The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A room for meditation. The background is a great purple curtain. The scene is purple in colour with a large yellow pentagonal lamp suspended from the ceiling. No other furniture or ornaments are in the room except the lamp and one chair. Benedictus, Johannes, Maria, and a child.

Maria:
I bring to thee this child who needs some word
From out thy mouth.

Benedictus:
My child, henceforth each eve
Thou shalt come unto me to hear the word
That shall fill full thy soul ere thou dost tread
The realm of souls in sleep. Wilt thou do this?

Child:
Most gladly will I come.

Benedictus:
This very eve
Fill thy soul full ere sleep embraceth thee,
With strength from these few words: ‘The powers of light
Bear me aloft unto the spirit's home.’
(Maria, having taken the child away, returns.)

Maria:
And now, that this child's destiny doth flow
Harmoniously through future days beneath
The shadow of thy gracious fatherhood,
I too may claim my leader's kind advice,
Who am its mother, not by bond of blood
But through the mighty power of destiny.
For thou hast shown to me the way wherein
I had to guide its footsteps from that day,
When I discovered it before my door
Left by its unknown mother desolate.
And wonder-working proved themselves those rules
Whereby thou madest me train my foster-child.
All powers, that deep in body and in soul
Lay hidden, issued forth to light and life:
Clear proof it was that all thy counselling
Sprang from the realm which sheltered this child's soul
Before it built its body's covering.
We saw its early promise blossom forth
And radiate more brightly each new day;
Thou dost know well how hard it was for me
To gain the child's affection, at the first.
It grew up 'neath my care, and yet nought else
Save habit chained its soul at first to mine.
It only realized and felt that I
Gave it the nurture and the food that served
The needs of body and the growth of soul.
Then came the time when in the child-like heart
There dawned the love for her who fostered it.
An outer incident brought forth this change—
The visit of the seeress to our group.
Gladly the child did go about with her
And soon did learn full many a beauteous word
Steeped in the mystic charm that graced her speech.
Then came the moment when her ecstasy
Descended on our friend with magic power.
The child could see her eyes, strange smouldering light,
And, terrified unto the vital core,
The young soul found itself.

In her dismay she fled unto mine arms;
And from that hour did grow her love for me.
Since that same time she doth accept from me
The gifts of life with her full consciousness
Not with blind instinct: aye, and since that day
When this young heart first quivered into warmth,
Whene'er her gaze met mine with loving glance,
Thy wisdom's treasures of their fruitage failed,
And much already ripe hath withered up.
I saw appear in her those tokens strange
That proved so terrible unto my friend.

A dark enigma am I to myself,
And grow still darker. Thou wilt not deny
To solve for me life's fearful questionings
I Why do I mar the life of friend and child,
When I in love attempt to work on them
According to the dictates of my heart
By spirit-lore instructed and inspired?
Oft hast thou taught me this exalted truth—
Illusion's veil o'erspreads life's surfaces—
Yet must I see with greater clarity
Why I must bear this heavy destiny,
That seems so cruel and that works such harm.

Benedictus:
Within our circle there is formed a knot
Of threads that Karma spins world-fashioning.
Thy sufferings, my friend, are links in chains,
Forged by the hand of destiny, whereby
The deeds of Gods unite with human lives.—

When in life's pilgrimage I had attained
That rank which granted me the dignity
To serve with counsel in the spirit-spheres,
A godlike Being did draw nigh to me,
Who would descend into the realms of earth,
And dwell there, veiled in form of flesh, as man.
For just at this one turning-point of time
The Karma of mankind made this demand.
For each great step in world-development
Is only possible when Gods do stoop
To link themselves with human destiny.
And this new spirit-sight that needs must grow
And germinate henceforth in souls of men
Can only be unfolded when a God
Doth plant the seed within some human heart.
My task it was to find that human soul
Which worthy seemed to take within itself
The powerful Seed of God. I had to join
The deed of heaven to some human lot.
My spirit's eye then sought, and fell on thee.
Thy course of life had fitted thee to be
The mediator in salvation's work.
Through many former lives thou hadst acquired
Receptiveness for all the greatest things
That human hearts can e'er experience.
Within thy tender soul thou didst bring forth,
As spirit heritage, the noble gift
Of beauty, joined to virtue's loftiest claim:
And that which thine eternal Self had formed
And brought to being through thy birth on earth
Did reach ripe fruitage when thy years were few.—
Thou didst not scale steep spirit-heights too soon,
Nor grew thy yearning for the spirit-land
Before thou hadst the full enjoyment known
Of harmless pleasures in the world of sense.
Anger and love thy soul did learn to know
When thy thoughts dwelt yet far from spirit-life.
Nature in all her beauty to enjoy,
And pluck the fruits of art,—these didst thou strive
To make thy life's sole content and its wealth.
Merry thy laughter, as a child can laugh
Who hath not known as yet life's shadowed fears.
Thus thou didst learn to understand life's joy,
And mourn in sadness, each in its own time,
Before thy dawning conscience grew to seek
Of sorrow and of happiness the cause.
A ripened fruit of many lives that soul,
That enters earth's domains, and shows such moods.
Its childlike nature is the blossoming
And not the ground-root of its character.
And such a soul alone was I to choose
As mediator for the God, who sought
The power to work within our human world.
And now thou learnest that thy nature must
Transform itself into its opposite,
When it flows forth to other human souls.
The spirit in thee ripens whatsoe'er
In human nature can attain the realm
Of vast eternity; and much it slays
That is but part of transitory realms.
And yet the sacrifices of such deaths
Are but the seeds of immortality;
All that which blossoms forth from death below
Must grow unto the higher life above.

Maria:
E'en so it is with me. Thou giv'st me light:
But light that doth deprive me of my sight,
And sunder me from mine own self in twain.
Then do I seem some spirit's instrument—
No longer master of myself. No more
Do I endure that erstwhile form of mine
Which only is a mask and not the truth.

Johannes:
O friend, what ails thee? Vanished is the light
That filled thine eye: as marble is thy frame.
I grasp thine hand and find it cold as death.

Benedictus:
My son, full many trials have come to thee;
And now thou stand'st before life's hardest test.
Thou seest the carnal covering of thy friend;
But her true self doth float in spirit-spheres
Before mine eyes.

Johannes:
See! Her lips move; she speaks.

Maria:
Thou gav'st me clearness yet this clearness throws
A veil of darkness round on every side.
I curse thy clearness; and I curse thee too,
Who didst make tool of me for weird wild arts
Whereby thou willedst to deceive mankind.
No doubt at any moment hitherto
Had crossed my mind of heights thy spirit reached;
But now one single moment doth suffice
To tear all faith in thee from out my heart.
Those spirit-beings thou art subject to,
I now must recognize as hellish fiends.
Others I had to mislead and deceive
Because at first I was deceived by thee.—
But I will flee unto dim distances,
Where not a sound of thee shall reach mine ears;
Yet near enough that thy soul may be reached
By bitter curses framed by these my lips.
For thou didst rob my blood of all its fire,
That thou mightst sacrifice to thy false god
That which was rightly mine and mine alone.
But now this same blood's fire shall thee consume.
Thou madest me trust in vain imaginings;
And that this might be so, thou first didst make
A pictured falsehood of my very self.
Often had I to mark how from my soul
Each deed and thought turned to its opposite;
So now doth turn what once was love for thee,
Into the fire of wild and bitter hate.
Through all worlds will I seek to find that fire
Which can consume thee—I curse—Ah, woe!

Johannes:
Who speaketh here? I do not see my friend.
I hear instead some gruesome being speak.

Benedictus:
Thy friend's soul hovers in the heights above.
Only her mortal image hath she left
Here with us: and where'er a human form
Is found bereft of soul, there is the room
Sought by the enemy, the foe of good,
To enter into realms perceptible,
And find some carnal form through which to speak.
Just such an adversary spake e'en now,
Who would destroy the work imposed on me
For thee, my son, and millions yet unborn.
Were I to deem these wild anathemas,
Which our friend's shell did utter here and now,
Aught else but some grim tempter's cunning skill,
Thou durst not follow more my leadership.
The enemy of Good stood by my side,
And thou hast seen into the darkness plunged
All that is temporal of that dear form,
For whom, my son, thy whole love burns and glows.
Since through her mouth spirits spake oft to thee,
The Karma of the world could not restrain
Hell's princes also speaking thus through her.
Now only mayst thou seek her very soul
And learn her nature's inmost verity;
For she shall form for thee the prototype
Of that new higher life of humankind
To which thou dost aspire to raise thyself.
Her soul hath soared aloft to spirit-heights,
Where every man may find his being's source
Which springs to life and fullness in himself.
Thou too shalt follow her to spirit-realms,
And see her in the Temple of the Sun.—
Within this circle there is formed a knot
Of threads which Karma spins, world fashioning.
My son, since thou hast now attained thus far,
Thou shalt still further pierce beyond the veil.
I see thy star in fullest splendour shine.
There is no place within the realm of sense
For strife, such as men wage when they do strive
And struggle after consecration's gift.
Whate'er the outer world of sense begets
Of riddles soluble by intellect,
Whate'er this world engenders in man's heart
Born tho' it be of love or bitter hate
And howsoever direful its results:
The spirit-seeker must attain the power
In all these things to stand unmoved, serene,
Casting his gaze all unperturbed and calm
Upon the scene where such contentions rage.
For him must other powers unfold themselves
Which are not found upon this field of strife.
So didst thou need to fight to prove thy soul
In combat such as comes to him alone,
Who finds himself accoutred for such powers
As do belong unto the spirit-worlds.
And had these powers found thee not ripe enough
To tread the path of knowledge, they needs must
Have maimed thy powers of feeling, ere thou daredst
To know all that which now is known to thee.
The Beings, who can gaze into world-depths,
Lead on those men, who would attain the heights,
First to that summit whence it may be shown
Whether there lies in them the power to reach
To conscious sight within the spirit-realms.
And those in whom such powers are found to lie
Are straightway from the world of sense set free.
The others all must wait their season due.
But thou, thou hast preserved thy Self, my son,
When Powers on high stirred to its depths thy soul,
And potent spirits shrouded thee with fear.
Right powerfully thy Self hath fought its way
E'en though thy very heart was torn by doubts,
That willed to thrust thee into darksome depths.
True pupil of my teaching hast thou been,
First since that hour, so fraught with fate for thee,
When thou didst learn to doubt thy very self,
And gavest up thyself as wholly lost,
But yet the strength within thee held thee fast.
Then might I give thee of my treasured store
Of wisdom, whence to draw the strength to stand
Assured, e'en when mistrusting thine own self.
Such was the wisdom which thou didst attain
More steadfast than the faith once given to thee.
Ripe wast thou found, and thou may'st be set free.
Thy friend hath gone before and waits for thee
In spirit-worlds, and thou shalt find her there.
I can but add this guidance for thee now:
Kindle the full power of thy soul with words
Which through my lips shall grant to thee the key
To spirit-heights, and they will lead thee on
When naught else leads, that eyes of sense can see.
Receive them in the fulness of thy heart:
‘The weaving essence of the light streams forth
Through depths of space to fill the world with life;
Love's grace doth warm the centuries of time
To call forth revelation of all worlds.
And spirit-messengers come forth to wed
The weaving essence of creative light
With revelation of the souls of men:
And that man, who can wed to both of these
His very Self, he lives in spirit-heights.’
O spirits, who are visible to man,
Quicken with life the soul of this our son:
From inmost depths may there stream forth for him
That which can fill his soul with spirit-light.
From inmost depths may there resound for him
That which can wholly wake in him his Self
To the creative joy of spirit-life.

A Spirit-Voice behind the stage:
To founts of worlds primeval
His surging thoughts do mount;—
What as shadow he hath thought
What as fancy he hath lived
Soars up beyond the world of form and shape;
On whose fulness pondering
Mankind in shadow dreams,
O'er whose fulness gazing forth
Mankind in fancy lives.

Curtain

In our consideration the day before yesterday, we arrived at the conclusion that the Gospel of John contains many great aspects. Today we want to talk about the relationship between man and the world that surrounds us here on this earth. Man usually sees himself as a much too simple being. In reality, however, he is a very complicated entity. One of the characteristics of the modern human being is their laziness, which extends to our way of thinking. The truth is simple only for those who have first made their way through the complexity. It is like a thread with many, many pearls strung on it.

From the public lectures, we have already seen how man is related to the cosmos that surrounds him, to the earthly nature that surrounds him. Through his physical body, he is related to the mineral, so-called inanimate world; through his etheric body, to the whole world of plants, to vegetation; and through his astral body, to all animal beings. It is only through self-awareness that he rises above the other three realms. Without a thorough understanding of this development, and without understanding what an initiation or awakening is, we cannot penetrate the depths of the Gospel of John.

Consider the three kingdoms of nature around us. The crystal has no self-consciousness, no ego in the physical world. This assertion is based on clear insights that come from occult research. But only here on this earth do the stone, the plant, and the animal have no self-consciousness. The question arises: are they not conscious? How this is to be understood can only become clear to us through occult study. Let us start with the consciousness of the human being. The nature of the human being in his fourfold nature is based on the fact that he has his consciousness in this physical world, that he has his four members in this world. Let us make this clear with a diagram:

The animal has its three bodies here, its I in the astral world; therefore the animal has no individual soul, but a group soul. If you look at a person's ten fingers, they are all animated, but not independent - they are only one part of the whole body. Just as we have to search for the ego of the fingers within us, so we have to go up into the astral world to find the common soul of the animals. The individual lions are members of the Lion-I, the Lion-Soul. All lions are connected in the astral, a thread goes from each of them into the astral world, where the ego is.

For the materialist this is incredible; but the spiritual researcher must say: it is true! One can ascribe exactly the same evolution to the group soul of animals as to the human ego in the physical world. When we follow groups of animals on the astral plane, we see their development taking place there in the same way as that of human beings on the physical plane as individuals.

The plant has its astral body in the astral world, its physical and etheric body in the physical world and its I in the lower devachan. But what is the entity of such a group of plants? Similar plants have their I, their group soul in the devachan. A human being in dreamless sleep is in exactly the same situation as a plant throughout its entire life. The entire plant world on earth is a sleeping being; the plant leads a dream life.

Let us consider the sleeping human being: the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed, the astral body is on the astral plane and the I in dreamless sleep in Devachan. Let us now turn to the mineral. Its physical body is in the physical world, its etheric body in the astral world, its astral body in Rupa-Devachan, and the I at the very top in Arupa-Devachan.

Lower Devachan, Rupa: the world of spiritual forms
Upper Devachan, Arupa: the world that has not yet been formed.

The mineral thinks, feels and wills like a human being, not on the physical plane, but in Devachan. It extends only its inanimate parts into the physical world. The mineral's relationship to its soul is the same as a human being's relationship to its nails and bones to its self. An insect crawling over a finger nail and mistaking it for inanimate because it does not see the whole individual, would be comparable to a person mistaking a crystal for inanimate. The crystal is therefore an object that belongs to a being that reaches up into the spiritual world; so is the connection of its physical appearance with the spiritual world.

