The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The occultist will never dream of imposing dogmas. He is one who tells what he has seen and tested in the astral and spiritual worlds or what has been revealed to him by trustworthy and reliable teachers. He does not desire to convert but to quicken in others the sense that has awakened in him and to enable them to see likewise.

Here we shall consider man as an astral being as he is revealed by clairvoyant vision. The astral being of man includes the whole world of feelings, passions, emotions and impulses of the soul. To inner sight these are changed into forms and colours. The astral body itself is a cloud-like, ovoid form, permeating and enveloping man. We can perceive it from within.

In man as a physical being, we have to consider the substance and form of the body. The astral substance entirely changes in the course of seven years, but the form remains. Behind substance is the constructive, upbuilding principle—the etheric body. We do not, in the ordinary way, perceive it; we only see its accomplished work, in the physical body. The eye of sense only sees what is finished, not what is in the state of becoming.

The contrary is the case when we are able to see the astral body—that is to say, our own astral body. We become aware of it from within through our desires and the various movements of the soul.

Seership consists in learning to see from without that which in ordinary life we feel from within. Feelings, desires and thoughts then become living and visible forms, constituting the aura around the physical sheath.

The etheric body builds and moulds the physical body; the astral body is made up of desires. Every human aura has its own individual shades and predominating colours. There is one fundamental colour in which the others play. The aura of a man with a melancholic temperament, for example, is of a bluish hue. But so many impressions coming from without flow through it that the observer may easily be deceived, above all if he is looking at his own aura. The clairvoyant sees his own aura reversed, as it were, the outer as the inner, the inner as the outer, because he is observing it from outside.

All the great Founders of religions have been possessed of clairvoyant sight. They are the spiritual Guides of mankind, and their precepts are precepts of the moral life based on astral and spiritual truths. This explains the similarities in all the religions. There is a certain similarity, for instance, between the Eight-fold Path of the Buddha and the Eight Beatitudes of Christ. The same underlying truth is that whenever man develops one of the virtues, he unfolds a new faculty of perception. Why are eight stages mentioned? Because the seer knows that the faculties which may be transmuted into organs of perception are eight in number.

The astral organs of perception are called in occultism, the ‘lotus-flowers’ (sacred wheels, chakra). The lotus-flower with sixteen petals lies in the region of the larynx. In very ancient times this lotus-flower turned from right to left—that is to say in the opposite direction to the hands of a clock. In the man of today, this lotus-flower has ceased to turn. In the clairvoyant seer it begins to move in the opposite direction—from left to right. In earlier times, eight of the sixteen petals were visible, the others undeveloped. In future ages they will all be visible, for the first eight are the result of the action of unconscious initiation, the other eight of the conscious initiation attained by dint of personal effort. The eight new petals correspond to the Beatitudes of Christ.

Another lotus-flower (with twelve petals) is situated in the region of the heart. In earlier times, six petals only were visible. The acquisition of six virtues will, in times to come, develop the other six. These six virtues are: control of thought, power of initiative, balance of the faculties, optimism which enables a man always to see the positive side of things, freedom from prejudice, and finally, harmony in the life of soul. When these virtues have been acquired, the twelve petals begin to move. They express the sacred quality of the number twelve which we have in the twelve Apostles, the twelve knights of King Arthur, and again in all creation, in all action. Everything in the world develops according to twelve different aspects. We have another example in Goethe's poem, Die Geheimnisse, which expresses the ideal of the Rosicrucians. According to the explanation given by Goethe to certain students, each of the twelve Companions of the Rose Cross represents a religious creed.

We find these virtues expressed again in signs and symbols, for symbols are not arbitrary inventions—they are realities. The symbol of the Cross, for instance, as well as that of the Swastika, represents the four-petalled chakram in man. The twelve-petalled flower is expressed in the symbol of the Rose Cross and the twelve Companions. The thirteenth among them, the invisible Companion who unites them all, represents the truth that unites all religions.

This truth underlies the rites and ceremonies of the various religions. Divine wisdom speaks through the rites and cults which have been founded by seers. The astral world expresses itself through them in the physical world. As in a reflection, the rite represents what is happening in higher worlds. This fact appears again in masonic ritual and in certain Asiatic religions. At the birth of a new religion, an Initiate gives the foundations upon which the ritual of the outer cult is built. As evolution proceeds, the rite—a living picture of the spiritual world—tends towards the domain of Art. Art, too, comes from the astral world; the rite becomes beauty. This came to pass notably at the time of Greek civilisation. Art is an astral event of which the cause has been forgotten.

We have an example in the Mysteries and Gods of Greece. In the Mysteries, the hierophant retraced the development of man in its three stages: man the animal, man the human, man the God (the true Superman, not the false Superman of Nietzsche). The hierophant projected these three super-sensible types as living images into the astral light, where they were visible to those who had been initiated into the Mysteries. At the same time they were expressed in poetry and sculpture by three symbols: (1) the Satyr, or bestial type; (2) the human type: Hermes, or Mercury; (3) the divine type: Zeus, or Jupiter. Each of these figures, together with everything around them, represents a cycle of human evolution. That is the way in which the disciples of the Mysteries carried over into Art what they had seen in the astral light.

The zenith of the earthly life of man is reached at about the age of thirty-five. Why is this so? Why does Dante begin his journey at the age of thirty-five, the middle point of human life? Before this moment, man's activity has been concentrated on the development of the physical body but he can now begin his ascent to the spiritual worlds and apply his forces for the unfolding of seership. Dante became a seer at the age of thirty-five. It is the age when the physical forces cease to forestall the influx of Spirit; liberated from the body, these same forces can be transformed into clairvoyant faculties. Here we are touching upon a deep mystery: the law of the transformation of organs. Transformation of the organs constitutes man's evolution. The highest in him is the product of what once was the lowest and which has been transfigured.

At the time of the separation of the sexes, the astral body of man divided: the lower part producing the sexual (physical) organism and the higher part giving rise to thought, imagination, speech.

In days of yore, the sexual organs (the procreative forces) and the organ of the voice (the word creative) were united. Two poles have appeared in man's being, where formerly there was but one single organ. The negative pole (animal) and the positive pole (divine) were once united and have separated.

The third aspect of the Logos is the creative power of the word (as expressed at the beginning of the Gospel of St. John), of which the words of human speech are the reflection. In the old myths and legends this truth was represented in the figure of Vulcan, the cripple. His mission was to guard the sacred fire. He is crippled because, in initiation, man must lose something of his lower, physical forces; the lower part of the body is a product of the past. Raised to the heights of initiation, the lower nature must fall away, to rise thereafter to a yet higher stage. Thus in the course of his evolution man has divided into a lower and higher nature.

In certain mediaeval pictures, the human body is divided into two parts by a straight line; the head and left upper part of the body are above, the right upper part and the lower part of the body are below the line. This division is an indication of the past and the future of the human body.

The two-petalled lotus-flower lies beneath the forehead, at the root of the nose. As yet it is an undeveloped astral organ which will one day unfold into two antennae or wings. The symbol of them can already be seen in the horns traditionally represented on the head of Moses.

Viewed from above downwards, head and sexual organ, man is synthetic and one. All this is the product of the past. Left and right he is symmetrical, representing the present and the future. These two symmetrical parts, however, have not the same value. Why is man usually right-handed? The right hand which is the more active of the two today, is destined subsequently to atrophy. The left hand will survive when the two ‘wings’ on the forehead have developed. The heart will be the brain of the chest—an organ of knowledge.

Before man assumed the upright posture there was a time when he moved on all fours. Such is the origin of the riddle of the Sphinx: ‘Who is the being who in infancy walks on four legs, in middle age on two, in old age on three?’ Oedipus answers that this being is man, who when, a baby crawls on all fours, and in old age leans on a stick. In reality, riddle and answer refer to the whole evolution of humanity, past, present and future, as it was known in the ancient Mysteries. Quadruped in a previous epoch of development, man walks today on two feet; in the future he will ‘fly’ and will indeed make use of three auxiliary organs, namely the two wings developed from the two-petalled lotus which will be the motive organ of his will, and for the rest, the organ arising by a metamorphosis of the left half of the chest, and the left hand. Such will be the organs of movement in the future.

The present organs of reproduction will atrophy as well as the right side and the right hand. Man will give birth to his like by the force of the word; his word will mould ethereal bodies like his own.

If it was our last esoteric lesson * the great laws of spiritual life revealed in the course of human development, they were the great spiritual powers that guide everything that happens on the physical plan. And which replace each other in their effectiveness, today we want to speak in a somewhat more intimate way of the laws of spiritual life, as it takes place within man himself.

The one in an occult training course is, in a sense, a waiter, a seeker. He is waiting for a new world to uncover him one day except for the one he has otherwise perceived. He is waiting for one day to say to himself, "I see a new world;" I will be able to say to himself; "I will be able to do so." Between all the things I have been able to perceive in the room so far, I see a fullness of spiritual beings that were previously hidden from me. -To make this quite clear to you, you must call the seven states of consciousness that man goes through in the course of his development before the soul. The first state of consciousness that man underwent was a dull, dawny degree of consciousness in which man felt one with the cosmos; We call Saturndasein this state. In the soldon, the level of consciousness decreased, but it became all the brighter for it. When man lived through the man's being, his consciousness was similar to what we experience as the last remnant in our dreams, it was a dull image consciousness. Here on earth we have the bright awareness of the day, which will remain when man rises again to the consciousness of images on Jupiter, so that we then have a bright consciousness of images there. Be. Even two higher states, the inspired and intuitive state of consciousness, will continue to rise to two higher states, the person. So our bright awareness of the day stands in the middle of the dull image consciousness of the moon and the bright image consciousness of Jupiter. And what the esoteric is waiting for to reveal itself to him one day is Jupiter consciousness. It will reach each of you once, at one earlier, at the other later, that depends on your abilities, on the degree of inner maturity.

Now, however, the consciousness of Jupiter in its first germs is already present in every human being. In a very delicate way, the future consciousness is already indicated, man is only unable to interpret it. This is precisely the esoteric life to a large extent that the disciple learns the subtle processes in himself and in his surroundings.

One still the old moon consciousness, in the other the new consciousness of Jupiter is already there, are the feeling of shame and the feeling of fear. In the feeling of shame, where the blood is pushed towards the periphery of the body, there is still one last remnant of the moon consciousness, and in the Feeling of fear, where the blood flows after the heart to find a fixed center, is annoedly announced by Jupiter consciousness. So normal daytime consciousness strikes out after two sides.

Shame---------Standard----------Feeling of anxiety

When we talk about Anything Feeling shame and the pubic blush rising in our faces, we experience something reminiscent of being a moon. Imagine a Modem Man. He could not yet «I» to say to himself, but lived in a dull, dawning image consciousness, embedded in astric forces and Beings with which he felt one and in harmony. Think of it, my sisters and brothers, one day with such a Modem Man the feeling suddenly dawns: I am a «I». I am different from the others, I am an independent being, and all the other beings in my environment look at me. -The whole lunar man would have glowed through from top to bottom a very enormous feeling of shame, he would have disappeared, trying to go down with shame, when he could have felt such a premature feeling of self. So we, my sisters and brothers, too, when a sense of shame arrives, would like to disappear, sink under the ground, dissolve our self-iness, as it were. Imagine how the ancient Modem man was embedded in harmony with the forces and Beings of his surroundings. When an enemy being approached him, he did not think, but he knew instinctively how to avoid it. He acted in a feeling that, if he had been conscious, he could have expressed as follows: I know that the legality of the world is not set up in such a way that this wild beast will now tear me apart, but the harmony of the world is such that it means it. Who must protect me from my enemy.

So directly in harmony with the forces of space felt the old moonman. And if a feeling of self had awakened in him, it would have immediately disturbed this harmony. And the feeling of me actually, as it began to penetrate man on earth, has brought him more and more into disharmony with his surroundings. The Helllistener hears the universe ring out in a mighty harmony, and when he compares the sounds that penetrate from the individual people to him, so Today this gives a discord to all people, more to one, to the other, less so, but it is a discord. And your task is to resolve this discord more and more in harmony in the course of your development. Through the insoence this discord has arisen, but wisely it was set up by the spiritual powers that dominate and guide space. If people had always remained in harmony, they would never have come to self-employment. The discord was used so that man could achieve harmony freely, on his own strength. The self-confident feeling of self had to develop first at the expense of inner harmony. When the time comes when the consciousness of Jupiter lights up, and man again comes back in harmony connection with the forces of the cosmos, then he will save his self-conscious feeling with his self-confidence into the new state of consciousness, so that man then Independent self and yet will be in harmony with space.

We have now seen that the new consciousness of Jupiter is already being announced in the feeling of fear. But whenever a future state begins to occur before time, it is premature and not quite in place. This will be clear to you by an example. If a flower, which by its very nature should bloom in August, is brought to heap in a greenhouse as early as May, it will no longer be able to unfold in August, when its actual flowering period has come; Her powers will be exhausted and she will no longer fit into the conditions she should then get into. And in May, too, as soon as you remove it from the greenhouse, it will have to go to the bottom, because it does not fit into the natural conditions of this time of year. Straadeso it is with the sense of anxiety. It is still out of place today and much less so in the future. What happens when you feel an anxiety? The blood is pressed into the center of man, into the heart, in order to form a fixed center, in order to make man strong against the outside world. It is the innermost power of the I that causes this. This power of the I, which acts on the blood, which must become more and more conscious and on Jupiter, man will then be able to consciously direct his blood after the center and become strong. The unnatural and harmful thing about it, however, today is the feeling of fear associated with this blood flow. This must not be allowed to happen in the future, only the forces of the I, without fear, must work there.

In the course of human development, the outside world around us is becoming more and more hostile. More and more you must learn to confront your inner power with the encroaching outside world. But fear must disappear. And especially for those who undergo esoteric training, it is necessary, unavoidably, to free himself from all feelings of fear and fear. Only here does fear have a certain justification, where it alerts us to stand strong, but all the unnatural feelings of fear that torment people must disappear altogether. What should happen if man still has feelings of fear and fear, and Jupiter consciousness comes to an end? There, the outside world will face man much, much more hostile and terrible than it is today. A person who does not get used to fear here will fall there from a terrible horror to the other.

In order for man to fully grow up in the face of the evil forces of the future, he must have the innermost power of his self in his hands, he must be able to regulate the blood consciously in such a way. That it makes him strong against evil, but without fear of any kind. He must then have the power that drives the blood inward in his power. But even that other ability to pour the blood from the heart to the periphery must not be lost on it. Because the state of Jupiter will in some way also mean a return to the old moon consciousness. Man will come back into harmony with the great world laws and feel at one with them. He will regain the ability to flow together with the spiritual world powers, but not unconsciously and dawnfully as on the moon, but on Jupiter he will always maintain his bright awareness of the day and self-confident I-feeling and yet live in harmony. With the forces and laws of the world. The discord will then dissolve in harmony. And in order to be able to let oneness flow into the harmony of space, he must consciously learn to let the innermost power of his self radiate from the heart. He must therefore be able to consciously centralize the inner forces of his blood when an enemy confronts him, and he must also be able to radiate them consciously. Then only he will be up to future circumstances.

The one who is striving for an inner development must begin today to gradually get these forces more and more into his power. He does it by consciously learning his breath and moving in. When man draws his breath, the forces of the I enter into activity, which bring him into connection with the forces of the cosmos, those forces that radiate from the heart to the outside. And when man spends his breath and when he abstains from the breath, those forces of the I enter into activity, which push for the center points, after the heart, and there create a fixed center there. Thus, even today, when the disciple consciously does his breathing exercises in this sense, he learns to gradually master the powers of his self. No one can believe, however, that they independently carry out such exercises if they have not yet received instructions on them. Everyone will get them at right time. But even for those who do no such exercises, it is never too early to familidate themselves with the meaning of these exercises and to gain understanding of them. They will then become all the more fruitful for him later. So you, my sisters and brothers, are also to gain more and more understanding for the subtle processes within you and in the world as a whole and gradually grow into the future periods of human development.

* See therefore december 5 1907

[ 1 ] We said that for the development of ‘inspired cognition’ one of the basic exercises is to banish from the consciousness pictures which have arisen in it in meditation or in the sequel to the process of meditation. But this exercise is really only a preliminary one to another. By the banishing we get to the point of visualizing the course of our life in the way our last survey demonstrated. We attain also to a view of the spiritual Cosmos in so far as this can express itself in etheric life. We receive a picture of the living etheric Cosmos projected on to the human being. We see how everything which we can call heredity passes on in a continuous process from the physical organisms of the ancestors to the physical organisms of posterity. But we see also how a repeatedly new effect of the etheric cosmos occurs for the facts of the etheric organism. This fresh effect from the etheric cosmos works in opposition to heredity. It is of a kind which affects only the individual man. It is specially important for the teacher to have an insight into these things.

