality returns in the various earth-lives. However, the single life on earth expresses itself in the personality.

Let us consider the being of the personality properly. We have four human covers basically that are not to be imagined, however, like onion skins: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and in them that which the human being works for, his refined astral body, that part on which the human ego has already worked. We have these four covers. However, in them only the imperishable everlasting essence of the human being, the so-called spiritual triad exists: manas, buddhi, and atman—spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These go from earth-life to earth-life and ascend then to higher states of existence. The last external cover expresses itself in the personality. It has still another importance and it has received it more and more in the human development. If we go back to the old times, we find that the human beings appreciated the individuality during the former centuries less and less; instead, the personality became more and more powerful. Today one easily confuses the concepts of individuality and personality. The individuality is the everlasting that runs through the earth-lives. Personality is that which the human being develops during an earth-life.

If we want to study the individuality, we have to look at the bottom of the human soul. If we want to study the personality, we have to observe how the essence expresses itself. The essence is born into the people, into the occupation. All that determines the inner being, it personifies it. With a human being who is still on a subordinated level of development one can perceive a little of the work on his inside. The mode of expression, the kind of the gestures and so forth is just in such a way as he has them from his people. However, those are the advanced human beings who give themselves the mode of expression and gestures from their inside. The more the inside of the human being is able to work on his appearance, the higher this develops the human being.

Now one could say, the individuality is expressed in the personality. Someone, who has his own gestures, his own physiognomy, has a peculiar character in his actions and in relation to the surroundings, has a distinct personality. Is that lost at death forever? No, this does not get lost. Christianity knows for sure that this is not the case. What one understands by resurrection of the flesh or of the personality is nothing else than the preservation of the personal in all following incarnations. What the human being has gained as a personality remains to him because it is attached to the individuality and this carries it further into the following incarnations. If we have made something of our body that has a peculiar character, this body, this strength, which has worked there, resurrects. As much we have worked on ourselves, as much we have made of ourselves, we do not lose it. Generating awareness of this knowledge is something that has not yet happened. This happens by theosophy. However, it was the task of the Enlightenment to acquire an uncertain feeling. It showed the task of the personality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte has put the idea of the personality in its everlasting importance in his construct of clear ideas. There the right thing immediately emerges for the epoch of the recognition of the everlasting and imperishable in the personality. Fichte accomplished that.

One has often said, the great human beings have the big mistakes of their big virtues, and because Fichte was able to measure out the personality with the thought uniquely, he did not penetrate to the individuality; also not his successors. However, they have implanted the thought in the personality. Someone who finds it there carries it in a healthy way through the repeated earth-lives if he approaches spiritual science. It does not depend on dogmas, but on the education that we can obtain in his spirit. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was an educator in the proper sense.

It does not depend on the fact that we become servile students of such a man, but that we also go through that strength which he went through. Then we may get other thoughts by his forces in another age. One faces such a spirit in this way. This was expressed in a certain way at his time. His personality can educate us and find pleasant expression in the distant future.

Spiritual science is so little dogmatic that it leads to the great human beings and shows that we can learn from them even more than what they have said. The expression of that which they are is the language. However, more than the expression lives in every human being, the immortal soul lives in them to which we can rise as to the true essence. Therefore, Fichte was already in the highest degree stimulating for those, at the end of the 18th century, who were sitting at his feet and listening how he measured out the human personality with world-spanning lines of thought. He inspired them to penetrate conceptionally to the soul and to acquire still quite other treasures from it than Fichte himself did.

One of those who sat at Fichte's feet and looked reverentially to him, one of those who got out the philosophical ideas, was the young short-lived German theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, German Romantic poet and author, 1772-1801). He died around the turn of 18th to the 19th century, not yet thirty years old. Who becomes engrossed in his works goes through the finest training of theosophy. Perhaps it could be to that who is educated in the western science a much better elementary training to go through his tremendous light flashes, than through the Bhagavad Gita or similar writings that remain more or less strange to the West. Just now, it is possible to become engrossed completely in that which this great soul achieved.