Man has his four essential elements on the physical plane. What is physical in man remains a physical body, but in Devachan it has a consciousness of its own, of which man knows nothing, though it haunts his limbs. The etheric body has a different consciousness, which is realized in the lower devachan. Finally, the astral body also has its own consciousness on the astral plane. So man is a very complicated being. The following scheme may serve as an explanation:

Upper Devachan: physical body
Lower Devachan: etheric body
Astral plane: astral body
Physical plane: self.

His ego is at home in the physical world; no one can dispute that. Furthermore, that part of his astral body lives in man and belongs to him, which has an unconscious consciousness and is at home on the astral plane. Furthermore, an unconscious consciousness of the etheric body exists on the lower devachan plan, and one of the ego in the upper devachan plan. The most important thing now is that the human being works from the ego into the other bodies, and that only through this does he become aware of the different consciousnesses.

There is a peculiar connection between man and the different worlds, which is a most important mystery. If one learns to recognize this, then one gradually knows what an initiation is. When man works from his I into his astral body, then he rises up to the astral plane and becomes a companion of all astral beings. Everything that has an astral consciousness is around him. When he works with his I into his etheric body, then he rises at the same time into the lower parts of Devachan; then etheric beings emerge around him. This is a great and powerful moment: he sees light not only as light, but as the bearer of light-filled entities; with the physical rays of the sun, angelic beings approach that have light as their body. This is one result of initiation.

When a person ascends or descends even higher, let us remember the words of Goethe:

”It is all one..."

- then the moment has come when he first becomes one with the world's forefather. Then he can say: ‘I and the Father are one.’ Then entities emerge that are even higher than those described. Now imagine a personality who is so highly initiated that he consciously bears the nature of the higher beings in his own body, as John experienced with Christ Jesus. In the one Christ Jesus, the author of the Gospel of John sees the beings of the three worlds. And he has Philip say to Nathanael (John 1:45-51):

"We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.

And Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’

Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said of him: Behold, a true Israelite (that is, an initiate of the fifth degree), in whom there is no guile.

Nathanael said to him: How do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him: Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Being under the tree is the occult expression for initiation, the secret of multiplying and expanding consciousness. Only now does Nathanael reply:

“Master, You are the Son of God” - thus an even higher initiate - “and a king in Israel.

Jesus answered and said to him, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.

And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, from now on you shall see the sky open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’

That means: to see that which permeates his four consciousnesses. Man becomes a ladder on which one can see the angels of God ascending and descending. In this physical world, too, there are higher beings than man. Man used to have a group soul on the astral plane before he descended to the physical plane, at the time when the “blood Rubicon” had not yet been crossed. The entire tribe lived in this group soul. Likewise, the animal group souls will later descend and individualize. Here we touch on a great mystery, which belongs to the seven secrets that are called the unspeakable.

One of these secrets is the secret of numbers. It is true that whole groups of people had one soul. The secret is: From the One it flows and becomes a number: numerous like the grains of an ear of corn. When such a group soul descends, the same thing happens as with a seed: a grain is placed in the earth, and from it arises the ear of corn with many grains.

But everything in the world exists only once in a certain way. So this humanity, as it is now, is also only here once. Nothing in the world repeats itself in the same way. In the group souls of animals, we see some that will later become individual souls, but under very different circumstances than humans, in a very different nature. Are there also souls that have already been individual souls and then ascended to the astral plane again and became group souls? Yes, there are such souls. They arise when a number of people come together cosmically around an initiate and become like the members of a common body. Initiates thus become folk souls. Thus the Jewish people, the chosen people, had a common soul that united the individuals, which was once human and had ascended again and become the folk soul. In the bosom of Father Abraham it could rest.

Now imagine that a person undergoing initiation goes through his development more quickly. He then goes the same way as that folk soul as an individual soul: He becomes a group soul. The individual is absorbed in such an expanded consciousness. In truth, as an initiate, he has the cosmic value of an entire folk soul. You can still see this in the old terms. This stage of development was called by the name of the whole people, for example, Israelites.

In the Persian Mithras initiation, seven levels were distinguished. The initiate of the first degree bore the name of the raven. He is the messenger between the physical and the astral world. The symbol of the raven has been attributed significance since the most ancient times. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah was provided for by the ravens. Ravens are the messengers of Wotan, who fly over the world every day and report to him what they have perceived. The Kyffhäuser mountain, where Barbarossa slumbers, is also circled by ravens, which are supposed to give him news when the hour of awakening has come.

The second degree is that of the Occult. This may already live in the inner sanctuary.

The initiate of the third degree, the warrior, may represent the occult wisdom he has absorbed in the world. Such a warrior is Lohengrin. This degree is alluded to in Mabel Collins' book “Light on the Path”.

The fourth degree is that of the Lion. This is the designation for an initiate who has ascended with his consciousness to the tribal soul. Hence the expression: Lion of the tribe of Judah.

In the initiate of the fifth degree, the consciousness of the people itself has awakened. He bears the name of his people; in the Mithras initiation, he is called the Persian.

The initiate of the sixth degree is the solar hero. He can deviate from his path no more than the sun itself.

The seventh degree is that of the Father. It is the union with the original spirit.

Thus the “Persian” bears the name of the entire nation; his individual soul becomes a national soul. The image that this level of initiation expresses is sitting under the tree. You will find this expression everywhere in the occult language. For example, Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree. The tree comes from the one seed and has become many. Such is the process with the initiate; he has gained the ability to empathize with every single soul. So how would such a person have been called by the Israelites? “Israelite,” of course. As we have seen, Jesus recognizes Nathanael as an initiate of the fifth degree, as one who has attained a national consciousness. Nathaniel recognizes in Christ the higher initiate: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Christ is an initiate of the seventh degree, who has expanded his consciousness to include the Father: “I (or the I-Am) and the Father (or the Divine) are one.” He is the life and light of men, for he has brought his high consciousness into the physical body.

Some will think that such an interpretation is being spun into the gospel. Many, and mostly today's theologians, believe that the Bible should be interpreted “simply,” which actually means conveniently. But the gospel is not written in the usual way and for people who are accustomed to reading a book only once and then putting it down again. The Gospel was written for a time when the content was a book of life that was read again and again. It must be read and received in this way, because only then will one learn to recognize that each of these great truths contains an even greater truth, and that even the wisest never stop learning in the knowledge of the religious scriptures and in their full understanding. In the past, these writings were approached by learning a sentence; afterwards, one allowed it to live in the soul over and over again, and if one then had the good fortune, the rare opportunity to meet an initiate, one allowed him to explain it. For religious documents, and especially the Gospel of John, are written from the depth of wisdom, and therefore cannot be grasped deeply enough. But wisdom is not there for the comfortable. Wisdom is there for those who seek and search.

The person to be initiated undergoes the first five stages of initiation while ascending or descending the astral plane. This is completely irrelevant, because the Hermetic saying applies here: “Everything above is as below.” Everything in the spiritual has its counterpart in the physical. If you ascend to the astral plane, you will find yourself in a national soul, for this lives on the astral plane.

The sixth stage means as much as the other five combined: here the human being ascends in his etheric body and brings about its development. One nation always arises out of another through the astral body becoming different; astral entities are always to be found behind the national soul. But the etheric body of humanity and that of the individual remains unchanged from nation to nation; a new etheric body only arises with the ascent from race to race. Even the physical body is subject to change. The ancient Atlanteans had a very different physical body, and the first Lemurians had no real physical body at all. The solar hero encompasses in his consciousness an entire human race like individual atoms. He grasps the whole race with his consciousness. The seventh stage, the Father Initiation, leads beyond the race to all mankind on earth, to all peoples and races of the whole planet. Christ Jesus is the representative of this; he carries all mankind within himself. That is why in the Gospel of John humanity is called the bride, and the initiated Son of Man is called the bridegroom. Christ Jesus is the one who, in the essence, encompasses the consciousness of all humanity. This brings us to where we left off from the previous lecture when we were considering the wedding at Cana.

The prophet Elijah shines forth as one of the most resplendent stars in the firmament of man’s spiritual evolution, and that great illumination which he brought to humanity in olden times has endured even to the present day. The deeds, the characteristics, the greatness of this outstanding personality as portrayed in the ancient Biblical records, make the profoundest impression upon the hearts and feelings of mankind; but, nevertheless, this significant figure appears difficult of comprehension to external history. We are about to consider Elijah from the stand-point of Spiritual Science. Viewed in its light, we find in the very nature of his being an indication that the most important causes and motives underlying the circumstances connected with earthly existence during man’s evolution are not merely dependent upon those ideas that may be consciously apprehended, and the results of which can be recognized externally as forming a part of life’s history; for we learn that those very impulses which move us to actions of greatest import are born within the confines of the soul.

In order that this truth which sheds so great a light upon the world’s history may become clearly apparent to our spiritual vision, we need only recall the fact that Christianity owes its foundation, for the most part, to that profound psychic incident experienced by St. Paul [Saul], which found outward expression in ‘The Vision near Damascus’ (‘Ereignis von Damaskus’), Acts. ix, 3. No matter how much we may argue concerning the reality and nature of this external happening, it cannot be denied that the true origin of Christianity is intimately connected with what then took place in the soul and spirit of that great Apostle and righteous founder of the Christian Faith; and the knowledge and enlightenment which came to him was passed on to mankind through the medium of his flaming words and self-sacrificing deeds. In many other cases it can be proved that primary causes and impulses underlying events which happen during the historical enfoldment of human existence, cannot be identified with normal external occurrences, for their inception may oft-times be traced to the hearts and souls of mankind.

We are now about to consider an example of this very nature in connection with the personality of Elijah and the period in which he lived. Since, however, my lecture must of necessity be both brief and sketchy in character, although treating of a subject covering so wide a field, the question as to how far the matter presented will elucidate and provide new evidence concerning the progress of man’s historical evolution in this special instance must be left for your further consideration, but your thoughts should at all times be guided by the deep promptings of the soul. The object of my discourse is not merely to supply information concerning the personality and significance of the prophet Elijah, its true purport is at the same time to present an example of the manner in which Spiritual Science weighs and regards such matters and, in virtue of the means at its disposal, is enabled to shed fresh light upon facts connected with the growth and development of mankind, which have come to our knowledge through other sources.

With this end in view, we shall employ a special method in dealing with our subject. In the first place, statements that are the result of the investigations of Spiritual Science, and have reference to the personality and significance of Elijah, will be as independent as possible of all connection with the Bible as a source, and such references will only occur when they seem essential in connection with names and descriptions. We shall therefore endeavour to portray all pertinent events first as they actually happened and later draw attention to the manner in which they are depicted in the ancient Biblical records. The occurrences will be set forth just as they are revealed by the researches of Spiritual Science, which researches have formed the basis of the various portrayals presented both in the lectures of this series and in others of previous years. A large number of my audience who, through long years of experience with the methods of Spiritual Science have gained confidence in its power and proved substantiality, will accept from the very first all that I propose to bring forward, and regard it as entirely trustworthy and as the result of conscientious investigation; and this will be the case, even though my subject must of necessity be treated in a somewhat sketchy manner, because an exposition involving detailed proofs would require many hours for its complete presentation. To those of my audience who have had no such experience as I have mentioned, I would suggest that they look upon all that is said concerning the authentic historical narrative that I am about to unfold, as if it were in the nature of an hypothesis, underlying which is a substratum of positive evidence; and I am certain that if they will but do this, and make a reasonable and understanding attempt, in moderation and without prejudice to obtain the required evidence, that all my statements will ultimately receive entire confirmation.

What now has Spiritual Science to say concerning the personality and significance of the prophet Elijah and his period? To understand this we must go back in thought to those ancient Hebrew times when the brilliant epoch that marked the reign of Solomon was passed, and the kingdom of Palestine was enduring many and varied forms of privation. We must recall the troubles of the Philistines and other similar incidents, and transport ourselves in mind to those days when all that formerly constituted a united and centralized monarchy was already divided into the separate kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and King Ahab, who was the son of Omri, reigned in Samaria. Here we have found an opportunity of introducing Biblical names, but we have done so merely for the sake of clarity and corroboration as will often be the case as we proceed.

Between King Ahab, or rather between his father and the King of Tyre and Sidon, there was a close friendship and a sort of alliance had been formed; this compact was further strengthened by the marriage of Ahab with Jezebel, a daughter of the Royal House. I am making use of these names as they are familiar to us from the Bible, and in order that my subject may be more easily understood. We are looking back into an age when that ancient clairvoyant gift which was in general a spiritual attribute of man in primeval times had by no means entirely disappeared among those people who had still retained the necessary and fitting disposition. Now, Queen Jezebel was not only endowed with this gift, but her clairvoyant powers were of a very special order; these however, she did not always employ in ways which were destined to promote that which was good and noble. While we look upon Jezebel as a kind of clairvoyante, we must regard King Ahab as a man who only under exceptional circumstances evinced a faculty in virtue of which the hidden forces of his soul could break in upon his conscious state. In olden times such manifestations were much more in evidence and more widely spread than is the case in these days. There were occasions when Ahab himself experienced visions and presentiments, but never to any marked extent, and they occurred only when he was confronted with some special matter connected with human destiny.

At the time to which I refer, a rumour had spread throughout the land that a remarkable spirit was abroad. In reality, this was none other than he who, in the Bible records, bears the name of Elijah. Few there were among those living, as one might say, in the outer world, who knew precisely in what place the personality that bore this name might be found—nor did they know in what way, or by what means, he exerted so powerful an influence upon contemporaneous people and events. We can perhaps best describe the situation by saying that throughout the widest circles any reference to this mysterious being, or even the mention of his name was accompanied by a thrill of awe, and because of this it was generally felt that this spirit must possess some singular and hidden attribute of greatest import. But no man knew rightly, or had indeed any idea, in what way this unusual quality might manifest, or where it might be sought. Only certain isolated persons, whom we might term initiates, had true knowledge of what was really taking place, and they alone knew where, in the physical world, they might find the outer reality of the actual individual who was the bearer of this mysterious spirit.

King Ahab was also ignorant concerning these matters, but nevertheless he experienced a peculiar feeling of apprehension, and a kind of dread overcame him whenever mention was made of that incomprehensible being, regarding whom the most extravagant notions prevailed, as was only natural under the circumstances. Now, Ahab was that King of Samaria who through his alliance with Tyre and Sidon, had introduced into the ancient kingdom of Palestine a certain religious order which held to outer forms and ceremonies, and found expression through external symbolism—in other words a species of heathenism. Such information concerning the individuality of Elijah as came to the followers of this pagan form of worship must have created in them a strange and peculiar feeling of fear and dismay. For it was evident from what they heard that the Jahveh-religion, as it may be termed, had now indeed come down to them from the by-gone days of the ancient Hebrew people, and was once more active. There was still a belief in One God—in One Great Spiritual Being in the cosmos, Who rules over the superperceptual realm, and Who by means of its forces makes His influence felt, and affects both the evolution and the history of mankind.