[ 2 ] To progress in supernatural knowledge it is necessary to perfect the exercise of banishing the imaginative pictures more and more. Through it the energy of the soul for this banishing is continually strengthened. For at first we attain only to a review of the course of our life since birth. What we have there before us is indeed something psychic and spiritual, but at the same time it is not something which can be said to have an existence beyond the physical life of man.

[ 3 ] In continuing these exercises of inspiration it becomes clear that the power of obliterating the imaginative pictures grows ever greater, and later becomes so great that the whole picture of one's life's course can be banished from the consciousness. We then have a consciousness that is freed also from the content of our own physical and etheric human nature.

[ 4 ] Into this in a higher sense empty consciousness there then enters through a higher inspiration a picture of the psychic-spiritual nature as it was before man left the psychic-spiritual world for the physical, and there formed union with the body which exists through conception and the development of the embryo. We get a vision of how the astral and Ego-organization covers itself with an etheric organization which comes from the etheric Cosmos, and with a physical one which arises from the sequence of heredity.

[ 5 ] Only in this way do we acquire knowledge of the eternal inner being of man, which during his life on earth exists in the reflection of the soul's imagination, feeling, and Will. But we acquire also through it the idea of the true nature of this imaginative presentation; for in point of fact this is not present in its true shape within the limits of the earth-life.

[ 6 ] Look at a human corpse. It has the shape and the limbs of a man, but life has gone out of it. If we understand the nature of the corpse, we do not regard it as an end in itself, but as the remains of a living physical man. The external forces of Nature, to which the corpse is surrendered, can destroy it well enough; but they cannot construct it. In the same Way, from a higher stage of vision, one recognizes earthly human thought to be the dead remains of that living thought which belonged to man before he was transplanted from his existence in the spiritual, psychic world into his life on earth. The nature of earthly thought is as little comprehensible from itself as the form of the human organism is from the forces which work in the corpse. We must recognize earthly thought as dead thought, if we want to recognize it rightly.

[ 7 ] If we are on the way to such a recognition, we can then also completely see the nature of earthly will. This is recognized in a certain sense as a more recent part of the soul. That which is hidden behind the will stands to thought in the same relationship as, in the physical organism, the baby does to the old man on his deathbed. Only with the soul, babyhood and old age do not develop in sequence after one another, but exist side by side. [ 8 ] We see, however, from what has been explained, certain results for a Philosophy which intends to form its ideas only on the experience of life on earth. It receives as contents only dead, or at least, expiring ideas. Its duty therefore can be only to recognize the dead character of the thought-world and to draw conclusions from what is dead on the basis of something which was once living. Just so far as one keeps to the method of intelligible proof, one can have no other aim. This purely ‘intellectual’ Philosophy therefore, can lead to the true nature of the soul only indirectly. It can examine the nature of human thought and recognize its transitoriness, and so it can indirectly show that something dead points to something living, as the corpse points to a living man.

[ 9 ] Only ‘inspired cognition’ can arrive at a real vision of what is the true soul. The corpse of thought is again animated in a certain sense through exercises for this inspiration. We are not, it is true, transferred back completely into the condition that existed before life on earth began; but we bring to life in us a true picture of this condition, from the nature of which we can realize that it is projected out of a pre-terrestrial existence into a terrestrial one.

[ 10 ] By means of developing intuition by exercises of the Will it comes about that the pre-terrestrial existence which had in thought died out during the earth-life is brought to life again in the subconscious mind. Through these exercises man is brought into a condition by means of which he enters upon the world of the spiritual, apart from his physical and etheric organism. He experiences what existence is after the dissolution from the body; he is given a pre-vision of what really happens after death. He can speak of the continuity of the spiritual part of the soul after going through the gates of death.

[ 11 ] Again the purely intellectual conceptual Philosophy can attain to the recognition of the immortality of the soul only by an indirect way. As it recognizes in thought something that can be compared with a dead body, so in the will it can establish something comparable with a seed. Something that has life in itself, which points beyond the dissolution of the body, because its nature shows itself, even during life on earth, independent of it. So, since we do not stand still at thought, but use all soul-life as experience of self, we can reach an indirect realization of the everlasting nucleus of the human being. Further we must not limit our contemplation to thought, but subject the interchange of thought with the other forces of the soul to philosophical methods of proof. But still with all this we come only to experience the everlasting human nucleus as it is in the earth-life, and not to a vision of the condition of the human spirit and the human soul before and after it. This is the case, for instance, with Bergson's Philosophy, which rests on a comprehensive self-experience of what is evident in the earth-life, but which refuses to step into the region of real supersensible knowledge.

[ 12 ] Every Philosophy which remains within the sphere of the ordinary consciousness can reach only an indirect knowledge of the true nature of the human soul.

Cosmology if it is to be of a kind that the total human being is influenced through it, can be acquired only through the imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Within ordinary consciousness it has only the testimony for the human soul-life that dies out and re-awakens like seed. From this fact it can formulate ideas based on unprejudiced observations which point to something Cosmic, and lay it open. Still, these ideas are only that which pours into the inner being of man from the spiritual Cosmos, and moreover reveals itself in a changed form within him. Philosophy indeed had in former times a branch called Cosmology. But the real subject matter of this Cosmology were ideas which had become very abstract, which had by tradition subsisted from old forms of Cosmology. Humanity had developed these ideas at a time when an old dream-like Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition still existed. They were taken out of their tradition and woven into the material of pure intellectual, logical or dialectic demonstration. Men were often quite unconscious of the fact that these ideas were borrowed; they were considered new and original. Gradually it was found that in the inner life of the spirit no real inner connection with these ideas existed. Therefore this ‘rational Cosmology’ fell almost completely into discredit. It had to give place to the physical Cosmology, built up on the nature-knowledge of the physical senses, which, however, to the unprejudiced eye, no longer embraced man in its scope.

A true Cosmology can arise again only when imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge are allowed their place, and their results applied to the knowledge of the universe.

[ 13 ] What has had to be said concerning Cosmology applies still more to knowledge of a religious kind. Here we have to build up knowledge which has its origins in the experience of the spiritual world. To draw conclusions concerning such experience from the subject-matter of ordinary consciousness is impossible. In intellectual concepts the religious content cannot be opened out but only clarified. When one began to seek for proofs of God's existence, the very search was a proof that one had already lost the living connection with the divine world. For this reason also no intellectualistic proof of God's existence can be given in any satisfactory way. Any theory formed from the ordinary consciousness alone is obliged to work into an individual system ideas borrowed from tradition. Formerly, philosophers tried to get also a ‘rational Theology’ from this ordinary consciousness. But this compared with the Theology based on traditional ideas suffered the same fate as ‘rational Cosmology’, only still more so. Whatever came to light as a direct ‘God-experience’ remains in the world of feeling or will, and in fact prevents the transition to any method of conceptual proof. Philosophy itself has fallen into the error of seeing in a purely historical religion religious forms which have existed and still exist. It does this from an incapacity to attain through the ordinary consciousness to ideas on a subject which can be experienced only outside the physical and etheric organism.

[ 14 ] A new basis for the knowledge of the religious life can be won only by a recognition of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive methods, and by the application of their results to this life.

[ 1 ] Comprehension of the facts stated by spiritual science is made easier, if in the ordinary life of the soul attention be given to that which gives rise to ideas capable of such enlargement and transformation that they gradually reach as far as the events and beings of the spiritual world. And unless this path be followed with patience we shall easily be tempted to picture the spiritual world too much like the physical world of the senses. Indeed, unless we follow this path we shall not be able to form a just conception of what is actually spiritual, and of its relation to man.

[ 2 ] Spiritual events and beings crowd in upon man when he has prepared his soul to perceive them. The way in which they announce themselves is absolutely different from the way in which physical beings and facts do so. But an idea of this entirely different way of manifesting may be gained if the process of remembering be called to mind. Let us suppose we had an experience some time ago. At a definite moment—from one cause or another—this experience emerges from the depths of psychic life. We know that what so emerges corresponds to an experience, and we relate it to that experience. But at the moment of remembrance there is nothing of the experience present but only its image in the memory. Now let us imagine an image rising up in the soul in the same way as does a picture of memory yet expressing, not something previously experienced but something unfamiliar to the soul. If we do this, we have formed an idea of the way in which the spiritual world first makes its appearance in the soul, when the latter is sufficiently prepared for it.

[ 3 ] Because this is so, one who is not sufficiently conversant with the conditions of the spiritual world will be perpetually bringing forward the objection that all “presumed” spiritual experiences are nothing else than more or less indistinct images of the memory, and that the soul merely does not recognise them as such and therefore takes them to be manifestations of a spiritual world. Now it should on no account be denied that it is difficult to distinguish between illusions and realities in this sphere. Many people who believe they have manifestations from a spiritual world are certainly only occupied with their own memories, which they do not recognise as such. In order to see quite clearly in this respect, it is necessary to be informed of those numerous sources from which illusion may arise. We may have seen, for instance, something only once and for a moment, seen it so hastily that the impression did not penetrate completely into the consciousness; and later—perhaps in a quite different form—it may appear as a vivid picture. We possibly feel convinced that we never had anything to do with the matter before, and that we have had a genuine inspiration.

[ 4 ] This and many other things make it quite comprehensible that the statements made by those who have supersensible sight appear extremely questionable to those unacquainted with the special nature of spiritual science. But one who pays careful heed to all that is said in my books, The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, about the development of spiritual sight, will be put in the way of being able to distinguish between illusion and truth in this sphere.

[ 5 ] In this connection, however, the following should also be noted. It is true that spiritual experiences appear in the first place as pictures. It is thus that they rise out of the depths of the soul that is prepared for them. It is then a question of gaining the right relation to these pictures. They only have value for supersensible perception when, by the way in which they present themselves, they show that they are not to be taken for the facts themselves. Directly they are so taken, they are worth little more than ordinary dreams. They must present themselves to us like the letters of an alphabet. We do not look at the shape of the letters, but read in them what it is desired to express by their means. Just as something written does not call upon us to describe the form of the letters, so the images forming the content of supersensible sight do not call upon us to apprehend them as anything but images ; but by their own character they force us to look right through their pictured form and direct our soul's gaze to that which, as a supersensible event or being, is endeavouring to express itself through them.

[ 6 ] As little as a person on hearing that a letter contains news previously unknown can deny the possibility of this fact on account of the well-known character of the letters of the alphabet of which it is composed, so little can anybody object to clairvoyant pictures being formed out of well-known objects taken from ordinary life.

It is certainly true, up to a certain point, that the pictures are borrowed from ordinary life, but what is so borrowed is not the important thing to genuine clairvoyant consciousness. The important point is what lies behind and expresses itself through the pictures.

[ 7 ] The soul must, of course, first prepare itself for seeing such images appear within its spiritual horizon; but, besides this, it must carefully cultivate the feeling of not stopping short at merely seeing them, but of relating them in the right way to the facts of the supersensible world. It may be said positively that for true clairvoyance there is required not only the capacity for beholding a world of images in oneself, but another faculty as well, which may be compared with reading in the physical world.

[ 8 ] The supersensible world is at first to be looked upon as something lying wholly outside man's ordinary consciousness, which has no means of penetrating into that world. The powers of the soul, strengthened by meditation, first bring it into contact with the supersensible world. By means of these the pictures that have been described emerge from the wave of the soul's life. As pictures these are woven entirely by the soul itself. And the materials of which they are made are actually the forces which the soul has acquired for itself in the physical world. The fabric of the pictures is really nothing else but what may be characterised as memory. The clearer we make this to ourselves, in order to understand clairvoyant consciousness, the better. We shall in that case clearly understand that they are but images. And we shall also be cultivating a right understanding of the way in which the images are to be related to the supersensible world. Through the pictures we shall learn to read in the supersensible world. The impressions of the physical world naturally bring us much nearer to the beings and events of that world than the images seen supersensibly bring us to the supersensible world. We might even say that these images are at first like a curtain put up by the soul between it and the supersensible world, when it feels itself to be in contact with that world.

[ 9 ] It is a question of becoming gradually familiar with the way in which supersensible things are experienced. Through experience we learn by degrees to read the images, that is, to interpret them correctly. In more important supersensible experiences, their very nature shows that we cannot here have to do with mere pictures of memory from ordinary life. It is indeed true that in this connection many absurd things are asserted by people who have been convinced of certain supersensible facts, or at any rate think they have been. Many people, for instance, when convinced of the truth of reincarnation, at once connect the pictures which arise in their soul with experiences of a former earth-life; but one should always be suspicious when these pictures seem to point to previous earth-lives which are similar in one respect or another to the present one, or which make their appearance in such a way that the present life can, by reasoning, be plausibly explained from the supposed earlier lives. When, in the course of genuine supersensible experience, the true impression of a former earth-life, or of several such lives, appears, it generally happens that the former life or lives are such that we could never have fashioned them or have desired to fashion them in thought by any amount of thinking back from the present life, or out of any wishes and efforts in connection with it. We may, for instance, receive an impression of our former earth existence at some moment during our present life when it is quite impossible to acquire certain faculties, which we had during that former life. So far from its being the case that images appear for the more important spiritual experiences which might be memories of ordinary life, the pictures for these are generally such as we should not have thought of at all in ordinary experience. This tendency increases with real impressions the more purely supersensible the worlds become from which they issue. Thus it is often quite impossible to form images from ordinary life explanatory of the existence between birth and the preceding death. We may find out that in the spiritual life we have developed affection for people and things in complete contrast with the corresponding inclinations we are developing in the present life on earth; and we learn that in our earth-life we have often been driven to be fond of something which in the previous spiritual existence (between death and rebirth) we have rejected and avoided. Any memory of this existence which might be imagined to result from ordinary physical experiences must therefore necessarily be different from the impression we receive through real perception in the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] One who is not familiar with spiritual science will certainly make further objections against things being in reality as they have just been described. He will be able to say, for instance: “You are indeed fond of something, but human nature is complicated, and secret antipathy is mixed up with every affection. This antipathy to the thing referred to comes up in you at a particular moment. You think it is a prenatal experience, whereas it may perhaps be quite naturally explained from the subconscious psychic facts of the case.” In general there is nothing to be said against such an objection; and in many cases it may be quite correct. Knowledge of clairvoyant consciousness is not easily gained, nor is it without the possibility of objections. But just as it is true that a supposed clairvoyant may be mistaken and regard a subconscious fact as an experience of prenatal spirit-life, so it is also true that a training in spiritual science leads to a knowledge of self which embraces subconscious states of soul and is able to free itself from any illusions with regard to them. Here it need only be asserted that that supersensible knowledge alone is true which at the moment of cognition is able to distinguish what originates from supersensible worlds from that which has merely been shaped by individual imagination. This faculty of discernment becomes so developed by familiarity with supersensible worlds, that perception may in this sphere be as certainly distinguished from imagination, as in the physical world hot iron which is touched with the finger may be distinguished from imaginary hot iron.

By the esoteric life we mean the knowledge of the things of the higher worlds, to which we already feel drawn by a longing, a homesickness. How can we attain knowledge of them? To put it in a nutshell, it happens through initiation, which Dr. Steiner compared to the seeing of one born blind. Initiation is accompanied by a gradual awakening of abilities and powers, whereby we perceive unknown things that belong to a world of light, color and radiance beyond the realm of the material senses. The astral, devachanic and still higher worlds are indeed around us, and the development of spiritual life takes place according to the laws of nature, and not outside of their regular development. At some point we all reach these worlds, and there have been initiates since ancient times whose development has progressed faster than that of the rest of humanity. Looking back into the dim and distant past, we find that in those ancient times the souls of men had not yet fully taken possession of their bodies. Men of those early times lacked the power of forming fixed ideas, and great Teachers were needed to guide them.

The first point to be emphasized is that no man can conquer initiation for himself. There is a mysterious occult law that no selfish desire can further our spiritual development, but only a sense of duty and altruism, and not only the feeling that I want to help my fellow human beings, but also the insight that I must prepare the tools to do so in the most purposeful way.

Consciousness of this duty is one of the first great conditions for the inner life and the influence of its laws. This is because there is a great difference between the thinking of the primitive man and that of one who has developed esoterically. For from the thoughts and feelings of the latter, consequences and effects emanate into the outer world. Therefore, the person who wants to begin the esoteric life must first be imbued with a sense of duty to humanity, of responsibility for the consequences of his occult influence on the outside world.

The next point that must be clearly in our minds is that the esoteric life is dependent on certain conditions in connection with the great laws of the occult world. It is now quite difficult for us to realize that it is not as we imagine it should be, but as those who know it by experience tell us. You make a glass rod electrically by rubbing it. But if you start saying, “I don't want to rub it,” you will never succeed in making your stick electric. Without submitting to the great laws of occult life, you will not get anywhere. To gain a preliminary understanding of these laws, we must clearly visualize the state of present humanity.