He wrote a book in which he describes how a young person is introduced in the subterranean structure of the earth, in the geologic layers of the rocks and minerals by great geologists and mineralogical works. There he readily gets thoughts such as, you, rocks, I look only for you, however, what you say I look for continually.—Runes, letters, words were the stones to him, which he investigated as a miner underground; spiritual beings created in the earth and produced every single rock. He saw the spirit and soul in the earth, and every stone was to him the expression of that which the earth has to say to him. Mineralogy and geology became a runic science to him, and he attempted to penetrate to the spirit of the earth, while his great teacher made the layers and resemblances of the rocks clear to him. Just those who work in the depths of the earth are often led to deeper worldviews. Not least, miners did deep looks into the spiritual world. Staying underground has a peculiar effect on the spiritual experience.

However, something else appeared with Novalis. To understand it we only need to remember that at the front gate of Plato's school one could read the words: let none but geometers enter here.—The Platonic school demonstrated its elementary knowledge in geometrical forms, and Novalis, who illumined the secrets of existence with so big light flashes, revered mathematics like a religion. It is something sacred to him. Take this as a psychological phenomenon of peculiar kind. These strange human beings are able to feel something sacred and something like music with the abstract lines of mathematics and geometry. How circles and angles form a group together, how the different forms like polyhedra, dodekahedra and such build themselves up, then one can feel something that comes from Novalis speaking about mathematics. However, you can only take up that if you do not take up it in such a way as in our schools, but if you become engrossed in the inner music of space. Mathematics is the access to the infinite truth.

Then he heard Fichte, and from him the great truth of the ego as a personality. Then we see in this strange spirit almost the whole occultism reflected in certain ways. For someone who has knowledge in this respect Novalis is a peculiar personality. He is a personality who had already experienced the deepest initiation in former incarnations. Everything was a recollection that he experienced in the last, the third decade of his life. It becomes apparent in his life that it was more recollection of former incarnations than of the current one. This comes out in his imagination. The former incarnations completely became imagination in Novalis because they cast their shadows and found their expression as pieces of art.

Thus, we have to understand Novalis as a peculiar, tender, and intimate being. If Fichte arranges his razor-sharp thoughts and carries us off by this sharpness, then Novalis is wonderfully gentle and shows the spiritual life from a completely different side. Thus, he is the necessary supplement for someone who wants to go through the German preliminary stage of theosophy. Our best went through this pre-school in those days. We can call names of many people who attempted to penetrate in their kind, according to their character in those days into the truth which spiritual science gives humanity back today. These are names that are known more or less, however, whose bearers one has to deeper consider.

At first, we have Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch., German philosopher, 1775-1854). If we open ourselves to his youth writings, where he became independent, he works so strongly on that who gets involved with him because he expressed a thought of Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, German-Swiss physician, occultist, 1493-1541) in the way usual at that time. This thought was expressed not only by Schelling, but also by the great Steffens (Henrik St., Danish philosopher, 1773-1845), and in particular by the naturalist Oken (originally Lorenz Okenfuß, 1779-1851), by the great predecessor of the modern theory of evolution and founder of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians. This thought is an eminently theosophical one.

It was usual in natural sciences, also in the philosophy of Schelling and Steffens, also in that of Novalis. These thinkers said: if we look out at the world, we see a number of animals. Every animal shows certain human qualities one-sidedly developed. What the amphibians have, what the snails have is also found in the human being. Those snails, amphibians and so on have something one-sidedly physical. If one makes, however, a whole of it, one gets the harmoniously developed human body that summarises everything that is spread out outdoors. As Paracelsus says, we find letters outdoors in nature, and if we compose them, they yield a word and this word is the human being. A great theosophist—not a German one—of the 18th century (presumably Claude de Saint Martin, 1743-1803) just took this principle as the basis of his theosophical investigating. Therefore, he came so far to say, if we look at the human being, we see the remaining animal realm. This is the opposite principle of that how one studies these things today. The theorists of evolution of that time said something different from those of today.

They said, if you face a person about whom you do not know that he is, for example, a great watchmaker, and then you are not able to recognise the person. At first, you have to become engrossed in his astuteness that makes him create what he produces. What he produces, that is the point. However, nature has produced the human being as a keystone. There you have the compendium of the whole nature. If you understand this in such a way, you understand nature.—One must recognise the remaining nature from the human being and not the human being from nature. If you carry out that really, you also understand how it could emerge as a certain reflection with Schelling and Oken. With Schelling and Oken you can read, the snail is a groping animal, the insect is a light animal, the bird a hearing animal, the amphibian a feeling animal, the fish a smelling animal. Thereby they express how the senses are spread over the single animals. They are harmoniously contained in the human being. One only needs to distribute the qualities of the human being to understand the remaining nature.