It was further realized that the time was approaching when there would be an ever greater and more significant understanding of the Jahveh-Being, among those who were the most advanced and perfect of the descendants of the old Hebrew race. It was well known that in truth the religion of Moses contained the germ of all that one might term the Jehovah-Religion, but this fact had been grasped by the nation in a manner more or less after the fashion of a people yet in a stage of childhood or early youth.

The old faith with its upturned vision toward a supersensible God may only be described by saying:—‘It can be likened to nought else than to an awareness of contact with that which is invisible and superperceptual, which comes to man when he indeed apprehends and realizes his own true Ego’—and it was this consciousness of the supersensible which had descended upon the people. But the concept which they had formed, as far as they could form any concept at all, was as we might put it, based upon an attempt to picture to themselves the workings of the God Jehovah, as conceived from their experiences of the external phenomena of life. In those days it was the custom to say that Jehovah acted with regard to humanity, in such a manner that when all nature was luxuriant and fruitful, it was a sign that He was rewarding mankind and showering benefits upon the nation. On the other hand, when the people suffered from want and distress brought about by war, scarcity of food, and other causes, they cried out that Jehovah had turned his face away and was consumed with anger.

At that time about which we are speaking the nation was enduring the miseries caused by a period of dearth and starvation, and many turned aside from the God Jehovah, because they could no longer believe in His works when they saw how He treated mankind, for there was a terrible famine in the land. If, indeed, we can speak of progress in connection with the Jahveh-conception, then the progress destined to be made by these ancient Hebrew people can be characterized in the following manner:—The nation must henceforth form a new Jehovah-concept embodying the old thoughts and ideas, through which must flow a fuller and a higher order of human understanding, so that all might say:—‘No matter what shall take place in the outer world, whether we live in happiness or are beset with sorrows and privations, we must ever realize that such external events are in no way an evidence of either the wrath or the benevolence of Jehovah. True devotion to God and a proper comprehension of the Jahveh-concept implies that mankind shall at all times gaze upward unswervingly toward the invisible Deity, uninfluenced by the contemplation of outer happenings and things, or the apparent reality of material impressions. And even though we meet with the direst want and affliction, nevertheless, through those inner forces alone which dominate the soul, man shall come to the sure conviction that—HE IS.’

This great revolution in religious outlook was destined to be consummated and wrought through the power of the prophet Elijah [and, as will be seen later, his spiritual force operated at times through the medium of a chosen human personality]. When it is ordained that some great momentous change shall be brought about in the concepts of mankind, as was the case in Elijah’s day, it is necessary in the beginning that there be certain fitting personalities at hand in whose souls can be implanted the germ, so to speak, of those things which it is ordained shall later enter into the history of mankind. The manner in which the seed thus laid finds befitting expression, is ever that of a new impulse and a new force.

If you will not misunderstand my meaning, I would say that it was decreed in accordance with the preordained fate of the nation, that the individuality known as the prophet Elijah should be the chosen one whose soul should first grasp the Jehovah-concept in the form which I have described. To this end it was essential that certain singular and very special forces be called up from the hidden depths of his soul – deep-seated powers as yet unknown to mankind, and unguessed at even by the teachers of that time. Something in the nature of an holy mystical initiation of the highest order, through which might come the revelation of such a God, must first take place in the innermost being of Elijah. It is therefore of the utmost importance, in order to describe in characteristic manner the way in which the Jahveh-concept was instilled into the minds of the people, that we should presently gaze into the soul of that particular human personality in whom the Spirit that was to impart the primary impulse was incarnated, or embodied—that man, who through the nature of his Divine initiation became imbued with all the latent forces of his soul. Forces so vital to one who would strike that first deep fundamental note, which would call forth and make possible the coming Jehovah-conception.

Such [great spiritual] personalities [as Elijah] who are chosen to experience within the soul the first stimulating impress of some momentous forward impulse, stand for the most part, isolated and alone. In olden days, however, there gathered around them certain followers who came from the great Religious Schools, or Schools of the Prophets as they were called in Palestine, and which by other nations have been termed Initiation or Mystery Sanctuaries. Thus we find the prophet Elijah, if we would use this name, also surrounded by a few earnest disciples, who looked up to him in reverence as one exalted far above them. These disciples realized to some extent the true nature and significance of Elijah’s mission, even though, because of their limited spiritual vision, they were unable to penetrate deeply into the soul of their great master. [Now at that time strange events had begun to take place in the land] the people, however, had no idea where the mysterious personality might be found who had brought them about. They could only say:—‘He must be here, or there,—for something unusual is happening.’

Hence it was that there spread abroad what we might term a sort of rumour (if the word is not misused) to the effect that HE, a prophet, was actually at work, but no man knew rightly where. This uncertainty was due to the exercise of a definite and peculiar influence, which could be exerted by all such advanced spiritual beings as are found among outstanding seers. Viewed in the light of our modern times it is probable that such a statement may appear somewhat grotesque, but those who are acquainted with the singular characteristics of that by-gone age will find it in no way fanciful or extravagant.

All truly exalted spiritual personalities, such as Elijah, were endowed with this specific and highly penetrative quality which made itself felt now here, now there. Not only was the activity of this potent influence manifested in feelings of awe and dread, but there was also a direct positive action, through which it entered little by little into the souls of the people. It there operated in such manner as to cause them to be unable to tell, at times, just where the external form of some great spiritual personality might be found. But the true followers and disciples of Elijah knew well where to seek him, and were further quite aware that his outer individuality might perchance assume a wholly unpretentious character, and come to light in connection with some quite lowly station in earthly life.

It is remarkable that at the time about which I am speaking, the actual bearer of the spirit of Elijah was a close neighbour of Ahab’s, King of Samaria, and the possessor of a small property in his immediate vicinity; but Ahab had no suspicion that such was the case. He sought everywhere for this singular being whose presence was felt so mysteriously throughout the community, and whom he regarded with feelings of awe and wonder, even as did his people. He entirely failed, however, to take into consideration the simple and unassuming land-owner who lived so near him, and gave no thought as to why he should, at times, absent himself, nor where he went on these occasions. But Jezebel [being clairvoyant] had discovered that this unobtrusive personality had actually become the external physical embodiment of the spirit of Elijah; now the knowledge she had thus acquired she did not impart to Ahab, she kept it to herself regarding it as a secret, for reasons which will become apparent later. In the Bible this particular character [upon whose innermost being Elijah’s spirit worked] is known by the name of Naboth. We thus see that according to the investigations of Spiritual Science we must recognize in the Naboth of the Bible, the physical bearer of the spiritual individuality of Elijah.

It was in those days that a great famine came upon the land, and there were many who hungered. Naboth, in certain ways, also experienced want and distress. At times such as these, when not only does hunger prevail, as was assuredly the case in Palestine, but when on every side there is a feeling of infinite pity for those who suffer, the conditions are especially favourable for the entry of the latent soul-forces into one already prepared through destiny or karma. It is alone through these hidden powers of the soul that man may raise himself to the level of such a mission as we have outlined.

Let us clearly picture what takes place deep within the being under such circumstances, and thus gain an understanding of the manner in which Naboth’s soul was affected. In the initial stage there is an inner progressive change or enfoldment, marked by an important period of self-education and self-development. It is most extremely difficult to describe those inner experiences of the soul which tend to raise it to greater spiritual heights, while the personality is becoming imbued with the forces by means of which it shall be enabled to look upon the world of spirit. The power of Divine spiritual vision must next be called into being, in order that there may come therefrom the wisdom necessary to the inception of all vital impulses destined to be implanted in the stream of human evolution. A verbal description is here the more difficult because never once have those who have undergone an experience of this nature, especially in olden times, come to such a state of apperception that they could outline their impressions in a precise and lucid manner. What actually happens may be stated to be somewhat as follows:—The clairvoyant development of the soul is accomplished through different stages. In the case of a being such as Naboth, it would naturally occur that his first inner experience would be the clear apprehension of the following definite concept:—‘That spiritual power which it is ordained shall descend upon humanity, will now shine forth in me, and I am its appointed receptacle.’ Next would come this further thought:—‘I must henceforth do all that in me lies, in order that the force within my being may find true and proper expression; and that I may acquire those qualities that shall fit me to cope with every form of trial and experience that may come upon me. Thus shall I know how to impart the power of Divine-Impulse to my fellow men, in proper fashion.’

It is in this way that the spiritual and clairvoyant development of a personality such as I have described must go forward—step by step. When a suitable predetermined stage has been reached, then follow certain definite signs which are noticeable and manifest within the soul. These are also of the nature of inner experiences; they are neither dreams nor visions, for they owe their origin to, and are dependent upon, the soul’s actual growth and unfoldment. Pictorial images appear; these indicate that inner progress has now so far advanced, that the particular personality in question may reasonably believe that his soul has indeed acquired new powers. These images, taken alone, have not necessarily much connection with the reality of those experiences through which the soul is passing. They are merely symbols, such as may come during the sleep state, but in a certain way they are typical symbols, similar to those which occur, under certain conditions, when we have very distinct and positive dreams. For instance, a person suffering from palpitation of the heart, may, during sleep, be under an illusion that heat is emanating from some glowing source, as, for instance, a hot stove. In like manner when the soul has gained this or that special clairvoyant power, then will come corresponding definite experiences in the form of visionary manifestations.

Now, in the case of Naboth, the first event of the above nature brought with it a full realization of all that is implied in the following words:—‘Thou art the chosen one, through whom it shall be proclaimed that man may still believe in the ancient Jahveh-God; and that he must hold fast to this faith, even though it outwardly seemeth that because of the sore tribulation which has come upon the land, the current of life’s happenings be set against such trust. Mankind must now rest in peace till times may mend—for albeit it is the will of Jahveh the God of old to come with affliction, nevertheless shall man again rejoice—but he must be ever steadfast of faith in the Lord God.’

It was evident to Naboth that this proclamation which should come through him, was undoubtedly the expression of a true and unswerving force, carrying a conviction which lay deep within his soul; and this experience stood out vividly, as something more than a mere vision. Then it was that before his soul there arose an image of God Himself, in that form and manner in which it was within his power to picture Him, and the Presence said:—‘Go thou to King Ahab, and say unto him; In the God Jahveh must ye have faith, until such time as He may again bring rain upon the earth.’ In other words, until the conditions should improve. Naboth realized the nature of his mission; he knew also that henceforth he must devote himself to the further unfoldment of that power of soul, through which he might apprehend and interpret all that was yet to be presented to his spiritual vision. He then resolved that he would eschew no sacrifice, but as far as in him lay, share in the sufferings of those who were exposed to the greatest measure of want and starvation, during that period. Thus it came about that Naboth also hungered; but he did not seek thereby to rise to a higher spiritual state. Such a procedure, I would mention, is most certainly not to be recommended as a step toward higher spiritual knowledge and understanding. He hungered because of an impulse that made him desire to suffer even as others. Not only did he thus want to share in the common fate, but it was his earnest wish to take upon himself a measure of adversity, greater than that endured by those around him.

The soul of Naboth was given over to unceasing inner contemplation of that God who had revealed Himself to him in the manner described, and his thoughts were ever concentrated upon this Deity. The Spiritual Science of our time would say that throughout his meditations he devoted himself entirely, and of his own free will, to holding this divine concept in the very centre of his soul. That he acted rightly in so doing was made clear to him by a sign which came during an inner vision. This vision was again more positive than any of merely dreamlike character; for an image of that God who dwelt within his soul appeared before him, and it was full of life, and a voice said:—‘Abide in patience—endure all things—for He who feedeth mankind and thee also will of a surety provide that which thou needest; but thou must ever hold to a true faith in the soul’s eternal life.’ In this vision, which was of greater pictorial reality than any before, it appeared to him [whom we may now, under the singular conditions which prevailed, term Elijah-Naboth] that he was led by a hermit to the brook which is called Cherith, where he concealed himself and drank of the waters of the brook so long as any remained; and that he was nourished, so far as the conditions prevailing at the time permitted, by food which the Lord provided. It further seemed to him during the vision, that through the special mercy of God this nutriment was brought by ravens. Thus did [Elijah-Naboth] receive confirmation of the verity of the most important among those inner experiences which he was destined to encounter. It was next ordained that [Naboth] should pass through a more advanced stage of development in relation to the activities of the hidden soul-forces—and we know that he endeavoured to immerse himself yet more deeply (as we would now explain it) in that condition of intensive contemplation which lay at the foundation of his spiritual progress, the character of which we have already described.

This state of profound meditation fraught with inner-life experiences, assumed the following form—Naboth pondered thus:—’If thou wouldest indeed become worthy of that mission which shall shine in upon mankind because of this wholly new concept of God’s image, then must thou change utterly the nature of thine inner being, even to the most profound of its forces, so that thou art no more as thou hast been. Thou shalt subdue that soul which dwells in thee, and through those deeper powers which abide therein bring to thine inner Ego a new life, for it may no longer remain as it now is. [Thou must uplift its quality.]’ Under the influence of thoughts such as these [Naboth] worked intensively upon his soul—ever striving within—that he might bring about this essential transformation of his Ego, and thus become worthy to stand in the presence of that God who had revealed Himself before him.

Then came to [Elijah-Naboth] yet another experience which was, however, only in part a vision. But because it was not entirely of the nature of an inner soul-happening, there being other content, it must be regarded as of less spiritual significance. It is ever the pure inner workings of the soul that are of truest and greatest import. In the vision, it appeared to him that his God, who had again manifested, set him upon a journey to Zarepath (I Kings, xvii, 9), and in that place he met a widow who had a son and he there saw represented, or personified, as it were, in the fate of this widow and her son, the manner and way in which he was now to live. It seemed to his spiritual sight that their food was well-nigh spent, and even that which they had was about to be consumed, after which they would die. Then it was that he spoke to the widow as in a dream, as in a vision, using in effect those same words which, day by day, and week by week, throughout his solitary meditations, he had repeated over and over again to his own soul:—‘Fear not,—from that meal which remaineth, prepare the repast which must be made ready for you and your son, and for me also. In all that may yet come to pass trust alone in that God Who doth create both joy and sorrow, and in Whom we must ever abide in faith.’

In this dreamlike vision it was clearly impressed upon [Elijah-Naboth] that the barrel of meal would not become empty nor would the cruse of oil fail; for the oil and the meal would ever be renewed. It is worthy of note that at this point his whole soul-state which had become, so to speak, fully developed and perfected with regard to his individual character, expressed itself in the vision in such manner, that it seemed to him as if his personality went to live in the upper part of the house which belonged to the widow. But in reality the inner truth was that his own soul had, as one might say, risen to a higher level and achieved a more advanced stage of development.