If we look far back into early humanity with the occult eye, we come to a strange discovery. In ancient Lemuria and also later, in the Atlantean era, as the Akashic Records teach us, man felt the influence of his surroundings much more than he does today. The physical possibility of sleeping depended on the sunrise or sunset. In another way, people were subject to the influences of the moon. Certain bodily functions depended with great precision on the cosmic clock. Certain events occurred at sunrise and sunset. It was physically impossible at that time to turn night into day, as it happens now in our big cities. Mankind lived in harmony with the rhythms of nature. The fact that this harmony was lost in Lemuria was due to the unconscious ego. It was only with the conscious development of this ego that disharmony arose. The ego began to show its self-awareness by deviating from the rhythms of nature. The activities that had previously been connected with the course of the sun and moon were postponed. Until this time, when this took place (in the epoch of the transition to the fifth race), man had possessed a kind of dreamy clairvoyance. Now, in conquering our present form of consciousness, which, as I said, first expressed itself in the deviation from the rhythms of nature, this clairvoyance was temporarily lost. The effectiveness of the self that had awakened to consciousness consisted in the ordering and purifying of the astral body, and this purified and ordered part became Manas. This Manas encompasses all thoughts, all memories, every intellectual function, and we can call it the self of the spirit, the spirit self. And it is the task of the self to make the astral body a manasic body through purification. But how can clairvoyance and clairaudience, which used to be part of the human being, even if only in a dreamlike way, but has been lost through deviation from the rhythm of nature, be acquired again? This can only be done by the influence of the principle of Budhi on the etheric body, which is its shadow in the lower worlds. In this way it can be conquered again, but not in a dream-like state, but with full consciousness.

The esoteric life wants to awaken this clairvoyant state of consciousness again through methods that influence the soul. The gift of clairvoyance is not given to man. The master or [the disciple he has tested] gives the candidate instructions, which, if followed, must bring him back into harmony with the rhythm of nature. In preparation, he can familiarize himself with the theories and teachings of the great esoteric wisdom through study, but this purely intellectual exercise is not enough. The candidate must devote himself to meditation and concentration at regular times each day, cultivating inner contemplation of his own soul life. Regular repetition has an effect on the higher soul life, of which the etheric body is the vehicle. The content of meditation should be one or other profound saying, and it is best if the teacher chooses this, even if it is desirable that the saying itself comes to us from a high spiritual authority, such as: “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.” This sentence contains a world of spiritual depth and was given by a Master of Wisdom.

From such a well, the truth flows inexhaustibly and springs forth again and again in new reflections and in a thousand shades of spiritual light. The esoteric life does not consist in intellectually understanding such a saying, one must approach it again and again with one's whole soul. One should not always seek or want a new saying, but the same content must go through the soul again and again. This also explains the powerful effect of prayer: those who pray allow the same spiritual current to pass through their soul again and again. And repetition means acting on a different spiritual vehicle than that of the intellect.

If we follow the structure of the human being, we find on the one hand the I, this name that is inexpressible to the environment, and on the other hand the four lower principles, each of which must be transformed and made conscious by the I. Thus, the desires must be transformed into moral ideals. If we compare the savage with the European with the occult eye, we see that in the former the astral body is unified, but in the latter, a part of it has been transformed by the ego into manas. The sight of the aura proves this. And this manas is the spiritual self in occultism, but in its lowest form. 'But man is not only manas. As a person grows older, he gains in knowledge, at least up to a certain age. But what remains almost the same – unless he develops his being according to occult methods – are his habits and temperament. These habits, these characteristics, these habits proceed from the etheric body. Only impulses from the buddhi, of which the etheric is the reflection, can have a determining and developing effect on the etheric body. These impulses, which must act on the etheric body again and again, are awakened by devotional religious feelings, true art, and music. Thus, through the influence of Budhi, the etheric body is awakened and transformed, and the power to consciously change a habit arises, which actually means to renounce a habit or to unlearn a moral failing.

And repetition also plays a role here. At regular intervals, every day, a person should devote themselves to the meditation mentioned above, not only grasping the content of the meditation but also immersing themselves in it with their soul. As much of the etheric is recreated in consciousness, so much is Budhi consciousness. Later, when the candidate wants to bring the principle of the Atma to consciousness, he will have to act on the physical body.

Now - said Dr. Steiner - we still have to get a clear idea of this repetition in rhythms. We have to imagine the matter analogous to the growth laws of the plant world. The growth of a plant is governed from within by the etheric principle. This etheric principle is guided by the law of repetition, so that the branches come on the trunk and the leaves on the twigs. The astral principle of the plant surrounds it from the outside as a shining light, guiding and taming the principle of repetition in its work and stopping the further formation of leaves at the right moment to make room for the formation of blossoms, flowers, fruit and seeds. The etheric principle is that of repetition, the astral principle that of closure. In the human being, the effect of the etheric principle can be seen in the structure of the spine, which is closed by the formation of the skull. To live esoterically means to influence the etheric body through repetition, because what happens unconsciously must be repeated in the mind. This repetition must take place day after day in meditation. Just as all the forces in a plant work outwards in growth, so in man all the forces must work outwards through meditation. Through this spiritual repetition, the soul regains rhythm; in other words, it has regular spiritual points of rest.

You can follow a simple rhythm every day or use the same saying week after week, but you can also make the rhythm composite, for example, by having a different saying for each day of the week. In this way, the rhythm is developed from that from which we ourselves are developed, and the I comes to independence, emerging from itself in rhythm. That is why in old legends, initiates of the sixth degree are called solar heroes, because they did not deviate from the rhythm given to nature by the course of the sun.

The esoteric life is not repetition alone, it must also have guidance and limitation, just as the astral highlight has in plants. This element is represented in the development of the esoteric life of man by devotional feelings, religion, true art; aligning oneself with an individuality as one's ideal. And this meditation and this devotion must then coincide, as in the plant, the flower bud and fruit.

But the man who devotes himself to the esoteric life must also keep his eye on the world around him. Escaping from the world is not his ultimate goal. He has capacity for work and industry and does not want to be a saint in the distance, but a saint in the world. It is not esoteric to go one's way, absorbed in oneself, when there is much to see, to learn and to do outside. And the work of such a person must be the outward expression of his inner being. Therefore, separation based on misunderstanding must give way to holiness in the service of humanity.

Today we will continue to talk about what happens at death, when the human being enters into a new existence. We have already seen that the human being retains an extract of the life body, and we will see how important this extract and its absorption into the higher members is. Now we want to consider the astral body. It remains what it was before death, and retains all its good and bad qualities, its instincts, passions, and so on. What are the dead person's first sensations in their astral body?

When the life body, which still represented a connection with the physical world, has dissolved, the dead person, if he is not clairvoyant and has never risen above the circle of his own selfish interests in earthly life, will awaken after a first period of complete unconsciousness awaken in a painful state, in which he is aware that he is alive, but with the deceptive sensation of still having his physical body, just as a person still feels an amputated limb of his physical body and yet is aware that he cannot use it. On the other hand, however, the astral body, freed from the physical bond, vibrates in full power and strength, so that the person feels his urges, passions, and so on, to an increased extent, and suffers tremendously from not being able to satisfy them due to the lack of the appropriate tools. For the instincts are in reality inherent in the astral body and not in the physical body, and the astral body can only satisfy them through enjoyment. If, for example, a person is a gourmet, he retains the desire for fine food even though he lacks the palate. The same applies to the other sense organs.

Then there is the feeling of loneliness, which is caused by the fact that the person cannot perceive anything of the new world around him. But gradually he begins to perceive. First of all, it is auditory perception, because the astral world is eminently a world of sound. Then perceptions of light are added. It is important to note that while in physical life we see the things around us illuminated by light, in the astral life, on the other hand, man himself begins to shine like a small sun. When we observe him there, we see him at first as if shrouded in a dark cloud. This cloud is formed from that part of the astral body that contains the passionate elements and that must be shed at the end of life on the astral plane.

Life in the astral world usually lasts a third of the previous earthly life, although there are exceptions, for example for very intelligent people who are completely entangled in materialistic beliefs, whose life on the astral plane can last for centuries. It should be noted, however, that the perception of time there is different from ours. When the astral life is complete, the person leaves behind his third corpse. We are surrounded by such corpses, which hover around us and even penetrate into us. They are the ones that can be made visible through mediumistic powers or somnambulists at spiritualistic séances. The Christian religion calls life in the astral world “purgatory,” and in India it is called “Kamaloka”.

When we speak of supersensory worlds, we need not fall into the error of imagining them as spatial planes, as they are often called, one above the other. In reality, they are states of consciousness and different modes of perception in a single space. The length of time spent in Purgatory or Kamaloka depends on the intensity of the individual's desires and passions. It is a time of purification. Unfortunately, we do not always try to shorten it. However, those who are already capable of spiritual pleasures on earth will have a shorter Kamaloka. Artistic pleasures, such

the contemplation of Raphael's or Michelangelo's works of art, make life in the spiritual world accessible to us. But the same cannot be said of art that only seeks to glorify the physical form and has no uplifting effect at all. Furthermore, Kamaloka life is also shortened by noble deeds and by a life devoted to the search for truth and knowledge.

One peculiarity of the astral life, which is rarely mentioned in occultism, is that it runs backwards. At first, the initiate is completely confused because everything in that world is reversed and appears as if reflected in a mirror. So a number, for example 345, is read as 543. It is particularly disconcerting and confusing that this also applies to time, so that the past appears to us after the present as if it were the future. For example, you will see the chicken crawling back into the egg it came from. As for our lives, we go through it backwards as well, starting with the day of our death and ending with the day of our birth. In contrast to the panorama that the life body presented to us, however, the perceptions of the astral body do not leave us indifferent, and they are always accompanied by the feelings that go with them.

For example: If a person has died at the age of eighty and has caused another person pain when he was fifty, and if he has now reached his fiftieth year in his retrograde Kamaloka life, he feels the pain because he identifies himself with his victim.

But the same applies to experiences of joy. If a person did not experience joy, he would later find many obstacles in his path. But as it is, we learn that every evil must be made good. If this were not so, evil would never leave us, and union with God would be impossible.

In this way, then, we purify ourselves. And when we reach our childhood, we have come to the threshold of the heavenly world. This is what the Holy Scripture means when it says: Unless you become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Through purification, the fog that obscured the astral body lifts, and it then shines in all its glory. The self with the purified astral body enters devachan.

Has it always been like that? We know that humanity lived on earth in a certain way during the Egyptian period, in a different way during the Indian period, and so on, and that our time is also quite different from the Greek period. So is there also a history for the other world? Yes, most certainly: the soul life of an Indian from two thousand years ago was quite different from ours. He had no interest in the physical world. For him, people, animals, plants, etc. were all Maya, a dream. He wanted to decisively deny this world, which was an illusion to him. During this life, he was already in the spiritual world, and after death he did not feel disoriented at all. But humanity has not retained this tendency to flee from the physical world.

The ancient Persians, taught by Zoroaster – not the one in history, but a much greater one – learned to love life and take an interest in the physical world, while the Indians only ever thought of Brahma behind the stars. Zoroaster taught that man must live and work here on earth, but at the same time direct his mind upwards. He preached that mankind must work the material, physical world in order to unite with the great spiritual aura of the sun. He called this Ahura Mazdao, later it was called Ormuzd.

Meanwhile, however, humanity lost its direct and conscious connection with the Primordial Light, and its life on earth – and also after death – darkened. This darkening was already very great during the Egyptian-Chaldean period and reached its peak in Greek times. The Greeks placed the center of life entirely in the physical world. If we look at a Greek temple, we see that it is harmoniously built according to spiritual dimensions. It can stand there, abandoned and lonely, and yet we feel that it lacks nothing, even if there are no people inside, because the deity to whom it was dedicated could dwell in it and truly did so, filling it completely. If, on the other hand, we look at a Gothic church, we really feel a void. The souls of the faithful are needed to bring it to life. Seen clairvoyantly, the Greek temple appears only as a black spot in its astral form. That is why people in those days could not bring anything with them when they passed through the gate of death; they were not at all prepared for life after death. The life after death was the realm of shadows for them, which they feared so much that they said: Better a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows. Man found himself alone in the spiritual world at that time. In contrast, the astral form of the Gothic church appears quite different; it is completely luminous and offers the eye the point of connection between the two worlds. Let us now follow the story of the spiritual world.

After the classical period, an immensely important fact takes place in it, which all the great teachers of mankind had previously proclaimed. The seven great Rishis of India had said: Our wisdom reaches to a certain point, but no further. After this point comes an entity that will redeem humanity. Zarathustra also had an inkling of this entity, and Hermes [Trismegistus] showed the Egyptians a being who was ready to come - Osiris - and would come with a divine mission.

Before this important fact, which we will discuss later, took place, another, equally important one occurred, namely, the appearance of the Buddha six hundred years earlier. We know that he came from a royal family and that his attention was drawn to the suffering of humanity by seeing a sick person, an old person, and a corpse. In evil, in old age and in death, he saw only suffering; likewise in unsatisfied desire. The whole of life seemed to him to be suffering, so that he wanted to educate humanity to flee from life. He left his family, his relatives, his possessions and devoted himself entirely

the search for the path to this liberation. Thus the so-called truths of life arose in his soul. [But six hundred years later, with the great event of Golgotha, we see that everything has changed significantly.

What did a corpse on a cross mean for the new community? This corpse had become the true sign of salvation and bliss! Nothing like this has ever occurred in the history of humankind, and it happened only through the Mystery of Golgotha. If there had been a Hellscher when the Mystery of Golgotha was consummated and the blood of Christ ran from the five wounds, he would have seen how the Christ penetrated like an arrow of light into the realm of the dead and transformed it from a realm of darkness into a realm of light.

At that moment, the substance of the astral body of the earth received the Christ principle and began to shine; which is also what happens to us the more we approach the Christ. In the past, man brought nothing with him from the earth; now he can love life [because the human elements have been formed by the elements of Christ]. The clairvoyant sees nothing of the Greek temple on the astral plane, but he does see the Gothic church and the works of art by Raphael and Michelangelo, and so on. What he sees there is infinitely more beautiful and sublime than what is physically present here on earth. The same can be said of the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. When we experience them, we appropriate a large part of the spiritual world.

Later we will see how the dead in heaven live on in the light of Christ.

There is nothing in the study of myths that leads so deeply into theosophical thinking as the Nordic saga poetry. If the European can think his way into it, he can find his way from there and penetrate ever deeper into the esoteric realms. An understanding of these sagas of Nordic myth can only be attained in advanced stages of life. The Nordic myths were essentially the subject of the Nordic mysteries. A distinction is made between Western European and Northern European mysteries. In Scandinavia and Russia there were the Drottenmysterien, in England and the West the Druid mysteries. Both mysteries have disappeared. “Druid means ‘oak’. The priest or sage in the Nordic world was called ”the oak.”

The replacement of the Nordic belief in gods is communicated to us in a beautiful mystery. In the conquest of the oak by Boniface, we see Christianity's struggle with the Druid mystery. The basic tenor of the Nordic mysteries is tragic. There is something tragic about all the myths of Central Europe and the North. The Twilight of the Gods represents the downfall of the Nordic world of gods. After their downfall, a new sun god, a new Baldur, is to assert himself. In the other, non-Nordic mysteries, there is always a hopeful and confident element.

What was experienced in advance in the mysteries was to be fulfilled. The Apocalypse predicts a future in which Christianity is to be fulfilled. In the Nordic myth, something different had been predicted. There, the downfall of the Nordic gods was experienced through Christianity. It is from this point of view that the new mystery must be understood, through the four stages.

The first step is that of the first Nordic sub-race of the fifth root race. In Central Europe, Christianity was spread among the fifth sub-race of the fifth root race. Four sub-races preceded this. The secret of the four sub-races is that they show how Christianity was to replace what preceded it in the fifth sub-race.

We now go back into a dark past, to the first sub-race of the fifth root race on Nordic soil. There were the Drotten initiations in the north at that time. In primitive temples, half nature, half building, a sacred tent was erected, in which two deities were depicted as ruling the world: Hu and Ceridwen. Hu is Osiris, Ceridwen is Isis, the human being is Horus. There were three degrees of initiation: first, [Eubaten]; second, bards; third, druids. Those who were initiated into the three degrees underwent a transformation such that, by awakening their higher abilities, they became the god Baldur. The mystic had to say to himself: “You must become the resurrected Baldur, who was killed by the god Loki.” Then the initiation mead was handed to him and the initiation ring was given. The mead is analogous to the Indian Soma drink.