In 1809, Schelling published a writing, which is of big significance for theosophy. He had got to know the deep German thinker Jacob Boehme. He became engrossed in him, and thus he got to know the nature of the bad and its coherence with freedom. You find this in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom. There he shows that God is the light and that from the light everything comes that shines that, however, the light has to shine into the darkness and that where light is shadow originates. Only by this comparison, one can realise what one reads in this writing. If you let the sun shine into darkness, there originates shadow; shadow must appear if the light is there, but the light does not generate it. Hence, he says, from the divine primal ground of the light everything great arises in the world. However, as well as the light is opposed to the darkness, the non-ground faces the primal ground, and from this the shadow of the good emerges, the bad. This is the indication of an infinitely deep involvement. Again, you can educate yourselves to the theosophical life if you take up that in yourselves.

Another writing by Schelling is still significant: Bruno or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things (1802/1843). In pleasant dialogue form, like with Plato, he discusses here about the coherence of soul and spirit in the theosophical sense. Therefore, Schelling would be able to become a theosophist. He understood how to practice inner sight. Schelling was also an eager teacher at the Jena University first, and then he worked still at other sites and, finally, withdrew completely. In Munich, he lived a long time and was together with Baader (Franz Xavier von B., philosopher and theologian, 1765-1841), that spirit who renewed Jacob Boehme in such a fine way in the 19th century again. He stimulated Schelling. He wrote scarcely anything in that time. In 1809, his writing about freedom originated. Then he wrote almost nothing up to his call to Berlin by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who may be challenged in certain ways, who is not yet appreciated enough concerning insights into big, deep, and internal spiritual connections. In 1841, Schelling was appointed to Berlin. He should explain before the students what he had lived through such a long time.

He held two courses of lectures: about the Philosophy of Mythology (1856) and about the Philosophy of Revelation (1858). There he led into the essence of the old mysteries and showed how Christianity originated from them and what Christianity concerns. Then we who live more than half a century later are led automatically to reincarnation and karma. If you become engrossed in the philosophy of mythology and in the philosophy of revelation, you find, this is theosophy. However, all trivial people of that time railed against that. They could not understand what Schelling reported at that time. If the theosophists wanted to become engrossed in these writings, they would see from which depths all that is taken.

Fichte could speak of a special spiritual sense because he was one of those who wanted to open the eyes of the human beings. Fichte gave the definition of theosophy already in 1813. He said, “Appear as a sighted man in a world of blind people and speak to them of colours and light. Either you talk to them of nothing—and this is the more fortunate case if they say it, because in this way you soon notice the mistake and stop talking without success—or the more gifted people say, you are a daydreamer.”—All those experience that who are gifted with a special sense. They appear like among blind people. However, this sense can be evoked with everybody, slowly with the one, faster with the other. By the special sense, Fichte shows quite clearly that he knew what depends on in theosophy. This was the real definition of theosophy. Others scooped from such sources, from such currents of the spiritual life.

However, I would like to remind of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich H., 1770-1831, philosopher) above all. I cannot get involved to explain Hegel's peculiar view. I would also like to remind of the name of an exceptionally gentle person, of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780-1860, physician and naturalist), who wrote books about the essence of the soul. Schelling wrote to Schubert still in 1850 when the sixth edition of a book about the essence of the soul had appeared: you are, actually, in a more fortunate position than I am. I must get involved with the world-spanning thoughts, which introduce in the spiritual life. However, you live the intimate side that the human being meets if he investigates all intimacies of the soul.

Schubert studied that soul life which is the border area between consciousness, semi-consciousness and unconsciousness, but also the border area between everyday consciousness, dream, and clairvoyance. With Schubert, you already find explanations about the principle that controls the dream world. About that, you can find a lot with him. He studied Swedenborg (Emanuel S., 1688-1772, scientist, philosopher, and mystic) in the time in which it was possible to point to these characteristics of the human spiritual life with great thoughts in a healthy way. He represented the view that there is an etheric body and an even higher etheric body than that which decomposes after death with every human being. Schubert already pointed to that which the Vedanta philosophy calls the “fine body” (sukshma-shariram). He wrote a very nice consideration about this higher body of the human being. You can find there fine remarks with him.