It next appeared to [Elijah-Naboth], again as in a vision, that the son of the widow lay dead. This we must regard as merely a symbolical representation of the fact that [Naboth] had overcome, and slain, as it were, the Ego which had been his up to that time. Then it was the subconscious forces in his soul cried out:—‘What wilt thou do now?’ For a while [Elijah-Naboth] stood helpless and perplexed; but he was able to regain his self-control through the medium of that power which had always lived and flowed within his innermost being, and to plunge even yet more profoundly into the consideration of those conditions which now called for such deep and earnest contemplation. It then happened that after the widow’s son was dead, she reproached him. This signifies that his subconscious spirit reproached him, in other words, aroused in him a misgiving of this nature:—‘My old Ego-consciousness has now left me—what am I to do?’ In the description given of these events it is stated that he took the child unto himself and plunged unhesitatingly still further into the depths of his soul, and we are told that power was vouchsafed to him through which he brought the dead son once more to life. Then did he gain more courage to stimulate and quicken the new Ego, which was now his, by virtue of those qualities which were in the Ego that he had lost.

From that time on [Elijah-Naboth] continued to develop and mature the hidden forces of his soul, so that it might acquire that inner strength necessary to come before the outer world and utter those words which all must hear. But in the first place and above everything, to stand before King Ahab and bring to a crisis the matter which must now be decided, namely, the victory of the new Jehovah-concept as opposed to those beliefs that the King himself accepted, and which, owing to the weakness of the times had become generally acknowledged among the people.

Now, it came about, that while Ahab was making a round of his empire, anxiously observing the signs of want and distress that the personality [whom we have called Elijah-Naboth] approached him; and no man knew from whence he came, certainly the King had no idea. And there was a strangeness in the manner of his speech which affected the soul of Ahab, who was not, however, aware that this man was his neighbour. More strongly than ever did the King experience that feeling of awe and dread which had always come upon him when reference was made to that great spirit known in the Bible as Elijah the prophet. Then it was that the King spoke and said:—‘Art thou he that troubleth Israel?’ And Elijah-Naboth replied:—‘No, not I, but thou thyself it is who bringeth misfortune and evil upon the people, and it must now be determined to which God they shall turn.’

So it came to pass that a great multitude of the tribe of Israel assembled upon Mount Carmel in order that final judgment should be made between the god of Ahab and the God of Elijah. The decision was to be brought about by means of an external sign; but such a sign as all might plainly discern and clearly understand. To enter into details concerning these matters at the present time would, however, take us too far. It was arranged that the priests and prophets of Baal, the name by which the god of King Ahab was known, should be the first to offer a sacrifice. The people would then wait and see if the performance of certain sacrificial rites (religious exercises in which the ecstatic priests, through the medium of music and dancing, worked themselves up into a state of singular ecstasy) would lead to any communication or influence being imparted to the multitude. In other words, the people were to judge whether or not, in virtue of inherent divine powers possessed by the priests any sign was vouchsafed of the might and potency of their god.

The sacrificial beast is brought to the altar. It is to be decided if in truth the priests of Baal are endowed with an inner force, such as would stir the multitude. Then Elijah-Naboth raised up his voice and said:—‘This thing must now be determined—I stand alone while opposed to me are the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. We shall see how strong is their hold upon the people, and how great is that power which is in me.’ The sacrifice is performed, and everything possible done in order to transmit to the multitude a potent influence from the priests—that all should believe in the god Baal. The ecstatic exercises are carried to such lengths that the hands and other parts of the body are cut with knives until the blood flows, so as to increase still further the awesome character of the spectacle evoked by these followers of Baal, under the frenzied stimulus of the dancing and the music. But behold! there is no sign—for Elijah-Naboth is there, and the spirit within him is at work.

In words all insufficient of expression, one might say, that while Elijah-Naboth stood thus near at hand, he caused a great spiritual power to flow forth from his being, so that he overcame and swept away all things which were opposed to him. In this case, you must not, however, imagine to yourselves the exercise of any kind of magic.

Elijah-Naboth then prepares his sacrifice. He makes an offering to his God, using the full force of his soul, that soul which had passed through all those trials which we have already described. The sacrifice is consummated, and achieves the fullness of its purpose, for the souls and the hearts of the people are stirred. The priests of Baal, the four hundred and fifty opponents of Elijah are driven to admit defeat. They are destroyed in their very souls by that which they had desired, killed, as it were, by Elijah-Naboth—for Elijah-Naboth had won the day!

The above events were in some ways similar to those that I have endeavoured to portray in my book entitled Mysticism and Modern Thought. While speaking of Johannes Tauler, it is there related that for a considerable period during his life he was known as a remarkable and trenchant preacher, and that at one time he gave himself up to a particular form of training; after which, upon his return to the pulpit, he exercised upon one occasion such an extraordinary influence upon his congregation, that we are told some forty persons collapsed and were as if dead. This signifies that their innermost beings were touched, and that they were overcome by the sympathetic action of a special power emanating from that great divine. With such an example before us, we need no longer imagine that the Bible account concerning Ahab and Elijah is a mere exaggeration, for it is at all events entirely confirmed by the researches of Spiritual Science.

What follows as the natural outcome of all these events? I have already described the character and peculiar nature of Jezebel. She was quite aware of the fact that the man who had done all these things was their neighbour, and that he was to be found living close at hand, that is, when he was not mysteriously absent. Now, what did Elijah-Naboth know and realize from that moment? He knew that Jezebel was powerful, and that she had discovered his secret. In other words, he felt that henceforth his outer physical life was no longer safe. He must therefore prepare for death in the near future; for Jezebel would certainly compass his destruction.

Now, King Ahab went home, and as related in the Bible, told Jezebel about those events which had taken place upon Mount Carmel;¹ and [Spiritual Science tells us, that] Jezebel said:—‘I will do unto Elijah that which he did unto thy four hundred and fifty prophets.’ Who could understand these words spoken by Jezebel [and reflected in the second verse of the nineteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings]² were it not for the investigations made by Spiritual Science, in whose light their meaning seems almost self-evident. [As a result of these researches it is quite clear, and this point has always been obscure, why it was that Jezebel brought about the death of Naboth, when in reality she sought to destroy Elijah. From Spiritual Science, however, we realize that she sent her threatening message to Elijah-Naboth, because in virtue of her clairvoyant powers, she knew full well that the physical body of Naboth was in truth the bearer of Elijah’s spirit. (Ed.)]

It now became necessary for Elijah to form some definite plans whereby he could avoid being immediately done to death as a result of Jezebel’s revenge. He must at once arrange, that in case of this event happening, his spirit could still continue to carry on his teachings, and exert its influence upon mankind. Thus it came about when next he held commune with his soul, and while in a state of intense inner contemplation, that he questioned himself thus:—‘What shall I do that I may find a successor to fulfil my mission in this physical world, should my death indeed be brought about through the vengeance of Jezebel?’ Then behold! a new revelation came to him, in which his inner vision was directed toward a certain quite definite personality, to whom Elijah-Naboth³ might pass on all that he had to bestow upon mankind—this personality was Elisha. You may think it possible that Elijah had previously known Elisha, whether such was the case or not is a matter of little importance. What is of moment is the fact that it was the Spirit that pointed to the way, and that he heard through an inner illumination these words:—‘Initiate thou this man into thy secrets.’

We are further told, with that clarity which it marks the statements of Spiritual Science concerning ancient religious records, that Elijah-Naboth had a very special mission to fulfil; and that the Divine element which was about to descend upon Elisha, would be of the self-same Spirit as had heretofore been predominant in Elijah. Now it was in Damascus that Elisha was to be sought, and in that place he would receive this great spiritual illumination, which would come to him in the same way as that glorious Divine Light which flowed in upon St. Paul at a later period. But soon after Elijah had chosen his successor the vengeance of Jezebel fell upon him. For Jezebel turned the thoughts of her lord toward Naboth, their neighbour, and spoke to Ahab somewhat after this fashion:—‘Listen thou unto me, this neighbour is a pious man, whose mind is filled with ideas concerning Elijah. It would perhaps be well to remove him from this vicinity, for he is one of the most important of his followers, and upon him much depends.’

Now the King knew nothing whatever about the secret which surrounded Naboth, but he was quite aware by this time that he was indeed a faithful adherent of Elijah’s, and gave heed to his words. Jezebel next urged Ahab to try and induce Naboth to come over to his side, either by methods of persuasion or, if necessary, by exercising his power of kingly authority. She said:—‘It would be a great blow to the schemes and projects of this man, Elijah, if by any means it were possible to draw him away from his intents.’ Jezebel knew quite well, however, that all her talk was the merest fiction; what she really desired was to induce her lord to take some kind of definite and effective action. For it was not this particular move in which she was interested; her mind was bent upon a plot which was to follow: hence the advice which she tendered was of the nature of a subterfuge. After Jezebel had spoken in this manner to Ahab, the King went to Naboth and held converse with him; but behold, Naboth would not regard what he said, and replied:—‘Never shall those things come to pass which thou desirest.’

In the Bible the position is so represented that this neighbour of Ahab’s is described as possessing a vineyard which the King coveted, and sought to acquire. According to this account (I Kings, xxi, 3), Naboth said to Ahab:—‘The Lord forbid it me that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.’ In reality, however, the actual inheritance to which reference is here made was of quite another kind to that which Naboth declined to surrender; nevertheless, Jezebel used this incident as the foundation of her revenge. She deliberately proffered false counsel, in order that the King might be discountenanced and then angered by Naboth’s refusal. That such was the case becomes evident when we read that passage in the Bible (I Kings, xxi, 4), where it is written: ‘And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him: for he had said, I will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers. And he laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.’ Think of that! Merely because the King could not obtain a certain vineyard in his neighbourhood, he refused to eat! We can only begin to understand such statements, when we are in a position to investigate the facts which underlie them.

It was at this point that Jezebel took definite steps to bring about her revenge. She started by arranging that a feast be given to which Naboth should be invited, and at which he was to be an especially honoured guest (I Kings, xxi, 12). Naboth could not refuse to be present; and at this feast it was planned that he be afforded an opportunity of expressing himself freely. Now, Jezebel was truly gifted with clairvoyant insight; with the others Naboth could easily cope, with them he could measure forces; but Jezebel had the power to bring ruin upon him. She introduced false witnesses, who declared that Naboth did deny [blaspheme] God and the King’. It was in this manner that she contrived to compass his murder; as is related in the Bible (I Kings, xxi, 13). Henceforth the outer physical personality of Elijah was dead, and no more seen upon the face of the external world.

Now, because of all that had happened the deep forces in Ahab’s soul were stirred, and he was, as one might say, confronted with the grave question of his destiny, while at the same time he experienced a strange and unusual foreboding. Then Elijah, whom he had ever regarded with feelings of awe, appeared as in a vision and revealed to him plainly how the matter stood. Here we have an actual spiritual experience, in which Ahab was accused by the spirit-form of Elijah (subsequent to his death) of having virtually himself murdered Naboth—this Naboth-Elijah. The connection with the latter personality he could but dimly realize; nevertheless, Ahab was definitely termed his murderer. In the Bible we can read the dreadful words which fell upon his soul during that awe-inspiring prophecy, when the spirit-form said:—‘In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine’ (I Kings, xxi, 19); and then came yet another dire prophetic utterance:—‘The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel’ (I Kings, xxi. 23).

We now know that these predictions belonged to a class which finds ultimate fulfilment. For subsequently when King Ahab went forth to battle against the Syrians, he was wounded and his blood ran out of the wound into the chariot, and so he died; and when the chariot was being washed dogs came and licked up his blood (I Kings, xxii, 35, 38). Later on, after a further course of events had made Jehu ruler of Jezreel, Jezebel was seen as she stood at a window, and she was seized and thrown down, and dogs tore her in pieces, and actually devoured her before the walls of the city (II Kings, ix, 30 to 37). I have only touched lightly upon these matters, because our time is short and they are of no special importance to us just now. You will find that the subject I am about to consider is of much greater moment.

He whom Elijah-Naboth had elected to be his successor must henceforth develop and perfect his inner being, even as he himself had done; but this spiritual unfoldment was brought about in other fashion. For the pupil it was in some ways less difficult than it had been for his teacher; since all that power which Elijah-Naboth had acquired through constant upward striving was now at his disciple’s disposal, and he had ever the help and support of his great master. Elijah-Naboth influenced Elisha in the same way as the individualities of those who have passed through the portals of death may at times act upon humanity, namely, by means of a special form of spiritual activity emanating directly from the spirit-world. The divine force which thus descended upon Elisha was like in nature to that glorious inspiration which Christ Jesus Himself gave to His disciples after His resurrection. Elisha’s subsequent experiences were directly related to this divine power which continued to flow forth from Elijah, even after his death, and to affect all who might give themselves up to its potent influence. With Elisha, his experience was such that the living form of his great master appeared before his soul, and said:—‘I will go forth with thee out of Gilgal.’

At this point I shall quote the Bible literally, where it says (II Kings, ii, 1):—‘And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.’ Now, Gilgal is not a place or locality, and it is not intended in the Bible that it should be taken as such. The word Gilgal merely signifies—The act of moving in a circuitous path while revolving, as in waltzing [Herum-walzung]. This technical expression refers to the roundabout course of the soul’s life during those periods in which it is incarnated in the flesh, and passes from one physical body to another; that is the true significance of ‘Gilgal’.

It need cause you no surprise that the results obtained through Spiritual Science show that Elisha, in virtue of soul experiences gained through inner contemplation and absolute devotion, was enabled to be in the actual presence of Elijah in a higher state or world. This was made possible, not because of the forces latent in his physical nature, but through those more exalted powers which he possessed. While Elisha was thus uplifted the steps which he must take toward his soul’s development were pointed out to him by the spirit of Elijah, who constantly drew his attention to the difficulties which he would encounter in the path which he must follow. The way led upward and onward, step by step, to a stage where he would first feel himself unified with that divine spirit, ever flowing forth from his great teacher—Elijah.

The names, apparently referring to places which have been chosen [in the Bible at this point such as Beth-el and Jericho (II Kings, ii, 2, 4 )], are not to be taken as designating localities, but in their literal sense, signifying conditions of the soul. For instance, Elijah says:—‘I will now take me to Beth-el.’⁴ This statement was made to Elisha in a vision, but to him it was more than a mere vision. Then, again, as if counselling him, the spirit of Elijah spoke and said It were better to remain here’;4 the true significance of which is as follows:—‘Consider whether thou possessest the strength to go with me further’; [referring to the spiritual path]. The vision then continues with an incident in which we again find something in the nature of an exhortation and warning. All the sons of the prophets who were his colleagues in the spirit stood about Elisha and cautioned him, and those who were initiated into the mystery and knew that at times he could indeed ascend to the higher regions where the spirit of Elijah held converse with him, admonished him, and said:—‘This time thou wilt not be able to follow Elijah’—‘Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day?’ (II Kings, ii, 3). And his answer to those about him was:—‘Hold ye your peace.’ But to the spirit of Elijah he said:—‘As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.’ Then Elijah spoke again and said:—‘I must now go upon my way to Jericho’ [(II Kings, ii, 4.) ‘Tarry here I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho.’]. Once again this dialogue is repeated [and the word Jordan is introduced. (II Kings, ii, 6)], after which Elijah asks:—‘What dost thou truly desire?’ The reply which Elisha gave is recorded in the Bible, but in such a manner that we have to drag out its proper meaning, for it is rendered incorrectly. The words are these:—‘I pray thee let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me’ (II Kings, ii, 9); the actual answer, however, was:—‘I desire that thy spirit shall enter and dwell, as a second spirit within my soul.’