In the Nordic initiation, the initiate was first made aware of the development of the Earth and the conditions that preceded it on the earlier planets. On Earth, we should learn until we go beyond the possibility of error. Our life will then be transformed into a kind of rhythm, in relation to only very bright mental activity.

Logical thinking has only gradually emerged from a developmental process. Later, a general human sense of morality will develop as logical thinking is developing now.

What is error on one planet is disease on the next. What remains error on Earth today will be disease on the next planet, to the same extent that the beings capable of error have been left behind. We would not have the harmonious organism today if this harmony had not been developed out of the chaos of the moon. We owe the wonderful organization of our body to the development of the moon. The illnesses that still exist in our time are what remained behind from the error present on the moon. This is what did not reach perfection in the development of the moon. That was the view of the Druid mysteries. For what was left behind, a plant was taken as the descendant of the moon's development. Our plants grow out of the mineral earth. The whole moon was a living being. The plants developed on this living being. There was no actual mineral kingdom, but only a stone plant kingdom and an animal kingdom that lies somewhere between today's plant and animal kingdoms.

Mistletoe was the symbol of what was left of the moon. It draws its nourishment from the living. It is the symbol of all entities and products that hold back or harm the earth. Loki, who still ruled on earth from the moon, had brought to earth what should have found its actual phase of development on the moon.

Baldur is the god of the sun, the bringer of all life, the active powers of the sun. Loki is his necessary opponent. Baldur was frightened by heavy dreams that were to come true afterwards. All creatures take an oath not to harm Baldur, except the mistletoe; no one can kill him, only the harmful in the development of the earth. That is why mistletoe is thrown from Hödur to Baldur. Hödur is the blind, mechanical necessity which must make use of what has been left behind earlier in order to overcome Baldur. That was one part of the mystery. The other part was that blind, mechanical necessity was overcome by the introduction of harmony through the Christ experience. In Christ a new Baldur must arise.

There was a society of twelve great initiates. A thirteenth was their leader. He was not yet ahead of the twelve others at that time. These initiates were called Sige or Sig. When he reached a certain age, he was able to surrender his individuality to a higher individuality, to receive a higher individuality within himself. This is one of the highest mysteries - in the case of Christ Jesus, the descent of the dove. Sig's individuality was replaced by the individuality of Odin or Wotan. This is the same one who had already lived as a great initiate at the time of the Atlanteans. During the downfall of the Atlantean race, what was then tropical Europe gradually became a cold, foggy realm. The remains of the Atlanteans emerged from the ice land. The emergence of Wotan is presented in such a way that initially the ice masses are there. From this, what comes across from the Atlantean world saves itself. The cow Audhumbla licks the ice masses.

Wotan goes through two incarnations, through Buri and Bör. Then he becomes Wotan because of the chela individuality of the chela Sig. Everything that was in the chela Sig becomes what is associated with the name Sig. In the first sub-race, it is Wotan, who is confronted by Hönir or Wile and Loki or We.

Wotan had to undergo a difficult test after he had incarnated. For nine days after he had been wounded on the side where the heart is located, he had to hang on the gallows. Then Mimir came and taught him the runic writing - a model of the Christ fact. Then came his resurrection. This was the initiation of the first sub-race of the fifth root race.

Wotan now presented the origin of mankind in the mystery itself. First our earth was created, but without the minerals and plants. Everything was contained in a great individuality, the giant Ymir. He was overcome by Wotan, Wile and We. From him - the Adam Kadmon - the whole earth was created. From his skullcap they made the vault of heaven and so on. It was the macrocosmic man. From him the gods form the earthly structures. Dwarves also emerge from the giant's body and live inside the earth.

From the plant people the three gods find, from Ask and Embla - from ash and elm - they shaped the physical man. The three gods build the shells of the people:

Wotan or Odin - Sthula sharira
Wile or Hönir - Linga sharira
We or Loki - Kama/Karana sharira

Wotan-Odin gave the spirit, Hönir-Wile gave life and the lawfulness, Loki-We gave warmth and color, the Kama.

This is how the human shells of the gods were constructed. The dwarf is the little human being who is actually the spiritual being. This was the spark that came to fertilize the human being from the middle of the Lemurian period, which will develop into Manas, Buddhi and Atma. The human ego must first develop in the depths, otherwise it would be immediately transformed into a rigid mineral by the sunlight.

The initiation for the second sub-race was as follows: Wotan is said to have the potion of wisdom, and the second sub-race is said to develop slowly up to the same stage. The wisdom is formed by the giant Suttung. He guards the potion of wisdom. The giant's daughter is Gunnlöd. Wotan cannot get to the potion of wisdom. Therefore, he transforms himself into a snake and enters the sanctuary of Gunnlöd. There he remains for three days. The snake is the self, endowed with wisdom.

What happened in the Lemurian period is now repeating itself. The three gods find the dwarf Andwari as Hreidmar's son, Pike and Otter. Otter has the shape of an otter. He is slain by Loki. The father is to receive the hide of the Otter, decorated inside and out with gold. This signifies the permeation of man with the gold of wisdom. Before that, the sthula sharira, the linga sharira and the karana sharira have been formed. Loki kills what was on earth before, the otter, and brings in wisdom, the gold.

Besides the other gold, there was also a golden ring. Before he came into our present earthly development, man was in completely different circumstances. At that time he did not receive the impressions through the gates of the senses. The ring signifies being locked up in the sensations of the senses, which make the self into a special being – the Nibelungen ring.

In the third sub-race, Wotan and those who belonged to him were initiated once more. He had brought the Cup of Wisdom into the home of the gods. There the potion or cup of wisdom was guarded by Mimir. He had the wisdom that led us forward. At the transition from the Lemurian race, man had only one eye through which he was not yet closed off from the outside world. With it he could perceive what was useful or harmful to him. When man closed himself through the ring of sensuality, this eye receded. The gift he now received had to be bought by a sacrifice. Wotan had to buy the new gift by sacrificing the cyclopean eye - not one of the other two eyes.

The Wälsungs and their descendants from Wotan, Sigmund, Sigurd, Siegfried, that is the race of the initiates within the fourth sub-race. In Siegfried the last of the initiations takes place. He conquers the dragon, that is, the lower nature. He now becomes invulnerable to everything lower. He purifies himself through catharsis, through the consciousness of the higher. He must pass through the fire of passion. In this way he acquires Brunhilde. He remains vulnerable only at the point where one carries the cross. It was said that the next initiate would not be vulnerable there.

In the old Norse mythology, King Atli – Atlanti – emerges from the Atlantean era. He is the great Atlantean initiate. He only shies away from the representative of the Christian initiate, the Pope.

Just as a person seeks like-minded people among his contemporaries for intimate thinking and feeling, so it also satisfies him to occupy himself with great minds of the past. The Theosophical worldview does not yet provide an opportunity for this – but people are beginning to occupy themselves with it. It is still a young spiritual movement.

One who comes as close as possible to the theosophical views is Paracelsus. He lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and was a naturalist and physician. He combined in himself the wisdom and knowledge of his time and can still be a guiding light and teacher today. He has been unfairly criticized and slandered; he is said to have been a debauchee and to have enjoyed wine and the tavern more than his profession. But anyone who takes the trouble to study him recognizes in him the wisest and most intrepid champion of a high school of thought. He lived from 1493 to 1541, that is, at a time when the ideas of the Middle Ages began to give way to new views. Today's science does not yet understand him; it has so far been materialistic in direction; that too brought great things. Humanity had to limit itself to the external world. Today, when we are in the process of going far beyond doubt and ignorance, it is different. He lived by his motto: “No one should be another's servant, each should be a servant to himself alone.” According to this motto, he investigated everything that was accessible to him for the investigation of the spiritual foundations of things. But everything he investigated, he put at the service of medicine and the health care of mankind. His aim was to be of help.

What was the state of the art of healing at that time? It was completely under the influence of medieval pharmacology – Galen – and had degenerated. People tried to cure illnesses with trivial means, and he humorously describes how the doctors of the time only knew a few rules and applied them without understanding. Then Paracelsus decided to bid farewell to all this bookish wisdom. He wanted only one great teacher and to study him thoroughly: nature! She was to be his teacher and his teaching. The teacher should pass the nature exam. In doing so, he carried out this precept in the spirit of his motto. Lonely and independent, he went his way and sought to learn wherever he could learn something.

The doctor at that time had estranged himself from nature; but he had the instinctive feeling: there are secret relationships that humans and all of nature have to one another. He said to himself: “When humans develop in a wrong relationship, then they lose something of the more intimate relationship to nature.” When the cow seeks its food, it finds exactly what it needs. It has a more intimate relationship with the natural product - a bond - that it feels. The more man lives in stereotyped concepts, the more he loses the context. To feel something specific in every plant, in every mineral, is a gift. Man should not only see something shiny in gold, silver, and mercury.

Paracelsus assumes that the relationship between all of these and the human being can be found. Thus, his intuitive instinct distinguishes the power inherent in nature – and that is the healing power. We sense this power in the relationship between the sexes; it is something that attracts two beings to each other. Such attraction must exist between people and all natural products. This sympathy and antipathy cannot be taught by books; it comes only through the inner enlightenment of the soul.

You become a doctor by making yourself a different person and developing that power within you. Paracelsus gained this directly from nature; he wanted to get to know the relationship that man has with plants, trees, shrubs, with nature - and he listened to what his heart and soul said. He traveled far, to the south and to the north, and he said of himself: “I have never been afraid to learn, not even on the streets from vagrants.”

He gained a vast amount of experience for his medical profession. He was also filled with a certain pride, which was justified because he felt free and independent from his anxious predecessors when he said the proud words: “If you want the truth, follow me.” This is how he related to the surrounding nature. What had built up in him was a knowledge of man, which Theosophy has now to recapture.

In what we call the physical body, only a part, and indeed the lowest, of the human being can be seen. Theosophy calls the next higher link of the human being the etheric body. The same forces and substances as in this human body are also in animals, plants and minerals. Science is not aware of these finer forces because they are not just a product of chemical composition, nor is it aware that the etheric body exists before the physical body.

Before the etheric body, theosophy knows of another. Matter crystallizes out of itself into the physical body; comparable to how ice crystallizes out of water. The etheric body is the basic template. The astral body is the third link; this has formed the etheric body through its condensation. The astral body is the outer form for desires and instincts. The physical is created out of the spiritual and the soul.

Even higher is the “ego” of the human being, which is connected to the divine. The divine is the original, and this is also how Paracelsus views the world. He also initially speaks of the physical body. This is the seat of the animal life force, which the theosophist describes as the etheric body, whereas Paracelsus calls it the elementary body. Paracelsus was already using the term “astral body” to describe the third body; he also sometimes called it the sidereal body. He said: Within the physical body is the elementary body, within that is the sidereal body and within that is the divine spark. As an external human being, he is related to the elements: water, earth, air and fire. Through astral qualities, he is related to the worlds of the stars and through divine qualities to the invisible divine world. He needed a simile: Imagine an apple and its core, and you will say that the core of the apple has separated from the basic substance; the elementary body is in the apple flesh, the sidereal body in the core from the substance of the world of stars, and the innermost, divine, comes from the divine.

Paracelsus found threefold relationships within himself; first of all, to nature; furthermore, he had a fine relationship to the stars; he felt sympathetically attracted and antipathically repelled, and thus had relationships to the whole cosmos. Finally, however, he also felt divine relationships to everything divine in the wide universe. He said: The physical is built out of the spiritual, then it has separated itself from the spiritual. Do not seek the source of the disease in the elemental, but in the sidereal. Where there are symptoms of illness, relationships are not in the right proportion. Knowledge of disease involves three things: firstly anatomy, secondly astrology, thirdly knowledge of the divine forces, theology. Only in the totality of these three - that is, in the whole knowledge of the world - is the basis for understanding disease.

If Paracelsus needed a basis, he searched for the spiritual, for the invisible within the visible. When he observed the magnetic force in iron, how iron attracts or repels, he imagined the magnet to be composed of iron, attraction and repulsion.

Now he discovered that within the sidereal body there is something like [a] magnet. Therefore, he examined the magnetic forces and applied magnets to people. Wherever forces are destroyed in the human being, he sought to have a healing effect on them. Paracelsus called for the study of the higher worlds from the physician. Therefore, he was also concerned with the sleeping person and the world of dreams, and he observed what changes there. He painted a wonderful picture: the sleeping person with his physical and elementary bodies has been left by the astral body, and there it lives with the whole world of the stars and carries on the balancing star talk; that is why it has such a refreshing effect on the physical body. Thus the astral body receives the effect of the forces in the world of the stars.

Those who look so deeply into the workings of nature can also use spiritual means. From the starry sky, he knew how to get the things that worked on his sick. Today, one would speak of hypnotism. It is a mistake to believe that every idea has a healing effect; only certain ideas can have an effect; abstract concepts have no effect on the soul. Paracelsus used the word “imagination” and by that meant the transformation of the concept into an image. He believed that one should create entirely pictorial ideas and place very specific feelings into this image. Then the picture gains the power to affect the particular soul. Consider how Paracelsus, as a great healer of souls, affected the physical! He achieved nothing that occult schools do not aspire to. There, very specific exercises are done in which certain geometric figures, which make up a complete system, are placed before the soul of the person. Then the secret student has to evoke a certain feeling with a certain figure, and then what is called imagination develops.

Paracelsus formed a picture of how man relates to nature in a truly theosophical way. If he found that some kind of passion lived in a person, he sought the counter-image for this whole spiritual person outside in nature; thus nature became a mirror image for nature. The human passions, anger, rage, cunning - which are inwardly mental, are reflected in images of the animal world; and for everything that the etheric body builds up, there is a counter-image in the plant world. Paracelsus found the healing in that which is in harmony with the sick person. In nature, he saw, as it were, the human being laid out in compartments. He spoke a wonderful word: the whole of nature consists of individual letters and together these form the word “human being”. Of the insane, he said: the astral body is always healthy when it surrenders to the sidereal forces. But if the connection is clouded, then there are clouded rays. The soul is always healthy in the insane, it only shines through clouded rays.

I have only been able to give you a brief sketch of his penetrating research here. Goethe followed a similar line. He had recognized the relationship to nature. In “Faust”, where Faust encounters sublime nature, he has him say:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest, thou givest me everything.
[Why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in the fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature for a kingdom,
Strength to feel it, to enjoy it. Not
You only allow coldly amazed visitors,
granting me the gift of looking into their deep chests,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
before me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.]

For a gradual acquisition of that science which we designate as spiritual science, it is necessary that we should have the good will of filling out the thoughts and thought-connections which are indicated almost in the form of a plan with real ideas relating to those things which can at first only be given in a more general outline. We say that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, etc. This is quite correct, to begin with, for it is necessary that we should orient ourselves with the aid of encompassing schematic ideas. But if we wish to continue in the acquisition of spiritual science, we must penetrate more accurately into everything which has thus been given in a schematic form. We already possess quite a considerable number of lecture-cycles, which are read particularly within the more restricted circle connected with our Society; but these cycles of lectures still contain relatively little of what should be known to humanity in a near future, at least to a certain number of people! This would be most desirable. To begin with, we say: We designate as man’s physical body his external appearance, which can be perceived through the physical senses and which can be observed with the aid of that science that is linked up with the intellect, with experiments and observations. We know that the etheric body lies at the foundation of the physical body. Let us, first of all, cast our spiritual eye upon these two members of human nature.

Spiritual science as such, needs to say least of all (of course, this is at first only apparently the case) about the physical body, for the physical body is the only thing which the ordinary science, dealing with the physical world, is willing to contemplate with the aid of its methods. But although the physical body may at first seem to be what natural science considers, it to be, its true significance and its position within the universe can only be recognised if the higher members of the human organisation are also borne in mind.

You will undoubtedly recollect that man’s physical body, in the form in which it envelops him here upon the. earth, could only arise during the Earth-epoch, but it received its first foundation during the ancient Saturn-epoch. During the Sun, Moon and Earth epochs, it then underwent a constant transformation. It was gradually transformed under the influence of the processes which were taking place: it was transformed through the fact that the etheric body was incorporated with it. When the physical body passed on from the Saturn epoch to a new epoch, it had to change, for it became permeated with the etheric body. And it also had to change when it became permeated with the astral body upon the Moon. Not only has the astral body been added to the physical body, but the physical body has been transformed through the fact that the etheric body penetrated into it, as it were, during the Sun-epoch and the astral body during the. Moon-epoch, whereas the Ego is gradually developing in every direction here, upon the Earth; of course, it develops first of all within the astral body, then within the etheric body, but then also within the physical body.