You can see how at that time already the single currents flowed into each other, you can see this with a poet who interlaced these things in his poetries, with Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), who represented a peculiar prince in his Prince of Homburg and created Katie of Heilbronn, a peculiar figure, too. He was stimulated to them by talks on somnambulism and on higher spiritual life.

Schubert speaks of a pre-being of the soul; he also discusses the question of reincarnation. At that time, he did not yet regard it as Christian. However, he speaks of a pre-being whose destiny he exactly pursues. Then from this, the brilliant book originates by Justinus Kerner (1786-1862, practical physician, poet and writer): The Seeress of Prevorst (1829). When in the 19th century the book about this strange woman appeared, he used a lot of theosophy for its explanation. The occultist already recognises Justinus Kerner as an expert in the basic definition that he gives about this seeress (Friederike Hauffe, 1801-1829). He was an expert because he lived in the time, which had such thoughts as I characterised them. He says of the seeress of Prevorst—she had two children and was somnambulistic in the extreme—that the mental-spiritual world was open round her and that she could observe the spiritual side of the human beings. He describes her in such a way: imagine somebody retained at the moment of death, so that the peculiar state continues for some years; the emergence of the etheric body and the odd relationship of the astral body to the etheric body lasted for years. Because her soul condition was in such a way, she was able to behold the still existing part of the etheric body of someone who had lost a limb. She could also perceive many things besides. Kerner gives appropriate explanations even if they are not at the height of our time.

You can find explanations also with Eckartshausen (Karl von E., 1752-1803, philosopher, mystic) who also wrote about the inner spiritual development. Kosti's Journey or also The Hieroglyphics of the Human Heart are writings that are adapted to open the human soul to a higher vision. He also described what he calls a soul body appropriately. Another writer is sometimes rather stimulating: Ennemoser (Joseph E., 1787-1854, physician, mesmerist) who wrote theosophy, too, informed a lot of animal magnetism and the mysteries in his works, and contributed much to show the Greek mythology in the right light.

Thus, you see a painting of the first time of the 19th century, from the first thoughts that can work educationally on the human being up to the facts that bring theosophy together with immediate spiritualistic experiences. At that time, you find everything in a pure and sometimes nobler way expressed than it was shown later by the respective authors. You can learn much more about magic spiritual life there than in that which was published by Schindler (Heinrich Bruno Sch., 1797-1859, physician and author) and Albertus (?, perhaps hearing defect, probably Carus, Carl Gustav C., 1789-1869, physician, scientist, and naturalist).

Later the interest changed more and more into an interest, similar to curiosity, the mere urge for knowledge. In the first half of the 19th century, even such spirits who could not go very deeply had the desire of ascending to spiritual heights, developing inner soul organs, and knew something concerning self-knowledge and self-development. Novalis knew how to speak in miraculous tones in his Heinrich of Ofterdingen about that all. He put the big treasure of former initiation memory in that which he has like a recollection of former lives. In the Novices of Sais he shows how Hyazinth gets to know the girl Rosenblüth (rose flower). Only the animals of the wood know something of this extremely subtle love. A wise man comes and tells about the magic life, about spiritual secrets. Hyazinth and Rosenblüth get the desire to walk to the initiation temple of Isis. However, nobody can give some indication, which is the right way to the temple. He walks and walks. There he sits down, tired among nice physical things, in particular also because of that which nature speaks to him. He drops off to dream in a ghostly way.

The temple is round him. The curtain is lifted from the veiled picture, and what does he see? Rosenblüth. He lovely describes how Rosenblüth is that feeling of unity, that uniform idea of the whole nature, how it extends over the whole nature, and how he looks for the hidden secret that life often shows to us that we only need to understand. This is wonderfully indicated. Thus, you can prospect with Novalis wonderfully if you get yourselves in how intimately he expressed the experiences of the world at that time.

I was allowed here to speak about Goethe, Herder, and Schiller and to show how they were theosophists. In a theosophical way, Novalis just pronounces what is a characteristic trait of that time what controlled it like a theosophical motto spiritually. It is included in the words: “Someone succeeded; he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais.—However, what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—himself.”

Thus, the human being comes out, after he has developed the spiritual organs in himself, and searches for himself all over the world. He does not search for himself in himself, he searches for himself in the world, and with it, he searches for God. This search of God in the world, as he expresses it so nicely in this saying, is theosophy.