Now, the essence of Elisha’s request as understood by Elijah was somewhat as follows—Elisha had asked that his soul be stirred to its very depths and quickened, so that he might awaken to a full consciousness of its true relation to the spirit of his master. It could then of its own powers bring about enlightenment concerning spiritual revelation, even as had been the case during the physical life of his great teacher. Elijah spoke again and said:—‘I must now ascend into the higher realms; if thou art able to perceive my spirit as it rises upward, then hast thou attained thy desire and my power will enter in unto thee.’ And behold it came to pass that Elisha saw the spirit of Elijah as he ‘went up by a whirlwind into heaven’ (II Kings, ii, 11), and the mantle of Elijah fell down [upon him]; which was a symbol denoting the spiritual force in which he must now enwrap himself. Here, then, we have a spiritual vision which indicated, and at the same time caused Elisha to realize that he might now indeed become the true successor of Elijah. In the Bible (I Kings, ii, 15) we read:—- ‘And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The Spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.’ This passage points to the fact that the Word of the Lord had become so mighty in Elisha that it was filled with the same force which the sons of the prophets had experienced with Elijah; and they realized that the spirit of Elijah-Naboth did in truth live on in the being of Elisha.

In previous lectures I have described the methods employed by Spiritual Science, and as we proceed they will be yet further elucidated. The foregoing account gives expression to its testimony regarding the actual events which took place in Elijah’s time, and also concerning the impulse to humanity which flowed forth from that great prophet and his successor Elisha. An impulse which ever tended toward the renewing and uplifting of the ancient Jahveh Faith.

It is characteristic of that ancient period, that incidents such as we have portrayed and which could only be understood by the initiated, were represented to the mass of the people (who were quite incapable of comprehending them in their true form) in such a manner as to render them not only intelligible, but at the same time to cause them to work upon, and to influence, the soul. The method to which I refer is that of parables or miracle stories. But what seems to us so truly amazing, in the highest spiritual sense is, that out of such allegorical narratives there should have been evolved an account like that relating to Elijah, Elisha, and Naboth, as told in the Bible.

Now, in those days it was the custom to use the parable form, when speaking to all who could not understand or realize the supreme glory of the impulse which had come from the souls of these Great Ones; spiritual beings who of themselves must first undergo many inner experiences deep hidden from man’s external vision and apprehension. Thus it came about that the people were told, as may be gathered from the Bible, that Elijah lived in the time of King Ahab, and that during a period of famine the God-Jahveh appeared before him and [as Spiritual Science tells us] commanded him to go to the King Ahab and say to him:—‘As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew or rain these years, but according to my word’ (I Kings, xvii, 1). The account in the Bible continues as follows:—‘And the word of the Lord came unto him saying:—Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.’ (I Kings, xvii, 2, 3, 4.) These things came to pass; and when the brook was dried up, God sent Elijah to Zarephath (I Kings, xvii, 9); and ‘in the third year’ he was commanded to set out and appear before King Ahab (I Kings, xviii, 1) and to cause the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal to be called to a final decision (I Kings, xviii, 19). I have previously referred to all this, when presenting the facts as obtained through Spiritual Science.

Next comes a wonderful picture of the events that actually took place on Mount Carmel (I Kings, xviii, 20 to 39), and which happenings I have described. Then follows the story of how Naboth (who was in reality the bearer of the spirit of Elijah) was to be robbed of his vineyard by Ahab; and of how Jezebel brought ruin upon him (I Kings, xxi, 1 to 14). From the Bible account alone, we cannot understand how Jezebel could have possibly accomplished the destruction of Elijah in accordance with her threatening utterance to King Ahab (see this passage), namely:—‘I will do unto Elijah that which he did unto thy four hundred and fifty prophets’; for the story tells us that she merely compassed the death of Naboth. As a matter of fact, however, she actually brought destruction to the being in whom dwelt at that time the spirit of Elijah; a point which would undoubtedly escape the notice of any ordinary Biblical student—for in the Bible it merely states that Elijah ascended into heaven (II Kings, ii, 11). Now, if, as is intimated in the Bible, Jezebel’s desire was—to do unto Elijah as he had done unto the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal—she certainly accomplished her end and brought about his ruin in a most remarkable manner!⁵ I would here state that there are some graphic portrayals relative to the dim past which can only be rightly understood when illumined by that bright radiance which flows from the deep sources of spiritual research.

It is not possible in a single lecture to bring forward further evidence and proofs concerning these matters. If, however, those among my audience who may still feel that they cannot look upon the pronouncements of Spiritual Science as other than sheer hypotheses, would but criticize without prejudice, and set about comparing the various statements made with facts obtained through the medium of external science, I should feel entirely satisfied. Although it is true that if spiritual methods of research are not employed, we cannot hope to reach final and positive conclusions, nevertheless, it will be found that the verity of Spiritual Science is confirmed by the results of orthodox scientific investigations, and the proper exercise of the individual intelligence.

When we study the personality and period of the prophet Elijah, it becomes clear that the impulses and primal causes which underlie and bring about human events, are in no way limited to those occurrences which are outwardly apparent, and therefore find a place in the records of external history. By far the most important and significant happenings connected with man’s existence have their actual origin, and are matured as regards a primary stage, within the confines of the soul. The outcome of this fundamental process next finds expression in the outer world, ever spreading its influence further and further among the people. Although in these days it is inconceivable that a mysterious personality such as we have portrayed, and known only through rumour, could dwell in our midst in the guise of a simple and homely neighbour without all the facts becoming known, in olden times such a circumstance was undoubtedly possible. We have learned that throughout all human evolution it is precisely those forces which are of greatest power and intensity that operate in obscure and secret fashion.

From what has been said it is clear that through the influence of the prophet Elijah, man was raised to a higher spiritual level and became more and more imbued with Jahveh thoughts and concepts. We also realize that the life and deeds of that great patriarch, when viewed in the proper manner, must be regarded as forming an epoch of supreme import to humanity. Further investigation and research will assuredly prove that [by means of the methods of Spiritual Science] a new light has been thrown upon the momentous happenings of a bygone age, and on the events which ultimately led to the founding of Christianity. We know that through realities of this nature, born of the Spirit-World, we can draw nearer to an understanding of those fundamental forces and impulses which have been ever active during the evolution of mankind, and therefore appear to us of such great significance and moment. Then with enhanced knowledge we shall realize that, even as these basal factors have operated in remote antiquity, so must they continue to work on in our present period. Never can we read the deep secrets of the life which is around us, if we have no clear concept of the inner nature and purport of those singular events which have taken place in the dim and distant past.

External history, which is garnered solely from the outer world, does not enlighten us concerning things of greatest and most vital import. It is here the words of Goethe so fittingly apply—words which, if but read with a touch of deeper meaning, become as a call to humanity urging mankind to profound inner spiritual contemplation. For it is thus that man may enter upon that quest which alone can spring from the soul’s most hidden depths, and learn to apprehend the Divine Spirit which is, and abides, in all nature.

The wonderful example of the prophet Elijah and his period, as it shines forth in our spiritual firmament, stands as an evidence of the truth of Goethe’s words, which in slightly modified form, are as follows:—

History will not permit that veil to be withdrawn,
Which hides her secrets from the light of our new day.
That which she chooses from thy spirit to conceal,
Canst thou ne’er wrest from parchment script, nor canst thou say,
What message lies secreted ‘neath those mystic signs,
Inscribed on bronze, or fashioned deep in stone or clay.⁶

ADDENDUM

In the above lecture, which was delivered in Berlin in 1911, it will be noticed that in some cases the name Elijah-Naboth is found in places where Elijah only is mentioned in the Bible. The reason for this apparent inconsistency becomes at once evident, when we take a general view of the circumstances and singular relation which existed between Elijah, Naboth, and what we might term a duality of being as expressed in Elijah-Naboth. Let us therefore briefly consider the events portrayed in the order in which they took place.

At the time of Ahab, the Hebrew people were for the most part, so far sunk in materialism that there was danger, not only that disaster would overtake them, but that the actual course of the spiritual evolution of mankind might be hindered; and the matter had gone to such a length as to call for Divine intervention. Hence it was ordained that Elijah, whom we must regard as a truly exalted spirit, should descend upon the earth, and that his mission would be to turn the hearts of the people once more to Jehovah, and to determine upon his (Elijah’s) successor. This mission we may look upon as being accomplished in four stages.

At first the spirit of Elijah worked in mysterious ways, for he appeared among the people now here, now there; and no man knew from whence he came. In those olden days the masses were oft-times moved in matters concerning religious thought by engendering feelings of awe and wonder, and by so doing Elijah established a definite and powerful influence among the minds of the Community. He thus prepared the people to witness that sign of the spirit which it was decreed should be vouchsafed. Only through some great manifestation of Divine force could the nation, in that material state into which it had fallen, be brought back to Jahveh, the ancient God of the Hebrews.

In the second stage of Elijah’s mission we come upon the simple land-owner, Naboth. In order to create the utmost possible impression at the time when the supreme revelation of spiritual power should take place, it was essential that a multitude be present, but for this thing to happen it was necessary to gain the consent of the King. Now Naboth lived near to Ahab, and might on occasion obtain audience with him, and in this manner could aid Elijah in the maturing of his plans. Elijah therefore so worked upon the innermost soul of Naboth, that he became ‘the bearer of his spirit’ and did according to his word. Thus did Elijah’s spirit find expression through the outer form of Naboth and bring influence to bear upon the King, that all should be made ready for the people to be gathered together when the moment was at hand for the sign to be given. It is the dual state of Naboth’s being while the spirit of Elijah was dominant and worked within him that has been termed, Elijah-Naboth.

Now, Ahab was not truly clairvoyant and had no suspicion of all that had occurred. On that occasion when he met Elijah-Naboth and said to him: ‘Art thou he that troubleth Israel?’ (I Kings, xviii, 17), he thought it was only Naboth who was speaking, and that it was he who would turn the people against the gods of Baal; for Ahab at that time merely knew of Elijah through indefinite rumour. But it was the voice of Elijah the prophet speaking through Naboth that answered the King—it was Elijah-Naboth that spoke. It is because the ancient writer who portrayed this incident did not realize the singular spiritual and clairvoyant conditions, and therefore did not fully understand the circumstances, that the name of Elijah alone appears in this, as in other Bible accounts connected with the events which took place in those days.

We find a similar difference in the names occurring in the description of the happening on Mount Carmel, when the people were assembled in order to judge between Jehovah and the gods of Baal. It was then that the third stage of Elijah’s mission was fulfilled. In the lecture it states that it was Elijah-Naboth who was present on the Mount, and that it was he who ‘won the day’, but the Bible narrative tells us that it was Elijah himself who overcame the prophets of Baal. The reason for this apparent inconsistency can be seen from the following considerations.

It was Elijah-Naboth, who when all had come, stood forth and said: ‘This thing must now be determined—I stand alone while opposed to me are the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal.’ But Elijah, who was granted special spiritual powers at that moment, so ordered the matter that while the King saw before him merely the outer form of the man Naboth, the people were impressed with the spiritual being and personality of Elijah. In the Bible, the narrator realized the circumstances as the multitude had apprehended them, and therefore spoke only of Elijah, being unaware that at that time, Naboth was ‘the bearer of his spirit’.

Jezebel was not present at Mount Carmel, because she was conscious that she could not cope directly with Elijah. Already through her clairvoyant powers she was cognizant of all that had come to pass, and she knew full well that the spirit of the great prophet would be all-powerful in that place. In other words, she clearly understood that if she went to the Mount she would there have to do with Elijah-Naboth, and not merely with the simple land-owner. She thought, however, that if she could but compass the physical death of Naboth, she might put an end to Elijah’s influence.

Next came the fourth stage of Elijah’s mission. He must seek a successor, and that before Jezebel brought about the death of Naboth, for when the outer form of Naboth should be destroyed, Elijah must return to the Divine Spirit-realms. At that point in the lecture (see this passage) where it states that Elijah communed with his soul and asked this question: ‘What shall I do that I may find a successor to fulfil my mission in this physical world, should my death indeed be brought about through the vengeance of Jezebel?’ he is referring to the material death of Naboth and to the possible premature ending of the impulse he had wrought.

Further, we are told that Spiritual Science states: ‘That Elijah-Naboth had a very special mission to fulfil; and that the Divine element which was about to descend upon Elisha, would be of the self-same spirit as had heretofore been predominant in Elijah.’ And, ‘it was in Damascus that Elisha was to be sought ...’ In the Bible (I Kings, xix, 15, 16) we find these words: ‘And the Lord said unto him [Elijah], Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus ... and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-Meholah shalt thou anoint to be a prophet in thy room.’ The actual command to seek out Elisha was given in a vision to Elijah, as is indicated both in the lecture and in I Kings xix, 12, 13. Spiritual Science, however, tells us that it was Elijah-Naboth who made the journey. And this is quite comprehensible when we realize that in Elijah-Naboth, Elisha in virtue of his advanced spirituality would know and commune with the spirit being of Elijah. Here again it is for reasons similar to those already advanced, that in the Bible the name of Elijah, only, occurs, while in the lecture Elijah-Naboth is mentioned.

In all such cases it will be found, if we but look deeply into the matter, that the statements of Spiritual Science are, in truth, not in any way at variance with those things which are written in the Bible. [Ed.]

Notes for this lecture:

1 ‘And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword.’ (I Kings, xix, I.)

2 This verse is as follows:—‘Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the Gods do unto me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.’

3. See Addendum to this lecture.

4. Tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Beth-el. (II Kings, ii, 2.)

5. In this lecture it has been previously stated (see this passage) that, through Elijah–Naboth, the prophets of Baal were ‘destroyed in their very souls by that which they had most desired’. Now Elijah longed that his spirit might continue active in the being of Naboth, and it was this very wish that caused Jezebel to set about his ruin, and thus, as it were, to ‘destroy’ Elijah ‘in his very soul’. It was not merely physical death, to which Jezebel referred when she sent her message to Elijah, as mentioned in the Bible, saying: ‘So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time,’ (I Kings, xix, 2), but to a kind of spiritual death, which would break for ever that mysterious and sacred union between Elijah and Naboth, which it was her aim to sever. She knew quite well in virtue of her clairvoyant powers, that she could only hope to accomplish this end, and—‘destroy Elijah in his very soul’—by bringing about the material dissolution of Naboth, the bearer of Elijah’s spirit. Thus we find, that if we read Jezebel’s message anew, in the light thrown upon it by Spiritual Science, its purport becomes at once intelligible. [Ed.]

6. ‘Geheimnisvoll am Iichten Tag der Gegenwart,
Lässt Geschichte sich des Schleiers nicht berauben.
Was sie deinem Geist nicht offenbaren mag,
Das zwingst du ihr nicht aus Pergamenten
Und nicht aus Zeichen, die eingeschrieben rind
In Erz und Ton und Stein.’