If we now pass on from the human being to the cosmos, we only need to remember what is contained in our lecture-cycles. We must remember, in this case, that just as the first foundation of the physical body has been made possible through the outpouring, as we may call it, of the Spirits of the Will or the Thrones, so the transformation during the Sun-epoch became possible through the Spirits of Wisdom, and the transformation during, the Moon-epoch through the Spirits of Movement. The transformation during the Earth-epoch, that is to say, the change entailed through the fact that an Ego now dwells within the physical body, has been made possible through the Spirits of Form, This is a most significant fact, which we must bear in mind. When we encounter man’s physical body upon the Earth, we must think of it as being endowed with an Ego, and since it is endowed with an Ego, we must bear in mind that it has received a certain form, the form which is most appropriate to it. During the Moon epoch, it has merely received the inner movement which was most adapted to it. The form which was most suited to it, is a gift of the Spirits of Form, and is in keeping with the fact that an Ego had to be Implanted in it.

We may thus say: Our earthly body, which has a physical form, has been formed in such a way as to become a bearer of the Ego. Together with the Ego, the Spirits of Form gave the human physical body the form which it now has and which is in keeping with the fact that it is the bearer of an Ego. The beings that belong to the other kingdoms of Nature, have received their forms later. If you read the more intimate descriptions of the Moon-epoch,¹ you will find that they describe all the other beings in such a manner that it is not possible to say that also these beings had their forms at that time. They are described with a certain mobility. Bear in mind, for instance, the description contained in my Occult Science.

Also the other kingdoms of Nature have received their stable forms through the Spirits of Form, during the Earth-epoch. Let us now contemplate the animal kingdom. Also the animal kingdom has its definite forms. It has acquired these forms only during the Earth. epoch. But think of the great difference between the forms of the animal kingdom and of the kingdom of man! If we cast our gaze over the surface of the earth, we may indeed find certain differences among men, but these differences belong to another field of study. We also come across certain differences in the external human form. All the interesting peoples which the West Europeans now lead into the field against Central Europe of course present a different aspect from the European populations! Differences can of course be perceived when we cast our gaze over the surface of the earth and study the form of various individual human beings. The colour of the skin must, for instance, be considered in connection with the bodily form. But if you compare the differentiations which exist in regard to the human being with the great differentiations which exist in regard to the various animal species, you will have to admit: The various species of animals differ far more from one another than the human beings. In comparison to the various animal species we can speak of an individual human species; in the human kingdom, however, we cannot find such a great difference as may be found, for instance, between a lion and a nightingale. If there would be such a great difference in the kingdom of man as that between a lion and a nightingale, we would not hear even such peculiar observations that it is not possible to notice the differences which exist among human beings. The fact to be borne in mind is that the animals show infinitely greater differences than the human being, within his own general human species.

Although the things which I have just now explained to you are undoubtedly right, they are only right within certain limits, if we consider them from the aspect of spiritual science. The following fact should be looked upon as a truth: In your thoughts and, in your observation, add the etheric body to man’s physical body and imagine that a certain experiment is to be made; in reality, of course, this experiment cannot be made. Imagine the following experiment and that you see it being enacted; imagine that the whole physical body of man can be separated from him, detached from him scientifically, piece by piece and that before we begin to detach the physical body from the human being we are in the position to invoke the Spirits of the higher hierarchies—to send an invocation to the Spirits of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. We would have to utter this invocation in such a way that its request would be granted, namely, that the Spirits of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai might withdraw from the human being and cease; to influence his etheric body. We would, therefore—we cannot say, excoriate—but we would have to take away from the human being everything pertaining to his physical body and then we would have to ask the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai to withdraw their influences, so that man’s etheric body may be left entirely to its own resources, and may no longer be influenced by anything else. For the etheric body is subjected to certain influences; it is inserted in the physical body and the physical body has its own solid form, to which the etheric body must adapt itself. If you take a very soft piece of rubber and put it into a glass, it will adapt itself to the form of the glass and will no longer maintain its own form. But if you take it out of the glass, it will bound back into its own form. In a similar way, the etheric body must adapt itself to the physical body, without a form of its own. Consequently, if we draw away the physical body, we eliminate the forces to which the etheric body had to adapt itself; however, it would not immediately take on its own form, owing to the fact that the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai still work upon it, but we have asked them to withdraw, so that the etheric body can now obey its own forces to the fullest extent. In that case, the etheric body would take on its own elasticity. And this would be visible; we would see the etheric body jumping out. And what would occur?—You would have before you the whole animal kingdom! The etheric body would split up into portions, and these would show in their fundamental types the forms of the whole animal kingdom. In other words: etherically, the human being carries about within him the whole animal kingdom, which is simply held together by the form of his physical body and by the activity of the Beings of the above-named hierarchies. It is unquestionably true that the human being bears within him, as a disposition, the whole animal kingdom. From this standpoint, the animal kingdom differs from man only through the fact that every animal-species has assumed a form of its own, which it has developed independently into a physical shape. Consequently, the animal kingdom is the expanded etheric body of man,

A strange fact should be borne in mind. At the turn of the 18th and of the 19th century, something special arose within the world-conception of Europe, and we may observe this, for instance, more in detail in the case of Oken. From the standpoint of his time, the scientist Oken could not as yet speak of etheric bodies; indeed, he was far from doing so. But in his books we may find the following peculiar statement: “The animal kingdom is the human being, expanded.” This means that in his fantasy he had caught, a glimpse of the truth. It rose up on his spiritual horizon at a time when the great ideas of the Central European world-conception had developed. Indeed, this truth even rose up on Schelling’s horizon, and this same statement can also be found in Schelling’s books. Those who were unable to penetrate into such a lofty idea, which could not, of course, be developed fully, those who were unable to penetrate into such a great idea, went through a terrible time. We should think of Oken in such a way, that the things which he could not as yet grasp clearly, nevertheless lived within his soul as a marvellous conception, so that he could feel the single parts of the human being really consist of animal forms. He even had the courage to express this, but this courage very much annoyed the learned Philistines. Just think that Oken conceived the following idea: What is the tongue?—Well, he said that the tongue is a cuttlefish. Of course, the things which I have just explained to you lay at the foundation of this statement ... but just imagine what the learned Philistines thought about it! If we wish to grasp the development of man’s spiritual life we must become broad-minded and we must realise that things which may apparently sound like nonsense may bear within them a great truth. Oken subdivided the human being as follows: The tongue is a cuttlefish, other organs are something else. After all, it was merely the exact repetition of a truth which existed in a very ancient conception of man and which brought into evidence the fundamental types, subdividing the human being in accordance with the four fundamental animal types: Lion, eagle, angel and calf.

Thus we may say: Things are not as easy as they appear to be, for in reality, the human being bears within his etheric body the whole animal kingdom. As a philosopher might express himself, he bears it within him as a disposition.

Now you should bear in mind the following fact: If the things which I have just now described to you would not take place, if in addition to the fact that the physical body holds together the whole animal kingdom, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai would not exercise their influence, then the process explained above would necessarily take place, when the human being lays aside the physical body and passes through the portal of death; namely, the etheric body would, in that case, jump out elastically into the world when the astral body and the Ego have abandoned it, and a whole etheric animal kingdom would rise out of the etheric body. But in reality, this does not take place; this animal kingdom does not rise out of the human being, for the etheric body detaches itself in an entirely different form; it detaches itself and becomes incorporated with the universal ether and interweaves with it.²

What lies before us in that case? The fact that the Beings of the hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our etheric body and do not allow it to reach the point of splitting up into the animal kingdom. What does really take place?—You see, I would like to describe these things by drawing in a comparison. Here upon the earth we human beings work. We build machines, for instance, machines made of wood or of iron. Wood and iron are our fundamental materials. We use them to construct machines. The way in which these materials are put together is our own work, but wood and even iron are raw materials which we take from the earth. We take them from a kingdom which lies below our human kingdom.

If you now imagine that the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai live above us, you will also realise that these Beings do not exist in the universe simply in order to have a perpetual holiday. They have their work, tasks which they must fulfil. What do they really do? They, too, must use a material for their work, just as we use wood and iron which we take from the earth, and they, too, will work upon this material. Our etheric bodies are the material used by the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. For the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, our etheric bodies have the same value that the wood and iron which we take from the earth have for us, when we use them to build machines. The Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our etheric bodies, and when we walk about upon the earth and harbour, as it were, the thought (if we have such thought at all!) that we carry about within us our etheric body, believing that we carry it about as something that belongs to us in the same way in which the lungs that we carry about within us belong to us—then the whole essence of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai is active around us and works out forms for the spiritual world, forms that are needed there, just as machines are needed here upon the earth. They work out what is needed in the spiritual world. What aids these spiritual beings in their work?

You see, throughout our life we think; we think, from the moment that we attain the capacity of thinking up to the moment of death. Our thinking consists therein that it weaves and lives in our etheric body. Yet, while we live within our physical body, we believe that only the things we mould in the shape of thoughts belong to us. But what we thus possess in the shape of thoughts, what we thus form and mould within our thoughts is, as it were, only the inner aspect of our whole thought-life. From outside, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our thoughts, particularly in regard to our etheric body. As human beings, it is not at all unnecessary that we should think. Our thoughts are necessary not only for the physical earth, but also for the cosmos. For what we transform within our etheric body through our thinking, is employed during our earthly life as a material which is used in accordance with higher standpoints. While we pass through the world as thinking human beings, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon our thoughts, so that after our death something may arise that can be incorporated with the whole ether of the universe. When our astral body and our Ego lay aside our etheric body, they sew into the cosmos the wool of our etheric body, that has arisen essentially through our manner of thinking.

As human beings, we do not only live for ourselves; we also live for the whole universe. We know that Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan will follow our Earth. But all this must be prepared; it must be interwoven with the universe as forces. This entails work. It forms part of this work, for instance, that the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai carry it on in accordance with our thoughts. (Stupid thoughts are not the same kind of material as clever thoughts). Coarsely speaking, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon these etheric machines in accordance with the material that we supply to them, and these “machines” then exist, in order that the evolution of the universe may continue. When our etheric body is handed over to the cosmos after our death, this kind of work is therefore handed over at the same time to the Beings of the three, above-mentioned hierarchies.

Let us now contemplate from a similar standpoint man’s astral body. We always contemplate things from different standpoints, so that we always obtain other connections with the surrounding kingdoms, and those who cannot read (an encompassing view of things is needed in order to be able to read) may discover many contradictions in our descriptions, but this is only due to the fact that they ignore the standpoints from which these things are viewed.

You see, our astral body is connected with the earthly surroundings in a similar way as our etheric body. From the standpoint just indicated, our etheric body is the whole ANIMAL KINGDOM. Our astral body is, instead, the whole VEGETABLE KINGDOM. In exactly the same way in which I spoke to you of the etheric body in connection with the animal kingdom, I would now have to speak to you of the astral body in connection with the vegetable kingdom. All the vegetable forms of our earth are contained in the astral body. And again, we find that if nothing else were to occur, if the Beings of the higher Hierarchies would not work upon our astral body, if during the time between death and a new birth, when we live backwards through our life, nothing would occur except the fact that the astral body is discarded, then the astral body would appear as the whole vegetable kingdom outside in the world. Indeed, this would even take on the form of a sphere, it would follow its own elasticity. The astral body would really take on the form of a sphere; but it cannot do this because during our life between birth and death the Spirits of Form have been working upon our astral body, also the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom, and even the Spirits of the Will. When after years or decades we have lived backwards through our earthly life and have thus gradually freed the astral body from its connection with earthly existence, then the astral body will contain the results of a work, results that the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom and the Spirits of the Will require in order to incorporate something with the cosmos, namely, to incorporate with it, what they MUST incorporate with it. Of course, what thus becomes incorporated with the cosmos is to our own profit; for this must be contained in the cosmos. However, this becomes inwoven with the cosmos in a manner that differs from the process described above.

When we discard our etheric body, this becomes inwoven, I might say, with the universal ether of the cosmos. But what appears now, as a woof woven out of our astral body as a result of the work of the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom and of the Thrones, cooperates with our Ego that is passing through its time between death and a new birth and contains forces which must be active, in order that we may once more enter a new incarnation. Many things are needed in order that we may enter a new incarnation! Many things, indeed! To-day, the ordinary science of the physical world really knows quite a lot about the structure of the skull and of the human brain; such a lot, that many people find it is too much to learn all these things! It is undoubtedly a lot. But suppose that all the knowledge which is acquired through external science were to be considered from a particular standpoint ... from the standpoint that the _skull containing that wonderful structure of the brain has actually arisen, that it could really be formed in its minutest details, whereas if all this had to be formed with the aid of our ordinary external science, very little indeed could be achieved!

Here we face a significant mystery, a mystery that obtuse men (the sort of men whom we can really designate as obtuse) think to cope with so easily by saying: “Well, the human being simply arises! In the course of the generations, it so happened that human bodies develop spontaneously within the bodies of mothers. This is quite spontaneous.” Indeed, the arguments adopted by such people can be grasped ... but let me show you, with the aid of a comparison, how clever they really are!

For instance, you may take for granted that here in Munich there are certain Beings able to perceive many things, but unable to perceive man, and thus unable to see his activities. It is quite possible, to imagine this! But those Beings who cannot see man, nor his activities, may, for instance, be able to see—a clock. They would, therefore, know that there are clocks and also how they are made. They would not, however, see the man who makes the clock; they would only see how a clock arises from its single parts. They would perhaps see the different kinds of pincers taking hold of the clock’s parts, but they would see them gripping, as it were, out of the air. What a conception would these Beings have of a clock? They would not say: “In Munich there are clock-makers”, but they would say: “Clock-makers do not exist; the clocks arise spontaneously, of their own accord, for we can see how they form themselves.” This is the manner of thinking adopted by people who take for granted that things that gradually develop in a physical way must arise quite spontaneously! However, everything that arises is the result of actions fulfilled by spiritual Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies. Indeed, the human being does not arise spontaneously, merely through the interchanging influence of father and mother and through what develops within the mother’s body, but the whole cosmos participates in his development.

Particularly the external world, as far as its highest regions, cooperates in the formation of the human head. It participates less in what is attached to the head, and participates in a particular way in the development of the human head. In a not too distant future, even ordinary science will learn to think differently in embryology concerning all the organs and also concerning the human head. It will discover that the other organs depend very strongly upon hereditary qualities, whereas the formation of the head depends upon them only very slightly. The form of the head is simply pushed together after the formation of the other organs. The whole cosmos participates in the forming of the head and the influences of the cosmos penetrate into the mother’s body. Those who do not see these forces ... well, also a farmer does not see the forces that are active in a magnet, but this does not prove the non-existence of these forces. What exists in the human head, has been worked out, as it were, in connection with all that the human being has received from the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement and the Thrones, with what he bears along within his Ego, carrying it over into the time between death and a new birth, as a mighty spherical form. What is thus elaborated is gigantic; it is a sphere and within this sphere everything is worked out.³.

Imagine a gigantic sphere, upon whose surface is engraved, as upon a globe, everything that must be worked into it in accordance with what the human being handed over, to begin with, to the universal cosmos through his etheric body, through the extract of his etheric body; this forms, as it were, something that is copied on to the surface of the sphere. We then work into it what should be engraved upon it in accordance with what we have brought along with us through the work done upon our astral body. And then comes the time—it begins with that moment designated by me as the world’s midnight hour—when the sphere gradually grows smaller and finally this sphere, upon which, the higher Spirits work, becomes quite small, it grows smaller and smaller, until it unites with the human germ conceived within the mother’s body. This, above all, gives rise to the form of the head. The gradual development of the form of the head is the result of centuries of work on the part of the higher Hierarchies.

Just imagine how man’s feelings in regard to his relationship with the world could be deepened if he would be aware of his position within the whole cosmic connections! The human being who carries his head upon his shoulders should learn to think in all humility, without any pride and arrogance, that human wisdom and all that may be found in it, contains very little indeed of what is required for the forming of the head bestowed upon the human being! Man bears within him everything that is contained in the cosmos. If we consider things from this standpoint, spiritual science acquires an immense value through, the fact that it becomes the point of departure for certain feelings, that may, indeed, endanger souls filled with pride and arrogance.