I pointed out yesterday how the spiritual components of man's being have their points of contact in his physical organism. Awareness of this will have to enter into the consciousness of mankind as a whole, for it is this knowledge that in truth must lead man to the light out of the darkness of today's materialism, which will last for a very, very long time. Never, though, must the thread of spiritual knowledge be lost entirely. At least a small group of human beings must always ensure that this does not happen. I have already shown how the true discoveries of material science—which anthroposophical spiritual science must certainly not fail to recognize—are put in the correct light when things are seen spiritually, especially the human being. The examples I started with yesterday can show you how the physical processes in the human being are fully recognized by spiritual science—only spiritual science recognizes what is spiritual and investigates how the spiritual element is anchored in the physical element, especially, in the first instance, in the human being.

Thus we avoided the pitfall of seeking the spiritual element solely in abstract concepts which are unable to deal with something that has been created by it, namely, the material world. What is spiritual must not live only in a Cloud-cuckoo-land floating above the material world. It must be so strong and intense that it can permeate the material element and show how spiritual it is and how it has been created by the spirit. Thus true spiritual knowledge must come to the possibility of understanding the material world and existence on the physical plane. It is important now, of all times, to pay attention to the interaction of spiritual and material elements in the human being, because now it is necessary properly to understand the intervention of something not material, namely, the folk soul, in the human being.

I said: Those things in everyday life which we think, feel and will—not as members of one group of people or another but as citizens of the earth—are bound to the solid, earthly element. Even though only five per cent of our body is made of this earthly element, I said that that in us which gives us in the world between birth and death our purely personal knowledge, will impulses and degrees of feeling, is bound to the mineral, solid element of the brain; that is where it has its point of contact. As soon as we progress to what leads us into super-personal or sub-personal realms, we can no longer count on conceptions which are brought to us by the solid element, for conceptions here are brought by the fluid element. And conceptions which take us so far into the super-personal or sub-personal realm that we come to the intervention of the archangeloi in our being are brought to us by the airy element. The airy element is the mediator between these archangel beings and their sphere and everything which the human being experiences in that very subconscious way I described yesterday.

Well over ninety per cent of our physical being is a pillar of water, a pillar of liquid, but this liquid element in the human being, of which very little account has so far been taken by natural science, is the main bearer of life in the human being. I have pointed out how the aeriform element works through the liquid element into the solid element which is anchored in the brain. We breathe in; because we breathe in a stream of air and fill our body with it, the organ we call the diaphragm is pushed down. In this sucking-in of the stream of air and everything that goes with it, down to the lowering of the diaphragm, is to be found that sphere in which the impulses emanating from the kingdom of the archangeloi work. Just as all this remains in the subconscious, so does the real manner of the folk soul's working remain in the subconscious. As I said by way of comparison yesterday, it surges up like waves, in a form that differs utterly from the way it lives down there in the depths. When the diaphragm is pushed downwards it, in a way, dams up the blood in the veins of the abdomen. This pushes the stream of cerebral fluid upwards through the spinal cord so that it pours into the brain, or rather round the solidified mass of the brain. So now, as a result of breathing in, the cerebral fluid is in the brain, has been pushed up. In the way these pulsations of the cerebral fluid work lie all the impulses that come into man from the sphere of the archangeloi, everything man can have in the way of conceptions and feelings which lift him into the realm of the super-personal or sub-personal, everything that connects him with the forces that reach beyond birth and death. And in the brain itself the cerebral fluid comes up against the solid element.

Parallel with this runs the process by which all our ideas and conceptions ebb and flow in the liquid element. These ideas and conceptions are spiritual entities which ebb and flow in the liquid element, and they appear as our everyday conceptions relating to the external world because they come up against the solid element and are mirrored back by this solid element into consciousness.

When we breathe out, a damming-up takes place in the blood vessels of the brain, and the cerebral fluid is pushed down through the spinal cord into the abdomen. There is room for it there because breathing out has raised the diaphragm. So thinking and having ideas and so on is not the mere brain process of which the sciences of anatomy and physiology dream today. What takes place in the brain is a mirroring-back by something solid, and this is connected with what is not mirrored but remains in the fluid element whence, via the detour of breathing, it regulates the influence of the aeriform element. This is also the detour via which everything is mediated to us which belongs to a particular climate, the local soil conditions of a particular terrain and all the other influences connected with breathing. That part of breathing which never enters our consciousness but remains lika an ocean swell, is where spiritual realities surge. Via the detour through the cerebral fluid the breathing process is connected with the brain.

Here you have a physical process belonging to the whole human being, described in such a way that you can recognize it as a revelation of the spirit which surrounds us everywhere, just as does air or humidity. This gives you, through a true understanding of physical processes, an insight into how his earthly surroundings, together with the spirit contained in them, work on man, and into how, as a being both spiritual and physical, man is embedded in his earthly environment, which is also spiritual and physical. The air, water and warmth which surround us are nothing other than bodies for the spirit, just as our muscles and nerves are bodies for the spirit.

I am presenting you with these things now because they show how human life is founded on processes which are not at all obvious to present-day science. It will be the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period to raise these processes to the level of true knowledge. During the course of the fifth post-Atlantean period this realization must enter into everything we do—in teaching, in education generally and in the whole of external life. It must, in due course, be recognized that what is seen as science in materialistic circles today will gradually have to disappear from the life of the earth, together with all the consequences it has for life. All the battles still to be won in the fifth post-Atlantean period will be no more than an external expression of a spiritual battle, just as, in the final analysis, the present battle is an external expression of the confrontation between materialism and spiritual life. Hidden though these things are, behind today's infinitely sad events lies the battle of materialism against spiritual life. This battle will have to be fought to the end. It will take various forms, but it must be fought to the end because human beings must learn to bear everything they need to bear in order to achieve the spiritual view necessary for the sixth post-Atlantean period. It may be said that there must be much suffering, but only out of pain and suffering can arise what truly binds knowledge to our self. For the other side of the coin is that connected with the materialistic view of the world, is the materialistic way of life, which is only beginning today but which will take on infinitely more terrible forms.

The materialistic way of life began when science became willing to recognize only what is material. It has already led to a stage at which people are prepared, in life, too, to accept only what is material. This will be taken much, much further and will become far more intense. For the fifth post-Atlantean period must be lived to the end. In all areas it must reach a kind of climax. For spirituality needs its opposite pole if it is to recognize itself with the intensity that will be needed if mankind is to step with maturity into the sixth post-Atlantean period.

So do not shy away from following the spiritual guidelines offered as a possibility for comprehending the external facts of the world. For it is the prime task and duty of all those who strive spiritually to comprehend the course of human evolution up to the present and also to understand the likely evolution of the future in spiritual directions. We have often spoken of our inheritance from the fourth post-Atlantean period which ended in the fifteenth century, and of the fact that it is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period to develop to the full the consciousness soul.

Now it is precisely the consciousness soul which will unite man intimately with all material events and everything belonging to materialism. We have seen how, in the fourth post-Atlantean period, from the eighth century BC right up to the fifteenth century AD, the Greco-Latin element gradually came to dominate the world, first in what is usually called the Roman Empire and later in the Roman Papacy which reached the climax of its dominance during the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries. This is at the same time the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. It coincided with the first breaking of Roman Papal dominance. It is also the beginning of those impulses whose influence has brought about the present sad events. In the end no one can understand what is going on today without taking a wider view. For really all the peoples of Europe have contributed their share to the sad events of today's Europe. Those who want to understand things must necessarily turn their attention to impulses which have been in preparation for a long time and which today are being given a kind of first chance to show themselves.

So today we shall bring together what can be seen far in the future with things that are close at hand. First let us remember the description I gave of how the southern peoples, the Italian and Spanish peoples and the various kingdoms they have brought forth, represent a kind of after-effect of the third post-Atlantean period—of course, with the inclusion of the overall heritage of the fourth period. You need only follow the whole structure of Italian-Spanish development as it took place at the turn of the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period, in order to see that it still included what was directly justified in the third, the Egypto-Chaldean period. You can see this especially in the way in which, emanating from Rome and Spain, a religion spread which was borrowed from the cults of Egypt and Chaldea. In this you have the continued existence of what had been left behind in Egypt and Chaldea, and this reached its climax in the thirteenth century.

Papal supremacy emanated from the South and reached its climax in the thirteenth century. In order to describe it in a way which is meaningful today and which fits the facts, we should have to say that this papal supremacy, which covered and dominated the whole of European culture, was essentially the ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy. This ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy, which was a transformation of ancient Rome into the Roman Catholicism which streamed into Europe, is one of the impulses which continue to work like retarded impulses throughout the whole fifth post-Atlantean period, but especially in its first third. You could, I might add, work out how long this is going to last. You know that one post-Atlantean period lasts approximately 2,160 years. One third of this is 720 years. So starting with the year 1415, this takes the main period to the year 2135. Therefore the last waves of hierarchical Romanism will last into the beginning of the third millennium. These are echoes in which the impulses of the fourth post-Atlantean period assert themselves in the forms of the third post-Atlantean period. But many things work side by side at the same time, so there are other impulses working together with these. Roman Catholicism had its actual climax in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Let us now see how it continues. We have to distinguish the way it worked up to the thirteenth century—when it was, you might say, justified, because that was still the fourth post-Atlantean period—and what then followed, when it began to assume the character of a retarded impulse. It seeks to spread. But how? For it certainly spreads significantly. We see that the form of the state, which gradually matures in the new age, is more or less saturated with this Roman Catholicism. We see that the English state as it begins to grow at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period is at first entirely in the hands of this Roman Catholicism. We see how France and the rest of Europe are entirely in the grip of this Roman element of hierarchy and cultus in so far as their ideas and cultural life are concerned. To characterize this impetus we would have to say that there is an impulse on the part of Rome to permeate, to saturate the culture of Europe with this hierarchical ecclesiastical element right up to the bulwark it has itself created in eastern Europe. But it is noteworthy that an impulse like this, if it is a retarded impulse, takes on an external character. It no longer has the strength to develop any inner intensity, but becomes external in character. It spreads out widely on the surface but has no strength to go into its own depths. So we see the strange phenomenon of Roman hierarchism spreading further and further afield yet, in the countries at its core, being unable to give any inward strength, thus depriving its own population of inwardness.

See how such things start. Everywhere Romanism spreads in all shapes and forms, whereas in Italy itself, in Spain, the population is hollowed out. Just think what an extraordinary Christianity lived in Italy when the Papacy was at the height of its glory. It was the Christianity against which the thunderous words of Savonarola were directed. For in isolated individuals, such as Savonarola, the Christ impulse was alive; but these individuals felt impelled to grind official Christianity into the dust. A history telling of what happened at the point from which Christianity rayed forth would have to say: The power of the Roman church element rayed forth, but the Christian souls at the point from which this happened were hollowed out. This could be proved in detail. It is an important truth: Something raying out destroys its own inner core. This is how life goes. Like a human being growing old and using up his forces, so do cultural phenomena, when they spread, use up their own being and hollow themselves out.

On earlier occasions I have shown how the French state was in a certain way a recapitulation of the fourth post-Atlantean period in the fifth. Here we now have a second case of raying forth. For the southern element we used the expression ‘ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy’ to describe something that strove to found a universal monarchy of the church, a theocracy of Europe. Now we shall endeavour to find an expression to describe that cultural element which bears the culture of the intellectual- or mind-soul from the fourth post-Atlantean period up into the fifth. An expression encompassing all the historical elements, an expression which fits the facts and describes the reality of what is brought into the fifth post-Atlantean period, if we have the good will to find it, would have to be: the universal diplomatic element. Everything connected with this universal diplomatic element is also connected with what grew out of the French state element. It is not for nothing that the French language is the language of diplomacy, even today. Every historical trend is illuminated in detail when you discover that just as the universal theocratic element rays out from Rome and Spain, so the universal diplomatic element rays out from Paris.

And it is remarkable that just as with the Spanish-Italian element—though to a lesser degree because the element being brought forward is less ancient—so also, in the case of the French element, the raying forth is accompanied at its source by a hollowing out. It is particularly interesting to view history in the light of this. Take the way in which great French statesmen, such as Richelieu or Mazarin, inaugurate and carry on world diplomacy by translating old impulses into the diplomatic, political element. The servants of Louis XIV think on a European, not a French, scale and see themselves as the obvious leaders of Europe as regards the diplomatic, the universal, diplomatic element. One element, one impulse, always absorbs the other. It is not for nothing that cardinals practised in politics and diplomacy surround the King of France when the French state is at its zenith.

Studying that time particularly in the history of France, we find that the very concern which sends diplomacy all over Europe withdraws from its own country infinitely great forces in the realm of economics, finance, and also culture in general, hollowing it out down to the fine details. To see things this way, they must, of course, not be viewed in the light of national prejudices, but in all truth, objectively and impartially. This hollowing out is also the source of that uprising of the people into the element of revolution which leads to the exact opposite of what would be the most suitable for the French state: monarchy. In the Spanish-Italian realm there is no parallel to this Revolution, for the reasons I have already given. Yet it is precisely this Revolution which shows how strangely this contrast works in the French element, this contrast between concern for European diplomacy and the lesser concern for one's own country.

For we must not forget that the fifth post-Atlantean period was accompanied by the spread of civilization and culture across the whole earth, which went with the discovery of hitherto unknown regions. We see how, as a matter of course, those states which border the ocean build up their navies. French diplomacy spreads its concern over the whole earth, and at the same time—you can follow this in the various trends of history—the French navy begins to blossom; but this has its opposite in what rages uncared-for within and then comes to expression in the Revolution. It is notable that the more the Revolution proceeds, the more the French navy is neglected. You can observe how, during the build-up to the French Revolution, France's sea power grows ever smaller as her navy is totally neglected.

This has a significant consequence. When the French element withdraws once again from the revolutionary age and returns to what is more suited to it—the emperorship of Napoleon—there develops in the person of Napoleon that significant opposition to the third element, that element which is now suitable for the fifth post-Atlantean period, the opposition of France against England. This had been in preparation for a long time but in the person of Napoleon it took on quite a new character that differed greatly from the character it had had before.

What is most remarkable in all the waves created by Napoleonism? If you investigate what lived in Europe with regard to Napoleon, you find the important opposition between Napoleon and England. But Napoleon lacked something which was missing in the heritage of the Revolution, something which had to be lacking—I speak of a historical necessity—but which he would have needed so that the second element could have asserted itself against the third, the French against the English, namely: a navy! Hypotheses are only justified in connection with history as tools for understanding, but they can indeed make a great contribution. So let us make a hypothesis: If Napoleon had had a navy which he could have joined to those of other countries with which he was allied, he would not have been defeated at sea by England and the whole of history would have taken a different course. But the Revolution had not given him a navy. Here we see the mutual limitation of the two elements, those of the third and the fourth post-Atlantean periods, as they rise up into the fifth.