In my second Mystery Play I have alluded to this fact, in the scene where Capesius, conversing with Benedictus, feels the approach of truths telling him that the deeds of gods are needed in order to give rise to man. Truths of this kind may increase the vanity of many, who may at first be disposed to vanity. They may attribute enormous importance to themselves. Yet it would be far more reasonable to foster the feeling showing us how little of all that wisdom which gave rise to the human being really exists within our own consciousness! Of course, we may snare the opinion of those who say: “Of what use is it to know all these things? We can quite well do without this knowledge. Indeed, we can live quite comfortably without knowing, all these, things” ... Yet a great error is contained in the belief that we can quite well do without this knowledge! For, in reality, we cannot live without it. Indeed, at the present time we easily yield to the erroneous belief that we can lead quite a decent life without having a knowledge of the spiritual world; that is to say, that we can breakfast, etc., and do many things in between ... Undoubtedly, it is very easy to believe this at the present time; nevertheless, such a belief is not based upon truth. We should gradually be brought to the point of feeling that such beliefs are not based upon truth. For this reason, I mention a subject such as that of Planck. I mention Planck, that strange man, who lived for many years an extremely lonely life at Ulm and was not even offered a chair at the university of Tübingen, because nobody really understood his true value and significance; the significance of a man concerning whom obtuse persons would certainly say: “Towards the end of his life, he grew so nervous that he said all manner of things that sounded like megalomania.” Well, obtuse men may argue like that. But even someone who had not to endure the sufferings that Planck had to endure, would have grown nervous through the way in which his fellow men treated him, and he would also have uttered the words which may be found in Planck’s introduction to his “Philosophy of Nature and of Mankind”, the words of an ancient Roman: “Ungrateful country of mine! You shall not even have my bones!” I am quoting these words purposely; they were uttered in 1889, the year of Planck’s death, and they really convey exactly what we tried to explain just now.

The reality could be perceived by a man with idealistic conceptions, because the forces that develop within us when we are able to think in this manner, are, at the same time, the most practical thing in the world. The most practical thing is not at all as imagined by those who believe that they really are in touch with the most practical things in life; this can only be explained through the brutality with which they face life’s practical aspects. When I advance such examples, I only advance them in order to show you that all those human forces which are also needed in practical life, can give rise to clear thoughts filled with insight, only if the soul is fertilized by spiritual scientific truths.

Is it possible to-day that people actually believe that human life on earth is possible, without the slightest idea of spiritual scientific truths? Why do people believe such things?—Because they are so terribly short-sighted! If they were not so short-sighted, it would be possible to prove, even in an entirely external way, how mistaken are those who say: “Well, people simply believe that they need not concern themselves with a spiritual world. They are born without doing anything towards this, and they grow ...” Of course, some kind of education must be offered to man. Modern pedagogy is so extremely clever, that it sets up clever principles, reaching the gigantic heights of Forster’s pedagogy! And then we gradually become mature men, who concern themselves with the problem of what we should do, in order to give others something to eat and to drink.

Yet it was not always so within the human race. It is not so long ago that the present conditions arose, inducing men to believe that they can live upon the earth without possessing any spiritual knowledge. External proofs may be advanced, in support of this.

Let me advance one of these proofs. Probably, if we had time to spare (but here in Munich, people do not have much time), we might even come across a similar proof here in Munich. At the Museum of Art, in Hamburg we recently discovered a proof that may be advanced externally. It results from the following fact:

Let us bear in mind that great symbol at the beginning of the Old Testament: Adam and Eve’s Temptation, what is known to us as the Luciferic temptation. Let us think of this. When a modern painter paints this (his standpoint is quite an indifferent matter; it is all the same whether he is a realistic or an idealistic painter, an expressionist, impressionist, or futurist), he thinks that the reality can be conveyed best of all if he paints Adam and Eve in a more or less ugly way; between them, he will paint the Tree of Paradise and upon it the Serpent, with a real serpent’s head, as large as the Tree. Can this be termed realistic, in the true meaning of the word? I do not think so. Leaving aside the present assumption, it is impossible to believe that the archetypal mother Eve could have been so stupid as to be tempted by a real serpent. Imagine, a real serpent creeping through the green grass should have caught mother Eve! Even the present serpent can only be looked upon as a symbol of something else. Let us recall the thoughts that should really be connected with the Luciferic temptation. The serpent is Lucifer. It can only symbolize Lucifer. The fact that this being remained behind upon the Moon-stage of development, is connected with the Luciferic principle. It is therefore impossible to see Lucifer through physical eyes, for these have only developed upon the earth. Lucifer can only be perceived through the inner eye, and so he cannot resemble an earthly serpent that can be seen through our ordinary earthly eyes. Lucifer should be imagined as spiritual science is able to represent him. Imagine now that man carries upon him his head, as the most perfectly formed member of his body. Attached to it (it suffices if you study a skeleton) is the remaining organism; the spine is attached to the head. Everything that has, later on, developed physically, was formed in advance. If we go back into evolution, if we were to perceive Lucifer through our inner power of vision, we would see him in the form which he had upon the Moon, when he was preparing the earthly human head, a human head that was not so dense and solid as the present one, for it was inwardly mobile, manifold in its forms, and attached to it was a human spine, a spinal cord, that may be imagined in the form of a serpent’s body. Lucifer would, therefore, have to be painted with a countenance as expressive as possible, and attached to it, a serpent’s body, but one that resembles the archetypal human spine. This would be a kind of picture of Lucifer.

At the Museum in Hamburg there is a picture by Master Bertram representing a Story, of the Creation, and there the Paradise-symbol is represented in such a way that Lucifer is portrayed as described, exactly in accordance with spiritual science. In the 13th and 14th century, Master Bertram therefore painted Lucifer correctly, in a spiritual-scientific sense. This can be seen; it is a historical fact. We have frequently spoken of the ancient atavistic clairvoyance. What Master Bertram painted, shows that up to the 13th and 14th century it was possible to paint Lucifer correctly, in accordance with an ancient spiritual science. It can therefore be proved, it can be proved externally, that the human beings have become, so abandoned by the spirit as they are now, only a few centuries ago. This can be proved, and you will be able to discover such proofs.

In other words: What the obtuse people of to-day consider as the everlasting human nature ... the fact that they look out into the world through their eyes and then combine the things they see through their intellect, has become a human soul-quality only a few centuries ago. Before that time, man was aware of his connection with the spiritual world. This has faded. But we can learn to know that even in the 13th and 14th century people were still able to paint in such a way that this was in keeping with the ancient spiritual science. It is important to bear in mind such a fact. It shows us that the ancient spiritual science had to vanish for the sake of the development of human freedom, for in the 5th post-atlantean epoch arose something that has often been described: namely, the, consciousness-soul had to develop and consequently the old spiritual science had to recede. But it must be brought back again.

In regard to what constitutes the spirit of invention, the creative spirit, humanity still lives to-day upon the old inheritance in every sphere, upon the old inheritance that entered human evolution with the ancient spiritual science. When someone has a new idea to-day and invents something quite new, he does this because the ancient spiritual science still continues to be active. But in less than a hundred, in less than fifty years time, every kind of invention, every creative kind of thought shall have disappeared; it shall have disappeared even in the mechanical sphere, unless spiritual science influences humanity in a fruitful way. Spiritual science must begin to penetrate livingly into the development of the human race, for otherwise, the human race must grow barren.

In the sphere of art, this, fact is more or less evident to-day. In art it is strongly evident that the human beings are, as it were, abandoned by the spirit, seeing that they can only weave into their works of art what they find as a model, outside, in Nature; thus the inner fertilization on the part of the spirit is completely lacking.

These facts stand on one side. They show us how necessary it is for the human being to become aware of the fact that he is connected, as a whole human being, with Beings belonging to the higher kingdoms. We may think of people—some still exist to-day—who do not know that air exists. For them, space is empty. At least this fact does not reach their consciousness. After all, the physical body cannot be thought of without the environing air—for what would we be with our physical body without any air! We imagine that the physical body is closed up, because it is enveloped in its skin,—but here is the air outside the body: we breathe it in, and now it is inside us; we breathe it out, and then it is outside. Does not the air belong to the physical body in the same way as the muscles? Do you not have within you what is outside, and outside what is within? In the same way in which we are connected with the air in regard to our physical body, so we are connected, in regard to our soul-element, with the Beings that weave through the world as Spirits of Form, Spirits of Movement and Thrones; through our astral body we are united with the Beings who weave through the world as spiritual Hierarchies; they are incessantly active in us, just as the air is active within our physical body. If we know this, we have the right kind of consciousness of man’s being.

This is one aspect of the matter. But then there is still another aspect. Now I wish to awaken in you a conception of these things, by contemplating them from several aspects, as it is necessary to-day.

Read, for instance, (I might also indicate another example) Dostojevski’s “Karamasov Brothers”. Four characters appear, among others, in this book: the four sons of the old Karamasov, Ivan, Dmitri, Aljosha, Smerdiakov. It is very strange to see what an influence this novel of Dostojevski had, particularly in Europe. I would have to say many things if I wished to explain the whole way in which such things rise out of human life and pass through a soul such as that of Dostojevski where they develop into a work such as his “Brothers Karamasov”. Let me only say this: In spite of the greatest admiration which we may have for the penetrating psychological art (this is the name given to it by many modern people, because they know so little what psychology really is!), in spite of the penetrating insight of Dostojevski’s psychological art, also in spite of his fine and penetrating observation of life, those who have really reached the point of taking up spiritual-scientific conceptions not only in such a way as to say, man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, but so that they are filled with what may be experienced in connection with these members of human nature—those who strive to build up feelings in the way in which we endeavour to do it, will have an uncomfortable feeling when they read the frequently chaotic descriptions of the Karamasov brothers. For this book contains many things that may indeed be designated as fine observations of life, if we simply bear in mind an external, superficial observation of life ... for instance the fact that the eldest brother is the son of another mother and has an entirely different character than that of his two younger brothers; the fourth son is again the offspring of another mother (the old Karamasov is namely a thorough scoundrel!), whereas the third son has a most peculiar mother. One does not know if he is really the son of the old Karamasov ... But I do not intend to tell you the story of the book. Indeed, if we also bear in mind the aspect, who were the mothers, we may feel throughout: there is something behind all that! In fact, this is so, for a Central-European writer would not describe things in that way; he would describe things far more consciously and thus he would not bring into his description so many sub-conscious factors; as is the case with Dostojevski, he constructs more, and since he only brings into his book what he more or less knows, his book will not contain such a wealth of things as that of Dostojevski, who takes the things he writes from LIFE.

Life contains more than that which rises up in the consciousness of the human soul. Towards all these things we feel that in the case of Dostojevski we have before us an extremely chaotic mind, rendered chaotic through his epilepsy; but, in spite of this, many things passed through his entirely diseased soul, things which could pass through it, because human nature is, in our time, inclined, as it were, to reveal certain Things. We may then come to the following result: If we have acquired the right kind of feeling, the right kind of idea in regard to what is meant by physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, we shall find in the four Karamasov brothers four human beings who can only be understood in the right way if we say to ourselves: In one of them, we have before us a human being in whom the physical body is specially active; in the other one, a human being in whom the etheric body is particularly active; in the third one, a human being in whom the astral body is more active; and in the fourth one, a human being in whom the Ego is more active. It is indeed so: If you take the Karamasov brothers and study them from an inner aspect, you will be able to say that, in accordance with. the present cycle of human evolution, and in a case where everything is active in such a way that the poet is influenced and stimulated to describe things more from out his sub-consciousness, the various members of human nature are active so that in one brother one particular member has the upper hand, and in another one, another member; the four brothers therefore appear like the drawn-out image of humanity. In Dmitri we find that the Ego is preponderant; in Aljosha, the astral body; in Ivan, the etheric body; and in Smerdiakov, the physical body. Though at first this may seem strange, it is nevertheless so, from the standpoint of reality.

You see, here we have the strange case of a poet who produces chiefly from out his sub-conscious depths and even has a chaotic soul life owing to his epilepsy, but who is nevertheless pushed towards the reality and whose astral body, that is to say, his sub-consciousness, becomes connected with what weaves and lives in the world.

We may well believe that the experience of standing beneath the gallows and. being unexpectedly pardoned at the last minute (Dostojevski’s comrades have already been hung, while Dostojevski himself is facing the moment of being hung), is not an indifferent experience; indeed, such an experience awakens in a human soul altogether different feelings than those of a soul that has never passed through a similar experience. This is a fact that should be borne in mind. But all this shows us that at the present time, in particular, a soul of Dostojevski’s kind could be influenced by the real facts in such a manner that his soul felt induced to describe throughout his book, in a chaotic way, these four brothers, who possess the qualities just described, whom we can only understand if we know this and if we are able to feel it. In that case, we shall understand why the brother in whom the etheric body predominates and the one in whom the astral body predominates, must be the sons of a mother afflicted with hysterical fits. If we know this, the details in particular become wonderfully transparent. This reveals the tendency of our time within the sphere of a nation inclined to offer (I have already explained this to you), as it were, those blood qualities which must become united with the Central European qualities. We can grasp what is taking place, also in the case of men in whom these events are still inwoven unconsciously; but we can grasp this only if we understand spiritual science.

Even though it may seem stupid, let me nevertheless say that the world is deep, and that it is not such a simple matter to gain some knowledge in regard to it, nor to judge it; it is not so simple a matter as imagined by those who lead the usual kind of life. The human beings pass through life in a dream or in a state of intoxication. Yet great things are preparing and it is not so easy to attract people’s, attention to these things.

Through your Karma you belong to those who are gradually penetrating into these things; you have been listening to them for many years and have thus gradually become familiar with them, acquiring an idea of all that lies concealed beneath the surface of life. But in regard to outsiders:—we may sometimes allude to such things in their presence and the very people may be sitting there, who belong to the clever set and believe, above all, that the person who speaks in a spiritual-Scientific manner and mentions this or that thing to them, does not really know anything beyond what he is saying. They have not the slightest idea that this knowledge must be drawn out of an all-encompassing knowledge, one that can really be proved in every detail and that becomes interesting just when it can be substantiated through details.

That many things in human evolution must change, can be seen therein that I have put before you two facts: I have shown you, on the one hand, what is connected with the human being, but on the other hand, I have also shown you the way in which we should contemplate the events that are now taking place. If someone who knows nothing of microscopy looks through a microscope, he will see nothing whatever. In a similar way, nothing whatever can be discerned when we contemplate human experience. Nothing whatever can be discerned in the experiences of the East during the 19th century; nothing can be seen in a Dostojevski, who wrote the book, “The Brothers Karamasov”, a book that indicates a sub-earthly element. In the East, in the Russian East, people have become aware of this, for a certain attitude towards life has been designated, as “Karamasovshchina”. It is difficult to explain this word; it is a far more qualitative concept than, for instance, the word “Strizitum” (a word in Austrian dialect, indicating a loose, half rascally, half good-fellow attitude towards life). “Karamasovshchina” is a far more concrete thing. We may come across this in life itself and even in art, and in order to perceive what is taking place, it is easy to realise that when we contemplate things, it is necessary to have in our soul’s background a knowledge that can only come from spiritual science.

Even the external processes rising up before us at the present time in particular, reveal this necessity; if we only look upon life thoughtfully, they reveal the necessity to which I allude and which I illuminated from two aspects. For instance, a very distressing phenomenon of the present is the following one:—General opinions existed long before the war. Certain people were considered to be prominent in this or in that sphere. There was no reason to object to this because they really achieved extraordinary things in the meaning of modern civilisation. Then war broke out. These prominent people expressed their views, they wrote letters. It is almost incredible what nonsense these prominent men wrote! For instance, Krapotkin, who enjoyed a great reputation in England. But read the letters written by him at the beginning of the war! He was looked upon as a broad-minded free-thinker, yet how stupid were the letters he wrote!

These are weighty facts. Indeed, I might say: Particularly now that humanity is facing such a sudden and powerful situation, we can see how little their thoughts are capable of grasping something that does not, for once, break in upon mankind in accordance with an ordinary, easy programme. From their own standpoint, the ordinary Philistines are better off than others, for they judge things in accordance with their views. But how do these views generally arise? At the present time, people despise authority and have their own views! Yet their opinions are merely based upon the fact that they have forgotten where they have read them! These are the “individual opinions”, that are simply characterised through the fact that they have been read or heard somewhere. All these things show that particularly the so deeply incisive events of the present contain something that must become a distinctive mark of humanity: namely, the fact that many, many things in spiritual life must change completely; human beings must make up their mind not to pass through life in the same way as the materialists, who merely dream of the world ... Of course, they think that the others are dreaming, nevertheless it is THEY who really dream, for they have never really woken up properly. Spiritual life must indeed change, and this fact must penetrate into the consciousness of those who wish to become united in their heart with the true life-essence of the spiritual-scientific world-conception.

Earnest words had to be said at this meeting, simply because to-day things present such an aspect that every opportunity must be used which may, perhaps, not always be available. It is difficult to travel about, at present.