Now we come to the third element, the one which corresponds to the fifth post-Atlantean period and has the task of bringing into being the culture of the consciousness soul: the English, the British element. The sentient soul element, brought into culture by the Italian-Spanish sphere, expresses itself in the theocratic element of the cultus—the sentient soul does not live in consciousness. Similarly the political and diplomatic element corresponds to the French sphere. And now in the British sphere we have the commercial and industrial element, in which the human soul lives fully and entirely in the material world of the physical plane. But we must make clear an important difference. The Papacy could only pretend to world dominance for one particular reason.

Here [the lecturer drew] is the fourth post-Atlantean period. Now comes the first element, A, of the fifth post-Atlantean period, the papal, hierarchical element. It strives for a kind of universal monarchy because in a certain way it is the continuation of the universal Roman Empire.

Here, B, is the culture of the intellectual or mind soul. It also strives for something universal, but it is something universal that is very much in the realm of ideas. The most important consequence of the spread of the French element are not the conquests, which are merely side-effects, but the saturation of the world with the political spirit, with political, diplomatic thinking and feeling—that diplomatic, political thinking found not only in French diplomacy and politics, but also in literature and even the other aspects of French artistic life. A universal monarchy in connection with this could only be described as a kind of universal dream. And the way in which France marched in the forefront of civilization is a very exact expression of this dream.

In contrast, we now come to the third element, C. This, in harmony with the whole of the fifth post-Atlantean period, which has the task of bringing to expression the consciousness soul, is what corresponds to the British element, the special bearer of the consciousness soul in the age which is to develop especially the consciousness soul. Hence the pretension of the British element to universal commercial and industrial world dominance.

My dear friends, things which have their foundation in the spiritual world will run their course. They will, with all certainty, run their course. Do not imagine that you can moralize or theorize about this. They will run their course and become fact. Nobody need believe, therefore, that the mission of the British people will not—out of inner necessity—become fact: namely, the mission to found a universal commercial and industrial monarchy over the whole earth. The pretensions emerge as realities. These things have to be recognized as lying in world karma. And what people express and what they think is only a revelation of spiritual forces behind the scenes. So nobody should believe that British politics will ever be morally reformed and withdraw, out of consideration for the world, from the pretension to dominate the world industrially and commercially. Therefore we need not be surprised either that those who understand these things have founded societies whose sole aim is to realize such aims by the use of means which are also spiritual means.

This is where the forbidden interplay begins. For obviously occult principles, occult means and occult impulses are not permissible as promoters, as driving forces, especially in the fifth post-Atlantean period, which ought to be a purely materialistic civilization. The moment occult impulses work behind the spread of this purely materialistic culture, things become questionable. Yet, as I have shown you, this is what is happening. There are those who want to foster world dominance not only with the forces available on the physical plane, but also with the impulses of occultism, the impulses which lie in the world of the invisible. But these occult means are not used to work for the good of mankind in general but only for the good of a group. If you see the connection between such encompassing viewpoints, given to you from deeper knowledge, and everyday events, you will thoroughly understand a great deal.

There are still plenty of praiseworthy idealists—this is not meant as any kind of mockery, for idealism is always praiseworthy, even when it errs—who believe that the network of commercial and industrial measures, which has been spread by the British Empire over various countries, can only last as long as the war, and that after that people will once more be free to go about their own commercial business. Apart from a few illusions which will be raised by creating some interregnum or other, or by some other means to prevent people from becoming suspicious, all the measures that have been set up during this war to control commercial traffic throughout the world are not intended as something that will disappear once the war is over, but as something which is only beginning with the help of the war and will then continue. The war merely provides the opportunity for noses to be poked into business records. But do not imagine that this poking of noses into business records will cease after the war. I am speaking symbolically to describe something that will take place on the widest scale. What I mean is that commercial world dominance will become more and more thorough.

I am not saying all this in order to be inflammatory, but simply in order to show you what, out of the impulses of world history, really is the case. Only by recognizing what is really the case can people learn to conduct themselves appropriately. That is no doubt why that map of the European world turned out in the way I showed you on the blackboard yesterday. Let me repeat: I have traced this map back to the eighties of the nineteenth century. How far back it goes beyond that I do not know. I state only what I know, only what I can assert with certainty. That is why I have said nothing about the Scandinavian countries, since I do not know whether any plans have been made for them too. I limit myself strictly to what I know, and wish to stress this particularly on this occasion, though it is a principle which I follow on every occasion.

Further, this map—that is, this rearrangement of European affairs—has the tendency to serve the formation of a universal commercial monarchy. Europe is to be arranged in such a way that a universal commercial monarchy can be founded. I am not saying that this is to happen by tomorrow. But you can see that part payments are already being demanded. Only compare the most recent note to Wilson with the map of Europe, and there you have it. Nothing is said as yet about Switzerland. This payment on account will be demanded later. But as the demands appear one by one they will correspond to the map I drew yesterday.

The division of Europe shown there is suited to the founding of commercial world dominance. Study the details of this map and you will see that it is well conceived as a basis for founding what I have just said. I said: commercial world dominance. There is no need actually to possess all the territories, for it is quite sufficient to arrange them in such a way that they fall into one's sphere of influence. It is also very cleverly arranged so that at first those very regions will be drawn into the sphere of influence which I yesterday coloured yellow, as being the ones to be claimed as British: the peripheral territories. Indeed, in order to leave the others a little longer in the warm glow of a certain idealism, it is possible to arrange things in such a way that one practises the commercial domination oneself while leaving the others to play about with territories for a little longer. But the spheres of influence will be established as the drawing shows. It is quite irrelevant whether in the year 1950 there will be a Belgium, or a France extending right up to the border. The important thing is what power Belgians have in Belgium, or the French in France, and what power the British have in Belgium or France. In order to found commercial world dominance it is not necessary to actually possess the territories. What we must be clear about is that this world dominance is to be commercial and industrial. This is the basis for something extremely important.

I should, though, have to give a whole series of lectures if I needed to prove these things to you in detail. This would be perfectly possible, for the things I am saying can be proved very profoundly. Today, however, I can only draw an outline. In order to found a commercial and industrial world dominance, the first thing to do is to divide the main region into two parts. This has to do with the nature of commercial and industrial affairs. I can only explain this by using an analogy: Whatever takes place on the physical plane always requires a splitting into two parts.

Imagine a teacher without any pupils; there is no such thing. In the same way there cannot be a commercial empire without another region which is its counterpart. Therefore if a British commercial empire is founded, then a Russian opposite pole must be founded too. So that a differentiation can arise between buying and selling, so that the necessary circulation can come about, two regions are needed. If the whole world were to be made into a unified realm, it would be impossible to found a universal commercial realm. It is not quite the same, but similar to saying that if you produce something you need a buyer, otherwise you cannot produce. So this twofold split is necessary. And the fact that this has been initiated as a major trend is a great—indeed, a gigantic—conception on the part of those secret brotherhoods of which I have spoken. To create this contrast is a conception of universal proportions, against which everything else pales into insignificance: this contrast, between the British commercial empire on the one hand and, on the other, all that emanates from the Russian sphere involving, through their spiritual capacities, preparations for the sixth post-Atlantean period, together with everything I have described to you. It is a great, gigantic, admirable conception of these secret brotherhoods about whom we have spoken. Put simply, it is hardly possible to imagine a better opposite pole for what has developed in the West—namely, the supreme flowering of commercial and industrial thought—than the future Russian Slav who in times to come is sure to be even less inclined than he is today to occupy himself professionally with commercial matters, and who, just because of this, will be an excellent polar opposite.

A commercial empire of this kind will, of course, have to state its own terms. Profound thought on the part of Spencer, and even his predecessor, led them to stress repeatedly: The industrial and commercial element which suffuses a nation does not want to have anything to do with war; it is for peace, it needs peace and loves peace. It is absolutely true: There will indeed be a deep love between the element striving towards commerce and industry and the element striving towards peace in the world. Only this love for peace can sometimes adopt bizarre forms, as witness the present note to Wilson, which certainly contains something peculiar.

Look at what happens to Austria in this map, which is drawn exactly in accordance with the note. Yet this note dares to express something else as well: The common political unity living in the nations of Central Europe is not to be touched in any way. Well, this too is ‘gigantic’, a gigantically frivolous game with the truth. Usually untruths are not actually put down on paper, but here we have one note which says two different things: We shall dismember the middle realm, but we shall, of course, do it no harm. There is an accompanying chorus from the newspapers too. They write: Let us see whether the Central Powers will agree to these acceptable terms. Everywhere we read: The Entente Powers have stated their terms; now we shall see whether these terms, which ought to be eminently acceptable to the Central Powers, are bluntly rejected or not. Things have come a long way, have they not! For such things are there for all to read.

Now let us see where the thought leads us. We are dealing here with a splitting of the world into two parts, and those concerned are interested in achieving this in such a way that they can say to the world: We want peace, we stand only for peace. The recipe they are following is one which is behind much that is written today. It is like saying: I shall not touch you, I shall not harm a hair of your head, but I shall lock you in a deep dungeon and not give you anything to eat! Have I done anything to you? Could anyone maintain that I have harmed even a single hair of your head?

Many things are shaped in accordance with this recipe. Even the love for peace, despite the fact that it is a reality, is shaped in accordance with it. But if this love for peace is paired with a pretension to commercial world dominance it becomes unacceptable for the other side and it is utterly impossible to apply it. And so the peace-loving commercial empire is sure to find itself in future somewhat disturbed in its love for peace. This is, of course, known to those who divide the world into two parts, and so they need a rampart in between. This rampart is to take the form of the great southern European confederation which also comprises Hungary and everything else I mentioned yesterday. This is supposed to make for peace. Through the sphere of influence I have hinted at, the manner in which the British Empire is behaving towards the Mediterranean shows that it can quite easily give the southern European confederation Constantinople, as well as all kinds of other things. For they cannot go further than the Mediterranean, since the West, if it so wishes, can blockade the Mediterranean at any time.

In short, you can follow in every detail the gigantic, splendid thought on which this map is based. We have not enough time today to go through everything in detail. But it is a gigantic, splendid thought to leave only the southern ports which lead to the Mediterranean open for France, whilst keeping the others under one's own sphere of influence. This means, basically, that the French Empire, which France was anyway only able to found under the protection of the others, becomes an illusion, and can also be included in one's sphere of influence. If you follow all this, you will see in how gigantic a manner is to be realized—out of what belongs to the culture of the consciousness soul—what these occult schools are striving to achieve.

Those things which correspond to certain impulses do come to pass. For necessity governs world history and world evolution. These things do come to pass. But they come to pass in such a way that forces really do mutually affect one another. Just as there can never be positive without negative electricity; where opposites work on one another with varying intentions—so is it also in the events of human history. Therefore we must be careful, when we turn our attention to such things, to apply judgement that is free of moralizing. This also saves us from asking: Why must such a thing happen? For in the mission of one element or another is included the fact that things develop which must develop. And the adversary, the opposite pole must also exist: namely, something that resists whatever it is that wants to come about. This also must exist. So if we now once again take a wide view of all these things, we shall see something working in from the periphery which we have characterized as these three elements.

First let us return to the centre. Our concern here is that the adversary, the opposite pole should be there, so that a kind of brake can always be applied. This brake is just as necessary as the other element. And I blame one as little as I praise the other. I am simply describing the impulses and the facts. I have not the least inclination to pronounce a morally disparaging judgement on something I am describing as a necessity arising out of the whole character of the fifth post-Atlantean period. There is nothing bad about giving the world a materialistic, industrial, commercial culture, for this is a necessity. But the opposite pole must exist, too, for human evolution cannot proceed in a straight line. Opposing forces must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves. In Central Europe a collection of impulses has always of necessity existed, some of which worked with those streaming to the periphery in the way I have already described, while others had what was in many ways the tragic destiny of working in opposition to these.

These forces certainly stream outwards from Central Europe and make themselves felt elsewhere in many ways. But if you look closely you will find also in Central Europe the forces that oppose those I have described. Consider, for instance, that the first opposition to the theocratic, cultic element of the Spanish and Italian South came from Central Europe. It reached a certain climax in Luther and its greatest profundity in the mysticism of Central Europe. Not only German elements worked here, for mingled in the Central European stream were also Slav elements. Here there was a desire not for the Christianity of the Papal hierarchy, but for precisely that inwardness that had been hollowed out in the South. Savonarola was, after all, simply executed. This inwardness lived in the Czech, John Huss, and in Wyclif who stemmed from the Germanic element in England, and in Zwingli, and in Luther. Its more profound element is to be found in the mysticism of Central Europe, which, by the way, is very close to the Slav element. Precisely these relationships show how things fulfil themselves in a remarkable way. For Central Europe backed up by the Slav element is, in this, certainly an opponent of the periphery. So although they are in many aspects still disunited politically, Central European influences and Slav influences work together. In an occult sense, too, they work together fundamentally in a wonderful way.

We see how a certain materialistic element develops more and more in the South, reaching a peak in such people as Lombroso. We see this materialistic element setting the tone elsewhere in the periphery, as well. Right up to Oliver Lodge, about whom we spoke recently, we see materialism projecting itself into spiritual life. But on the other hand we also see how this is opposed by something which emancipates itself—to start with, from the Roman, hierarchical element. In this, Copernicus, the Pole, stands behind Kepler, the archetypal German; in this, Slav spirits, in particular, stand behind those who are German spirits. Indeed I could say: On the physical plane we see links between what is Central European and what is Slav; Huss, the Czech, Copernicus, the Pole—others might just as easily be named—these form a link stretching across the physical plane. We see, too, how in Central Europe the Slav element joins with the German element—we see the eastern European Slav element growing together with Europe. This, though, we only see when we consider the occult situation.

Let me give only one example: The soul of Galileo lives again in the Russian Lomonosov, and the Russian Lomonosov is in many ways the founder of Slav culture in the East. In between these two lies the spiritual world, so that we might say: The Central European Slavs are still linked with the people of the West on the physical plane; what lies behind this is linked with the people of the West via the higher plane.

This fits entirely with the fact that the Russian element follows the Slav element; but it also fits with the situation in which the western Slav element must be thought of as having a relationship to Western Europe differing from that of the eastern Slav element. Therefore, only those who do not think in accordance with human evolution as a whole, but solely in accordance with the English-speaking Empire, will want to assimilate Poland in the Russian Empire.

This point in particular gives an example of the difference between the kind of thinking which is concerned only with a particular group and that other kind of thinking which is concerned with the good of mankind as a whole. The thinking which is concerned with the good of mankind as a whole could never include the territory of Poland in the Russian Empire. For in a remarkable way it is precisely the western Slavs with their profoundest characteristics who belong to Central Europe. I cannot speak today about the checkered destiny of the Polish people. But I just want to say that the spiritual culture of the Polish people found one of its culminations in the Polish messianic movement—let everybody think what they like about this reality—which, out of the substance of the Polish people contains spiritual feelings and spiritual ideas belonging to mankind as a whole. We are speaking here, in a way, about that Gnostic element which corresponds to one of the three soul components which are to flow from the western Slavs to Central Europe.