It is therefore necessary to discuss these earnest things. They are also connected with questions discussed on previous occasions, questions that may be considered in connection with those of to-day. I explained that our etheric body is not something that may be designated as the bearer of our thoughts; it does not simply evaporate: no, the etheric body does not evaporate ... it becomes inwoven with the world-ether. When, however, as is the case at present, hundreds and thousands of deaths prevent human beings from carrying their etheric bodies through several decades, as would be the case normally, when these etheric bodies are handed over to the spiritual world, then something arises which I have frequently described: They remain here, with that part of the etheric body which may still have been used, and this will be found ABOVE. But its INFLUENCE in the future will depend upon the constitution of the souls BELOW. Strength for a spiritual progress will in future be found by those souls below who say to themselves: Many men have passed through the sacrifice of death and if we grow conscious of the forces contained in what they leave behind, then a spiritual growth will be possible. Souls must be there who are open to the comprehension of the spiritual world. In that case, the forces existing through the death-sacrifices can become fruitful for the earth. Otherwise, they must fall a prey to Ahriman. It need not NECESSARILY arise that these forces become fruitful for the earth ... for this will depend either upon the greatest possible number of souls that are inclined to unite in their feelings with what has arisen spiritually through the death-sacrifices; it will depend upon the possibility of utilising this later on, or else it will depend upon whether this will fall a prey to Ahriman. Meditate this thought, for then it will acquire significance and you will be able to feel the words with which I once more wish to conclude my lecture:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten:
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen geistbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(TRANSLATION)

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a Spirit-fruit,
If souls, in spirit-consciousness,
Lead their heart and mind into the Spirit-realm.

• 1. See The Akasha Chronicals
• 2. Compare: Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth
• 3. “MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM”

If spiritual science shall be a kind of life-force for our souls, and it can be that, this spiritual science must also prove itself powerful and suitable to extend the spiritual ken of the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science in such times like ours in which a lot prepares which is so significant. One sees the events thereby in a wider perspective than other contemporaries often can do with their narrow view of materialism. One could see in that what our spiritual-scientific movement has nurtured during the years that one of the purposes has also consisted in extending the mood of soul, so that the human being frees himself from the bare thinking about his narrow self and about that what surrounds this narrow self and is really able to look at the big impulses, the big manifestations of forces which go through the whole evolution of humanity. If we have tried that way to extend the vigour of our feelings and sensations as it were, we also have to make the forces suitable which we have won by spiritual science, just in such times, on the one hand, the waves of which break so deeply painfully against the soul and, on the other hand, raise this soul to particular height because they bear such important matters in themselves. We must be able to come already to the position in such times to go along with that what is not so externally visible in the events, what the everyday mind is not able to see in these events. We must be able to ask ourselves: does that mean something prophetic for the whole earth development what as such a dreadful torch of war is burning above our heads?

Only that human being lives properly in the present events who sees these events in such a significant light as far as it is possible. Friends, who are in our circles, will often have asked themselves, why I have spoken in our circle during the last years now and again of the fact that in decades of the 20th century times come for which we must look ahead with a particular attention because children and grandchildren of those who live now will have to experience important and immense, but also tragic and painful events. Those upon whom it is incumbent today to give something to keep the souls of the children and grandchildren upright towards that what the humankind of the 20th century experiences must be aware that this gift must be a strong internal spiritual force. Even more than we can imagine already today in our everyday life, our offsprings of the 20th century will need strong internal forces keeping up the soul to pass on the achievements of humankind, which were accumulated in the human development throughout centuries. To quite other storms of life the offsprings of humankind now living on earth will be exposed. I said that someone could be surprised when that was said within our circles that way. Now, however, a sensation of that may arise if we consider that we are in the most dreadful war events which concerned human beings, since humankind experiences history consciously on this earth.

It would be absolutely wrong if we did not penetrate ourselves so intensely as possible with the importance of the moment and present the question to ourselves: with what does that have actually to do that we strive for out of internal longing of the soul, what spiritual knowledge does have to do with that which should come in the development of humankind? Don't we see, even if we look only cursorily, a tempest breaking out which got up from the East since long ago menacing modern education and civilisation of Europe? You have at least to know that in the lap of this East immense forces are working from which you can already see that they make themselves noticeable; so that they now intend to dismember, destroy the European civilisation. You can only anticipate now to which extent this is the case.

Our European civilisation is in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It is the culture of the consciousness-soul in whose middle souls are among us who have to give something to humankind. Looking back at what was the Greek-Latin culture, this Greek-Latin culture was basically, even if in another arrangement, an echo, a recapitulation of that what already lived in the old Atlantis but on a higher level. It lived there still differently. In the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch a kind of recapitulation happened. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we stand is a new formation, is something absolutely novel what has been added to the current development of humankind. We should not conceive that only as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intensive human sense of responsibility. We should also be clear to ourselves about the fact that in the earthly evolution still long times will have to run off, until everything has come out of the human hearts and souls what the divine cosmic order has to give to humankind in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.

In the fourth culture-epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha took place as the most significant event of the whole earth development. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha had an effect in the fourth culture-epoch, it does not merely continue working in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. This fifth culture-epoch is incumbent to go to meet the Mystery of Golgotha gradually with full knowledge of spirit, with full understanding, with all forces of knowledge of the soul; not only with the forces of the reason, the forces of devoutness. It has to comprehend Christ, Who went through Death and Resurrection, bit by bit with everything the soul can produce from itself of knowledge and understanding forces. So that the word of Paul¹ is true, indeed, in a new way: “not I, but Christ in me.” Every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognising forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch.

Now we may imagine what it means, actually, if such efforts are expected from the fifth culture-epoch. Let us put before our souls the way how the Christ Impulse has worked since the Mystery of Golgotha in humankind. If the Christ Impulse could have worked only by that what the human beings understood about this Christ Impulse in the course of the centuries, since the Mystery of Golgotha has taken place, then the Christ Impulse could have worked only a little among the human beings. But it is not such an impulse which has spoken only conceptually to the human understanding or to the feeling understanding, but it is a real impulse which flowed into the course of history with living forces. The external symbol of the blood flowing on Golgotha represents the living force flowing into the history of humankind.

We will try to get clear in our mind with the help of a historical event in which way this Christ Impulse has worked, without being understood already by human beings, in which way it has worked as a living driving force in the evolution of humankind. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch has a vocation to make conscious the whole internal nature and being of the Christ Impulse. But that has already worked as a living force in the subconscious soul forces, before it became fully conscious in humankind. One of those figures the Christ Impulse selected to work through them, to work something significant is, for example—one could still give others—the figure of the Maid of Orleans. If we pursue the history of Europe up to the event that is connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans, we must say, even if we look only externally at history: with that what she accomplished in those days when she struck back the English, in the midst of the French people rising up,—she did that really,—the map of Europe was arranged as it was just arranged gradually. Any other historical consideration is basically a fairy tale for the last centuries, in so far as it concerns the distribution of nations and states in Europe. It is something unconscious that the Christ Impulse as a living impulse with the help of the Maid of Orleans caused the distribution of the European nations and national forces in those days.

I may say: while the learnt people argued about a lot, already started to argue about the question whether one has to take the Communion in this or that form whether this or that has to be interpreted according to this or that formula, and while the learnt people showed that they were not yet able to comprehend the Christ Impulse, this impulse worked through the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, worked as a formative force in European history.

Because the effect of the Christ Impulse is just not dependent on the understanding which somebody shows for it. By his Michaelic representative the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans. Now, however, the Maid of Orleans had to go through something that is similar to an initiation. We talk of initiation today and give the rules to the consciousness of the human being which I have collated in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds But such an initiation of the Maid of Orleans is out of the question, of course. You can only talk about an initiation which was as it were a relic of the ancient initiation which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of the human beings. Now just these ancient initiations have reproduced like elementary forces up to the modern time. In old legends and fairy tales a lot is told: that this or that happened to this or that person by which he got the internal soul-force. That is why he has seen this or that of the spiritual world. Such matters should be only an indication of it, like without any help of the human being, by the effect of divine-spiritual forces permeating the world, certain human beings, who are suitable for that because of their karma, are natural initiates, by the place on which they are put by karma where the karma of humankind flows together with the personal karma. A good echo of such a natural initiation, as one would like to call it, gives us a poem which speaks of the fact, that the “solar son” Olaf Åsteson was in a kind of sleeping state during thirteen nights and days—the interval between Christ's birth and His Epiphany, up to the 6th January. The name Olaf Åsteson already indicates that subconscious hereditary forces of knowledge are included in it, because somebody is called Olaf Åsteson through whom the blood of his forefathers runs. The solar son Olaf Åsteson sleeps through and dreams for thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year or contain at least the biggest force of the earthly annual darkness in them, from the first Christmas Day up to the 6th January, to Epiphany.

That is not only superstitious nonsense what goes back to these nights in such legends. Since, indeed, there are two seasons which are in a certain way like two opposite cosmic poles for the soul-life of the living human being. If we take the season around the St Johns-tide in summer, this is the time when the human soul with all its passionate impulses is united with the universe through the external physical sun force whose energy then reaches its peak. Hence, the St Johns-tide festival of the old time was intended to put divine-spiritual forces, permeating the universe, into the human soul when the human beings forgot themselves and were wrapped up in the external strong physical forces of the universe. However, when the solar force is physically the weakest, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces which have an effect in the darkness reaches its peak in return. And rightly, one can say, according to the cosmic laws the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is in this time. When the physical surroundings are the darkest, the soul can have the profoundest experiences if it feels united with the forces permeating the aura of the earth.

That is why Olaf Åsteson keeps on sleeping during these days, and experiences everything we call Kamaloka, soul-world, and, finally, spirit-land. The Norwegian legend tells us that Olaf Åsteson, when he awoke again after thirteen nights, knows to tell about his experiences that he has met the souls in the soul-world and in the spirit-land. Indeed, these are pictures which correspond to an Imaginative knowledge, but they point to that what really living possibilities of the human soul are if these souls feel transported in that time of physical darkness which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, if they feel transported to that what flows and weaves in the earth's aura. At the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ Impulse which get hold of the subconscious understanding of Olaf Åsteson. In such legends one speaks—as it were—of natural initiations which were still possible in olden times, of beholding the spiritual world. In these times the earth's aura really has a force which it does not have in other times when it is flooded and outshone by the physical sun force. Because Christ is united with the earth's aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the force of the Christ Impulse is also able to work into the souls particularly during these days if the souls are susceptible for it.

Hence, one may assume, before one investigates something historical, that—also with such a figure like the Maid of Orleans—the Christ Impulse would have worked subconsciously in her soul during thirteen days. The fact that also she would have gone through something like enlightenment by the Christ Impulse in the subconscious soul forces—what Olaf Åsteson has gone through during thirteen days and nights in the sleeping state. Then, however, the Maid of Orleans would have been in a kind of sleep once during the thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January, and then on the 6th January the Christ Impulse would have grasped this soul after it had been in a kind of sleeping state. That what one can assume did really exist in a peculiar way, only in a quite particular time when the human being can be, indeed, in a kind of sleep. Namely, before the human being does the first gasp in his earth-life, before he is released from the body of his mother and receives the first earthly-physical beam of light, he spends a time as a nascent human being in a true sleeping state. Just as you get a dreaming sleep in the evening, you are in the body of the mother in such a dream-like sleep.

Those days in which the dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unaware influence of the spiritual world are just the last days which the human being spends in the body of his mother. That is why it could also be that just these days would have been used with the Maid of Orleans to plant the Christ Impulse to her, before she saw the physical sunlight with physical eyes and did the first gasp outside the body of her mother. This was the case, because the Maid of Orleans is born on the 6th January. On the 6th January, it took place that the whole village gathered because something uncertain was in the aura of the village. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Maid of Orleans was born. Behind such matters a lot is hidden. Only if humankind gets round to seeing this mysterious fact once in the right light, will understanding of that also exist what really takes action in the human development under the surface of the external sensory world. The divine forces look for the most manifold ways for themselves to get into the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suitable that such a thing could happen.

But while the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on the 6th January, the historical chance was given that the Christ Impulse had a particular effect on her and gave Europe a new formation. These are matters which you can examine if you observe the course of history with some understanding. These are the matters which the spiritual understanding resumes in future when this fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch really gets every knowledge force out of the souls. Then the soul experiences the existence of the Christ Impulse more and more consciously. But it experiences this only if humankind is able to regard spiritual science not as a mere theory, but to feel it as living, to experience it internally. Then spiritual science is able to achieve its actual mission in the development of humankind.

In such a time like ours, we must be clear to ourselves in particular about the fact that the chasm must be bridged which opens for a materialistic age more and more between the human souls, who are here incarnated, and those who have already gone through the gate of death. More and more one will get round to regard also the souls which stand in the life between death and a new birth as belonging to the whole humankind, like those who are in the physical life between birth and death. The consciousness must become stronger and stronger, that we all are united on earth, also those who have gone into the supersensible realms before us who work only with different forces among us than we do who are incarnated. This consciousness must become more and more intense. However, just understanding of the spiritually effective forces is necessary. It is necessary that we learn to look at the connections of the earthly phenomena in that new light spiritual science can give.

Only because spiritual science should be something that touches our hearts at the same time, while it helps our souls in knowledge, want I to talk to you about something that has concerned us during the last weeks. I do that to explain something about the way which goes back at the same time to something that occupied us in the farther vicinity of our spiritual-scientific current during the last weeks. I could also take other cases, indeed, but these cases are connected with our karma immediately, so that I can speak about them just today again. You can extend that what I say here also to other persons who stand within and beyond our spiritual-scientific movement with their destinies and their relation to death in a similar relation as in the cases about which I want to speak.

Last autumn we have experienced a distressing case in Dornach in the vicinity of our construction. Dear friends had moved with their children to Dornach, settled there near the construction to manage the garden. And the oldest, seven year-old child, a spiritually infinitely bright boy who was something quite peculiar, however, also concerning his heart qualities was really a little bit like a sunny child. One had the most intimate interest in the soul of this child, even if one could see it only briefly here and there. When then the father joined the armed forces to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, there was the seven-year-old boy with his heart, I would like to say, already in the whole situation of life that he made particular efforts to substitute the father, as well he was able to do, to help his mother, while he managed everything possible. He went into the city, made purchases, the seven-year-old boy quite on his own. One evening the boy was missed. It was just an evening lecture. A person friendly to us came possibly at ten o'clock and said that the boy would be missed. It could not be unclear in the end at all that this had to do something with a removal van which had toppled over near our construction at a place where perhaps a removal van has never gone before and and will probably also not go for a long time. The van had toppled over a small embankment in a meadow that the carters said, it would be out of question that one could lift the van in the evening. They unyoked the horses about which they were very anxious, and left the van to lift it the next day because they believed that they had to work for a whole day to be able to lift the heavy carriage. Now it was ten o'clock in the evening. We had to assume that the boy was missed because the carriage had toppled over. All possible tools were brought, and everybody who could work worked, and in two hours the carriage was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the removal van.

Now if one takes only externally into account and considers, how from longer time, before this had happened, everything pushed itself together, so that the boy who had always gone, otherwise, a somewhat different way by which he would have passed the van on the right side, however, at that time he went so that he passed the carriage on the left side where the carriage just had to topple over him. If you imagine that he was detained a little bit in the most benevolent way, so that he left possibly a quarter of an hour later—he got something for the supper in the so-called canteen,—so that he has left later than he wanted, actually. If you imagine that the whole accident took place that it depended really on some, even not some minutes that the boy was just here where the carriage toppled over, and nobody noticed the accident. Not far away from that place people noticed that the carriage fell down, but they did not see the boy. If you imagine everything, you will recognise already externally that this is a most remarkable example of logical delusion which may occur easily to human beings.

I have often shown clearly, also to you, that the human being can already delude himself in the external life, so that he mistakes cause and effect. I have said: imagine that you see a person from the distance going along a riverside. You see him suddenly staggering and falling into the river. He is pulled out dead not long afterwards. Now you are quite justified to suppose according to all external reasons that the person has fallen into the water and has just drowned. If you do nothing else, you adhere to this judgment. In this case it only requires external means to convince you of the opposite. One has still found a stone where the person has fallen into the river, and you are supported in your judgment. If one opens the corpse, one will find out that the person suffered a stroke that he has fallen consequently into the river and that he has met his death not because he fell into the river, but that he fell because he was dead. So cause and effect were completely mistaken. However, somebody who understands the matters observes that at many places above all in science. In our case where the boy met his death, we must say: the karma of this boy ordered the removal van; karma brought the van just to that place. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance played a role. The boy should only arrive just at the seventh year in this incarnation. I would like to say, the whole arrangement was made for that. We must completely get used to exchange cause and effect compared with the way of judging matters in the everyday life.

If we look now with the glance of the seer at the life of this soul, something stupefying becomes apparent to us that at the same time lights up the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Not long after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach construction changed. While I say this, I say something to you that is connected with my experiences. If anybody himself has to work for the Dornach construction of the Anthroposophical Society, if one has to instigate what is to be carried out there, then one knows what one has to thank the supporting forces for working from such an aura into one's soul. Since those days, the still unused etheric body of the boy is really connected with the aura of the Dornach construction. After the human being has taken off his etheric body, he goes on with his ego and astral body; this is something different. But the etheric body if it is taken off at such a tender age has forces in itself which could still have supplied the physical body and its life for decades. Now these forces have gone unused through the gate of death. They are taken off after some days. These forces just co-operate with the aura of our construction. One is not allowed to say that it is the soul itself of this individuality, but it is the unused etheric body. Nothing gets also lost in the spiritual world. The physicist knows that nothing of physical forces gets lost that the forces only change. Also in the spiritual world we have to look for transformed forces, unused etheric forces which ascend from early-deceased human beings to the spiritual world. We approach these matters if we observe them in concrete cases. That is why I may talk to you only about such concrete cases today.

A dear anthroposophical friend (Sibyl Colazza) died before some weeks in Zurich after a life which had brought her some ordeals, and the karma of our movement brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation. The time from death up to cremation lasted from Wednesday at six o'clock p. m. until Monday at eleven o'clock a. m. This interval was a little longer than usual. That is why the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already happened, while the cremation took place. Now the peculiar was that in the time, in which the soul had already separated from the etheric body during the days between death and cremation, the necessity arose to me to speak certain words before and after the obituary. My own ability of coining words had really to do a little with the way these words were coined. However, by identifying with the soul of that personality the necessity resulted to characterise this personality as if an inspiration came from her soul itself. The soul said as it were: coin your words, so that they characterise my soul.—But the soul was still unconscious. The words came not consciously from the soul, but from the being of this soul. I had to characterise her as she wanted not to mirror herself in selfish way, but as she appeared to herself if another soul looked at her. For this other soul the necessity arose to speak the following words at the beginning of the funeral speech and to coin each single word. The words had to be spoken as an address to the soul who had gone through the gate of death:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

As I said, in the beginning and at the end of the funeral these words had to be spoken. Now, indeed, this soul was as it were like sleeping during the whole process, during the funeral ceremony. Then the cremation followed. Strangely enough the soul experienced a first flashing of consciousness, which later passed again, at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but the heat seized the corpse. There one could say: now this soul has gone through the gate of death, it had taken off its etheric body, and it now appeared how such a soul looks back. In this retrospective view, the whole funeral ceremony stood before the soul, looking at the spoken words. Someone could see there the secret of time effectiveness for the soul, after it has gone through the gate of death. One could always have seen this in such a case. If one here in the physical body looks at something spatial and then leaves it, this object does not leave, but is left, and one can always look around—one sees that it is left. However, that does not hold true of something we experience in time in the physical life. There we have a memory picture of the events only. If one looks back after death at past events, they are left; one looks at the events like through space. Thus the words had been left; the soul looked back at them like at spatial things through the course of time. This is the way to look at the things of the Akasha Chronicle. Then a kind of sleeping state happened again. But particularly in this case it was rather clear that the fear of the materialistic soul is unfounded that the consciousness of the soul is reduced when it goes through the gate of death.

We do not have no consciousness or not enough consciousness after death when we sink in a kind of sleeping state, but we have too much consciousness. When we have taken off the etheric body, when the life tableau is taken off, we are full of consciousness that blinds us at first, and the human being must orientate himself first.—I gave more details in my talks of the Vienna cycle The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and New Birth.—The soul orientates itself, while it looks back at its own earth-life and at its character in this earth-life. It has to orientate itself by means of self-knowledge. The force of orientation must take hold there, and then the abundant consciousness is reduced as far as the human being is able to endure it, depending on what he has gone through in his last incarnation. It is, actually, reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the degree which the human being can endure. But that may happen in stages. When the body was seized by the heat, the first flashing of real consciousness took place in the soul of this personality friendly to us.

It appeared to me especially clearly in another case that the soul, when it has gone through the gate of death, wants to summarise its being. I said that you can experience these matters at every death, but I give you typical examples of the most recent time. It appeared to me with quite particular clearness in another case when a friendly personality, after it had reached higher years, has gone through the gate of death. During the last years which it lived through on earth it was given away with all feelings in a rare way to the impulses of spiritual science. It felt the details of spiritual science more than it grasped them with the mind, that it united with its soul the kind of feeling which gives not a theoretical, but a true view of spiritual science. Shortly after the hour of death, while the soul experienced the life tableau with its etheric body, it tried now to grasp its self where it had taken off its body. This process seemed likewise to ray forth to me, and I identified with it. I had then to note words shortly after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric body, which I have also not coined with the help of my human knowledge. These words are nothing else than a reproduction of that what the soul worked internally in itself to summarise what it had been able to get from spiritual science and came to an internally complete self-awareness that way. There the words sounded from the soul which I had to speak then also, following an inspiration, before and after the funeral speech. You will immediately notice the great difference to the whole tone of those words I gave for the other personality before.

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares,
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfil my human duty;

May I live in anticipation
Oriented toward my soul's star,
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

The soul speaks of itself as “I.” In the former case, the considering soul had to characterise the other soul interchanging with it. In this case, the considering soul had nothing else to do than to transport itself completely into the soul which still tried to grasp, enriched by spiritual science, with the forces of the etheric body to become clear that it has now to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

These are cases again in which one realises that the human being, after he has gone through the gate of death, is dependent on looking back at himself in self-knowledge. One could see clearly that somebody who is still in the physical body can help the dead to formulate in words what works and weaves in him. Of course, the times, when the human being sees his weaknesses and mistakes, his sins, come later in the soul-world. But we have to retain: as much as death is feared now and again by those who are still in the body, death is something completely different seen from the other side in the retrospective view. Here in the physical life nobody can look so far back with his everyday human forces to the hour of his birth. Actually, nobody who does not have clairvoyant forces has the possibility to look at his entry into the world; only later the point in time up to which one can look back takes place.

Just the reverse is the case with that birth for the spiritual world which we call death. The human being looks at this point in time permanently in the life between death and new birth. This moment belongs to the most marvellous, greatest at which one can generally look in the spiritual world. Death is always an immediate proof of the fact that the spirit incessantly celebrates his victory over the physical nature. And you experience this in yourself. That is why the soul wants to experience that which one can be also really in the soul after death. Hence, it is a help if a soul living in the body expresses that in words what the soul strives for, so that the soul clearly sees itself with the best it has before its own spiritual view after it has gone through the gate of death. I just could see in this case that such words came to me with an internal necessity which referred to the soul in question when I had to speak at the funeral and did not speak out of arbitrariness, but obeyed the divine voice which told me what I had to do.

In still another case that appeared to me by the karmic course of the last times, when one of our friends died as young man who gave rise to great hopes just for our movement. He died in the thirtieth year of his life. On the 26th February he would have been thirty years old, he died shortly before. This friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher, has been somebody who was able to summarise that spiritual-scientifically what he had gained in learning—he had a disposition to scholarship,—with infinite, sacrificing devotion, and thus, indeed, he stood before something our movement needs so much: taking up our extensive science in oneself, so that one penetrates it spiritual-scientifically and reports it spiritual-scientifically, so that one stands completely on the ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for that. Even if now the karma runs a way that such souls go early through the gate of death, this has its significance in the whole world course. Like in the other cases—because I was urged just by karma to speak at the funeral,—it was there also that I had to speak words in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech which had to be spoken again in the same manner, transporting myself into the soul's being, so that I coined the words again not arbitrarily, but grasped them in the lively being together with the deceased. There I had to say then:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

Already in the next night I could experience that the following sounded from this soul from the spiritual realm:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I assure you, when I had written down these verses, I did not think, not in the least, that in both stanzas each “you” can be transformed to “me,” each “your” to “my.” I took notice only, when both stanzas sounded back from the other soul like an answer in the next night. So that the stanzas could just remain, only the second person was replaced by the first person.

I mention this, because a heart understanding can arise to us that in the future of the human development the possibility remains to speak from soul to soul, when the mouth is no longer the tool. In the same way we get answer here for the everyday life from the mouth of the other soul, it was here at an example where the soul gave answer still even from the unconscious of its being, saying as it were: I have now understood, because it was to me really that way in life; now I understand what I have aimed at in life, after I have taken off my body.

It does not only depend on the fact that we take up concepts, ideas and mental pictures of the spiritual worlds, but that we live in a certain life, in a certain way of life as human beings, while we go as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch towards the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. It depends on the fact that the chasm is bridged really which separates the living human beings from the so-called dead that humankind becomes one more and more not only in so far as it is incarnated in the body, but also as it has taken on those forms of existence which the human being lives through between death and new birth. Spiritual science has not only to bring that to humankind, but for the life which the earth needs for the rest of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the first, I would like to say, still stammering attempt, because what can be given in spiritual science is basically only a stammering compared to that what future generations experience of spiritual science.

My account tried to make that comprehensible by the force of heart what we can think about the relations of life and death, referring today to spiritual science facing life, so that you get another understanding than the head understanding, the lively heart understanding which we seek for, actually, through the spiritual-scientific deepening. That is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The sixth and the seventh epochs follow it. However, you understand only what is to be defended as Central European culture if you just feel this Central European culture intimately connected with that which must be gained in the fifth culture-epoch for humankind. Something may then begin from that which I have mentioned in the beginning of this consideration: a widening of the view beyond that what our destiny-burdened times have in their lap.

In the East, a kind of human life prepares which will be significant for the future. You only need to read up about that in the series of talks about the mission of the folk-souls² I held once in Kristiania (= Oslo). But totally different from the soul kind which is just that of the Central European is already the soul kind of the Eastern European not to speak at all of the Far Eastern—totally different. We have already to get on by that what spiritual science should be for us to create an open spirit eye for such things. What is often told that once the Varangians were invited by the Russian-Slavic population that they would have said to them: we have a nice country, but we have no order, come to us and make order. Arrange something like a state for us. What is told sentimentally as a starting point of the Russian history is nothing else as a legend without any historical background. This has never taken place that way. In truth, these Varangians came into the country as conquerors and were not called really. Nevertheless, what is told in history has more significance, even more than it would have if it corresponded to a historical truth. Because it means something prophetic, something really prophetic, something that has not yet happened that happens, however, in future. What should develop in the East, has to develop so that the abilities of the eastern peoples are used to take up what the western civilisation has created, and to process it in itself to get fertilised with that which the West has created. This is the task of the eastern peoples in future.

One can just characterise the nature of the Russian eastern nation briefly. When we look at the real nation—not at that dishonest society which now governs the Russian nation,—then we have to be aware of the fact that the Russian soul has an immense lot of talents that it is gifted as it were for everything; but just while it unfolds its mission in the world human development more and more, will appear that something can be there in humanity what one can call: talent without productive power. The talent will still become greater and greater. That, however, what distinguishes, for example, the Central European, that he has combined his talent with the spiritual force that he produces that “for him whose striving never ceases ...” and lives intimately with his folk-soul. He wants to produce that what he wants to understand at the same time what is there so splendid in Fichte's philosophy where the ego to understand itself wants to produce itself perpetually—one will see only later which significance this philosophy has,—just that what distinguishes Central Europe. The opposite of that is in existence in Russia, in the east of Europe. These Russian souls are receptive first of all: they have the biggest gift for taking up, and if one speaks of productiveness, one is mistaken. They have a vocation to develop talents without productiveness. Today even the concept is difficult to grasp because something like that has not yet existed in the development, but has to develop only bit by bit. In future it happens that from the East over here to the West the call goes out: we have a nice country, but no order—for disorder increases more and more,—come and make order.—Central Europe has a vocation to bring spiritual productiveness to the East. What happens now means that they defend themselves unreasonably against that which must still happen in future. One wants to crush that to which once one will have to come and say: come to us and make order.—It is thus in the historical evolution of humanity that that is thrown back mostly, pushed back mostly what one has to long for in the end. The biggest misfortune would be that the east of Europe, if Russia were victorious in this process. That would not be the biggest misfortune for Central Europe, not at all, but for Russia herself, the biggest misfortune, considered internally, because this victory would have to be cancelled again. This victory could not last with its effects. Thus we stand before the tragic moment of the historical evolution of humanity that the East defends itself against something it will long for in future, will long for with all its forces. Because it would experience an entire decline if it could not be fertilised by the spiritual life of the directly bordering West. In the further course of its culture this West has to produce a lively cultural life, not only idealism, but lively cultural life. This lively cultural life will be like a spirit sun which moves from the West to the East, opposite to the movement of the sun. The external Russian human being will see more and more how little he is able to do by himself how he is dependent on arranging himself really in the whole evolutionary process of humanity; how he commits the biggest sin assaulting the west-European culture.

I would like to say we could feel strange pre-flashes of it. Something appeared in this East that was impossible in the West: the so-called world view of the discalced friars,³ a type of philosophy of the discalced friars which has quickly spread over big circles, while it was not there some years ago at all. Being discalced! The world view of those who make the absolute unbelief in human beings and humanity a philosophy, because they cannot believe that the human being is really something different than that what there walks around between birth and death under tribulation and fright, that the words liberty, fraternity, compassion and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise one is who walks as a pilgrim barefoot through the world, who the whole culture, the whole putrescent west-European culture—as the discalced friar says—feels as a big deception and regards the tattered clothing, the musty room and broad street as something through which the human being walks, when he forced himself to the discalced friars' world view. When a poet allows to express this discalced friars' world view by one of his persons with characteristic words, this must touch us quite strangely who always try to find out that of the Central European world view which can kindle the light of the future for the human beings. If a poet allows to express a person that what is, however, basically a kind of a summary of the discalced friars' world view and their philosophy how does it seem to us?

”Yes what does this person mean to you? Do you understand? He collars you, quashes you under the nails like a fleeing! Then you may feel sorry for him ... Certainly! Then you may manifest your whole stupidity to him. He will stretch you on seven instruments of torture for your compassion; he wraps your intestine over the hand and pulls all your veins out of the body, an inch per hour ... Oh you ... Compassion! Pray to God that one may thrash you simply without any compassion, and finish ... Compassion ... Bah!”

And Gorki of whom you have already heard something says to such words: “Cruel, but true,” while he returns now not only the world view of a poetic personality, as the poet expresses it, but he expresses his own world view which results for him as the consideration of the world. This is the world view of a discalced friar, a world view about which one can just talk like about other world views now in existence. It is the world view which has lost the possibility to come out of itself to something that rays light to life. It has to wait, until it is fertilised by this light, and then it can fulfil its mission in the human evolution. However, now it rebels against that what it just must do. One could experience many phrases in the world, but I say that from the most tragic feeling:

Such phrases, as they were spoken by the most different parties in August 1914 on the war assembly of the Russian Duma, such a sum of phrases exceeds the peak of phraseology. Such a thing is only spoken when any lively productive force of the soul is exhausted. In the East one stands in reality in the eve of that what should become first, and unfolds a force that is opposite to that what will once make this East great. We in Central Europe have to say to ourselves: nevertheless, this East waits just for the spiritual wisdom which has to arise in the middle of Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform that into feelings what I has suggested to you with grievous feelings, I would like to say, in single words that it can light up that what we are able to see as spiritual scientists with enlarged sensations and with which we should familiarise ourselves to understand the real necessity and also the contemporary historical necessity of the spiritual-scientific world view. Then we penetrate ourselves with thoughts which ascend from our souls to cosmic distances. Thoughts which meet then what works down from these spiritual worlds, when peace prevails on earth.

Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls work which free themselves as unused etheric bodies from the souls, which could work still for years, still for decades here in the physical bodies, for the physical lives. The idea must become apparent to us how many such unused parts of etheric bodies ascend into the spiritual world—still except that what human beings going through the portal of death on the battlefields take with their individualities into the spiritual world. However, these etheric bodies represent a big sum of spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which should help forming a spiritual world view from the spiritual spheres which should seize humanity more and more. It is necessary that thoughts ascending from earthly human beings to the spiritual spheres meet these forces of the unused etheric bodies which are able to work down from the spiritual spheres. These human thoughts have to show understanding for the secret work of the spiritual world into which the forces of these unused etheric bodies are woven.

However, this should be an encouragement for us that we penetrate ourselves with the profundities of spiritual science. Since these profundities stimulate thoughts in us which have an effect then more and more also in other human beings. Depending on what develops as destiny-burdened contents of our days, days full of peace will come when that what the souls have planted of spiritual science in themselves will ascend. It will meet the forces that have collected from the etheric bodies of those who went through the gate of death on the battlefields and flow down. Then this will happen what I would like to subsume in some words as a result of this spiritual-scientific consideration. If we are able to put the fruits of spiritual science in our time rightly, then that will happen what I would like to express in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Galatians 2:20
• 2. The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology 11 lectures in Kristiania (today Oslo, June 1910), Steiner's Collected Works volume 121
• 3. the following quotation from the dramatic poem The Lower Depths by Maksim Gorky (1868–1936) stems originally from a writing by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941)