The second element lies in the Czech people to whom—not for nothing—John Huss belongs. Here is the second soul component inserted into Central Europe out of the Slav element. And the third component is from the southern Slavs. These three soul components push westwards like three cultural peninsulas and most certainly do not belong to the eastern European Slav element. Externally, on the physical plane, by means of political marriages, but inwardly by means of what I have just been explaining, this Austria has come about whose purpose it is to amalgamate German and western Slav peoples precisely so that the western Slavs can unfold in accordance with their own impulses. This has nothing to do with any principle of dominance! Anyone who has known Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century will regard as utterly ridiculous what is said in the present note to Wilson about Austria and a certain principle of dominance. Of course the situation is difficult. But anyone familiar with the history of Austria in the nineteenth century knows how possibilities were sought which would enable any Slav people, indeed any nationality whatever, to develop absolutely freely in Austria.

However, all kinds of things are contained in this note. You need only glance at an elementary history textbook to see that the territories Italy is now demanding from Austria have never been under Italian rule. Yet the note says: The Italians are demanding the return of territories which once belonged to them.

But truth is not the concern of this note, for its aim is to say what it wants to say while counting on it that the magical power of modern journalism has persuaded people to believe everything. And you can certainly often count on this. The power of journalism is indeed one of the means on which certain societies count. Just because Austria has been preparing—as it were, beneath the surface—for the mission about which I have spoken, she has always been an opponent, an opposite pole, to any Freemasonry of the kind which has developed in the West in the way I have been describing over the last few weeks. Freemasonry has never been allowed to enter Austria. Its presence begins to be felt to some extent—but merely in the way I have described—only beyond the river Leitha.

Of course there are also other impulses which, as you have seen, are the cause for some degree of leniency, so that the peoples of Central Europe will not be utterly destroyed politically. The war aims, and also the peace initiatives which are at present being made, are in accord with this. But the fact that Austria herself is being attacked so viciously is in part explained by the enmity that has always existed between Austria and western European Freemasonry, right from the days of Maximilan I. It is disguised in various ways, of course, and what I am now saying is easily proved wrong, just because on the physical plane things are disguised, are masked.

So we see how Central Europe has to put up a fight on behalf of mankind, for it is the pole which opposes the impulses coming from the West. This brings it about that the evolution of Central Europe does not proceed in a straight line. It fluctuates, for Central Europe always has to take up and bring to a certain climax, a certain intensity, whatever there is by way of opposition to any of the impulses coming from the West. Take the hierarchical, theocratic impulse. While a kind of Christianity is carried into Europe on the waves of the hierarchical, theocratic impulse, opposition begins to build up as early as the twelfth century. Read Walther von der Vogelweide, that great Central European poet, and you will find he opposes the Roman Papacy and indeed everything Roman. What later reaches a climax in Huss, in Luther, in Zwingli and so on, is already hinted at by Walther von der Vogelweide. Then you also find what is developing as a more inward Christianity, parallel with that of the periphery but inwardly intimate, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival epic.

There, at the very beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, you have opposition against the theocratic, hierarchical, Roman element emanating from Spain and Italy. This opposing pole works in such an extraordinary way that intimate inwardness is never denied. It remains. It is confiscated from the principle of power and fashioned into the opposing pole.

I am neither praising the one nor blaming the other, for I am simply quoting facts. After the hierarchical, theocratic principle came the diplomatic, political principle. It is carried over in all its forms and in all its side manifestations. Here, some historical details are interesting. Something that is often said in historical textbooks is not actually correct: namely, that the invention of gunpowder was the origin of modern military forces, in contrast to the armies of the age of chivalry in the Middle Ages. A much more important factor came into play when, at the beginning of modern times in Europe, the barter economy of the Middle Ages was replaced by a currency economy, so that those in power came to be administrators of money, which had formerly not been the case. Until then, barter had been much more to the fore, with money playing only a minor role. The currency economy led to the development of mercenary armies that were no longer compatible with the armies of the age of chivalry which had been adapted to the barter economy of the Middle Ages.

This modern military organization started in Switzerland. The Swiss were the first soldiers in the modern sense of the fifth post-Atlantean period. You can follow this in history: It was just because the Swiss became such efficient soldiers that they were able to win all those battles they had to win in order to create a Switzerland which would later be able to withstand the assaults of chivalry. I am speaking to the Swiss amongst us. Basically the Swiss with their armies are the primary, the real, conquerors of chivalry. Chivalry was overcome in Switzerland. It was from Switzerland alone that the rest of Europe learnt how to use their armies of infantry to overcome the armies of chivalry. Study history, and you will find that this is true.

Now let us proceed in history to Napoleon. Why were Napoleon's soldiers and armies superior to those of Central Europe? It was because Central Europe was still working, at the time of Napoleon, not with Swiss soldiers of course, but with the Swiss military principle, whereas Napoleon had under his command a real national army born out of the French nation itself. You will appreciate this if you follow the battles between the Central Europeans and Napoleon in the right way. How the generals of the Central European armies had to keep a hold on their mercenaries—for that is what they really were—even inside their barracks! Thus they never had the possibility of a strategy of long battle lines. Napoleon is the first to be able to use long battle lines because the French army at his disposal is a national army born of the people. When strategy necessitated a wide distribution of his forces, he did not need to worry that the men might desert. The Prussian general, on the other hand—for instance during the famous campaigns of Frederick the Great—was constantly concerned that a troop dispatched to a distant spot would desert, for his was not a national army but a crowd collected and sometimes coerced from all quarters; they came from all over the place, including quite foreign parts. The national army was invented in France, and this meant that Central Europe, starting with Prussia, also established national armies modelled on that of France. The Central European national armies came into their own when they assumed a French character.

So we see how even in this field things work parallel with the periphery. When it is a matter of armies, obviously the opposition takes the form of waging war. This is not the point I want to make, however, for I want to lead on to a similar contrast in another field.

So far we have seen that the hierarchical, theocratic, Roman character met its opposition in Central Europe in everything that culminated in the Reformation. The diplomatic, French character made its way into Central Europe up to the time of Frederick the Great, right into the eighteenth century. Lessing was still in a position to debate whether he might, indeed, write Laokoon in French. Read the published correspondence of the eighteenth century. In Central Europe people wrote excellent French and poor German. The French element flooded the whole of Central Europe. We can say that what the Reformation had done to what came up from the South, Lessing, Herder, Goethe and those who came after them did in relation to the French, diplomatic element. Here, in Central European literature, Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Lessing emancipate themselves from the West, just as, in the Reformation, Central European Christianity emancipated itself from the South. But this process of separation goes hand in hand with one of combination. In his youth, Lessing still wrote a great deal in French. Leibniz wrote the whole of his philosophy, apart from what he wrote in Latin, in French, not German. In both these fields there was at the same time a working together and a standing in opposition. It is quite correct to summarize as follows: The South and Central Europe—opposition; the West and Central Europe—opposition.

With the third element, the British, it is the same. At first there is some kind of a parallel course. This is expressed especially in the fact that, from the eighteenth century and during the course of the nineteenth century, the great Shakespeare becomes a thoroughly German poet, for he is totally absorbed into German culture. He is not merely translated, he is totally assimilated and lives in the spiritual life of the German nation. For obvious reasons, I do not want to say that he still lives more in the spiritual life of the German nation than in that of the British nation. But look at the whole development, starting with Elias Schlegel, who first translated Shakespeare into German, and on to Lessing's subtly spiritual penetration into the spirit of Shakespeare; the enthusiasm for Shakespeare felt by the German Naturalists of the eighteenth century, and also by Goethe; the absolutely outstanding—not translations—assimilations into German of Shakespeare by Schlegel and Tieck, and so on, right up to the present. Shakespeare lives in the German nation. When I went to Vienna and sat in on the literary history lectures in addition to my scientific studies, the first I heard were by Schröer, who announced he would be speaking about the three greatest German poets, Schiller, Goethe and Shakespeare! Of course Shakespeare has not been captured in the sense that it is claimed that he is actually German. But this one example shows how standing in opposition can at the same time take the form of an absolute working together.

Thus it was with regard to the diplomatic, political, French element. And so it happened also with regard to the British element. At the same time the opposite pole must be present as well. The third element has not yet found a form in Central Europe. The first was all that led to the Reformation; this was in opposition to the southern, hierarchical element. The West is opposed by what culminated in Goethe's Faust. And what we now hope for in Central Europe is the development of the element of spiritual science. In consequence there will arise the sharpest opposition between Central Europe and the British realm, an opposition even sharper than that of Lessing, Goethe and their successors, with regard to the diplomatic, French element. Thus, what took place between us and the followers of Mrs Besant and so on, was no more than a prelude. These things must be seen from wide points of view.

I hope you know me well enough not to think that I speak out of any petty vanity when I say certain things. But I do believe that the great opposition is to be found between what works with experiments on the physical plane—even to proving the existence of the spirit—on the one hand, and on the other hand what in the human soul longs to rise up to the spiritual world. There is no need for anything as coarse as the declaration of an Alcyone as the actual physical Christ, for the more subtle descriptions by Sir Oliver Lodge would be quite sufficient. One senses what is intended. Well, I suppose there is no harm in saying these things. There is indeed a kind of opposition between two things that came into being more or less simultaneously when, on the one hand, Sir Oliver Lodge pointed to the spiritual world in a materialistic way, while at the same time I was writing my book Vom Menschenrätsel, in which I endeavour, in a totally Central European manner, to point to the paths which are being taken in Central Europe by the human soul to the world of the spirit. There is no greater contrast than that between the book by Oliver Lodge and the book Vom Menschenrätsel. They are absolute opposites; it is impossible to conceive of any greater contrast.

This very clear differentiation only began more or less at the commencement of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Before that, things were still rather different. At first the universal Roman realm exercised its power, even as far as England, and the sharp differentiation between England and France only really came to the fore with the appearance of the Maid of Orleans. But then everything began, everything which was to happen within the context of these differentiations. The remarkable thing is that, even within this context, the impulse appears which says that a link ought to be created with the opposite pole. Thus, as I have often shown, we see the utterly British philosopher Francis Bacon of Verulam, the founder of modern materialistic thinking, inspired from the same source as Shakespeare, working across so strongly into Central Europe, in the way I have described. Jakob Böhme, too, was inspired from the same source. He transforms the whole inspiration into the soul substance of Central Europe. And again from the same source comes the southern German Jesuit Jakobus Baldus.

You see, beneath the surface of what takes place on the physical plane there works what is to bring about harmony. But one must see things as clearly differentiated and not let it all disappear into a nebulous jumble. One of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm stands quite close to the opposition against what is merely commercial within the British commercial empire, and that is James I. James I brings in a new element by continuously inoculating into the substance of the British people something that they will have forever, something that they must not lose if they are not to fall utterly into materialism. What it is that he inoculates into them is something that is linked by underground channels to the whole of the rest of European culture. Here we are confronted by a significant mystery.

You will agree—neither one thing nor the other can be called either justified or unjustified; things simply have to be comprehended as necessary facts. But we must be clear that we surely ought to understand these things properly. It is easy to ask the question: What can I myself do in these painful times? The first thing one can do is to endeavour to understand things, to really see through things. This brings up thoughts which are real forces and these will have an effect. What about the question: Have the good forces no power against the evil forces we see all around us? To answer this we have to remember how difficult human freedom makes it for the spiritual world to assert itself amid the surging waves of materialistic life. This is what it is all about. Is it to be made so very easy for human beings to enter fully into the life of the spirit?

Future ages will look back to today and say: How careless these people were with regard to adopting the life of spirit! The spiritual world is sending it down to us, but human beings resist it with all their might. Apart from all the sadness and suffering holding sway at present, the very fact that all this does hold sway is in itself a destiny signifying a trial. Above all it should be accepted and recognized as a trial. Later it will become apparent to what extent it is necessary for those who—so it is said—are guilty, to suffer together with those who are blameless. For after all, during the course of karma all these things are balanced out. You cannot say: Are not the good spirits going to intervene? They do intervene to the extent that we open ourselves to them, if we have the courage to do so. But first of all we must be serious about understanding things; we must be deeply serious about trying to understand.

As a contribution to this understanding it is necessary that a number of people muster the strength to oppose the surging waves of materialism with their deepest personal being. For something else is going to unite with the materialism that works in the industrial, commercial impulse; something coming from other, retarded impulses from the Chinese and Japanese element, particularly the Japanese element, will become increasingly caught up in materialism.

Yesterday somebody asked whether the societies working from the West for a particular group did not take into account that the Japanese might follow suit from the East. Indeed, the people who belong to these societies do not regard this as something terrible, for they see it as a support for materialism. For what follows suit from Asia will simply be a particular form of materialism. What we must be clear about, at all costs, is that we have to oppose the waves of materialism with all our strength. Every human being is capable of doing this. And the fruits of such efforts will be sure to follow. There is no need to give a name to whatever it is that must work against materialism. Don't call it ‘Central European’, don't call it ‘German’; that is not necessary. But do consider how a counteraction of forces can come about and how this can be objectively proved.

You can summarize in two sentences what is needed to work against materialism—which, after all, has some justification. In the fifth post-Atlantean period the world will become even more pervaded by the industrial and commercial element; but the opposite pole must also exist: There must be people who work on the opposite side because of their understanding of the situation. For what is the aim of these secret brotherhoods? They do not work out of any particular British patriotism, but out of the desire to bring the whole world under the yoke of pure materialism. And because, in accordance with the laws of the fifth post-Atlantean period, certain elements of the British people as the bearer of the consciousness soul are most suitable for this, they want, by means of grey magic, to use these elements as promoters of this materialism.

This is the important point. Those who know what impulses are at work in world events can also steer them. No other national ele¬ment, no other people, has ever before been so usable as material for transforming the whole world into a materialistic realm. Therefore, those who know want to set their foot on the neck of this national element and strip it of all spiritual endeavour—which, of course, lives equally in all human beings. Just because karma has ordained that the consciousness soul should work here particularly strongly, the secret brotherhoods have sought out elements in the British national character. Their aim is to send a wave of materialism over the earth and make the physical plane the only valid one. A spiritual world is only to be recognized in terms of what the physical plane has to offer.

This must be opposed by the endeavours of those who understand the necessity of a spiritual life on earth. Looked at from this point of view, you can express this counter-force in two sentences. One of these is well-known to you, but it does not yet come fully out of the hearts and souls of human beings: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ The sentence ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ must sound forth against that kingdom which is to be spread over the physical plane, that kingdom which is only of this world, that kingdom of commercial and industrial materialism.

There is not enough time today to explain to you how the words ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ link up with the cultivation of what belongs to mankind as a whole—not to what is German, but to what belongs to mankind as a whole. In ancient India there were four castes, in ancient Greece four estates. They came into being one after the other during the course of the second, third and fourth post-Atlantean periods. In the fifth post-Atlantean period the fourth estate, social life, that which belongs to mankind as a whole, must come into being. Not everyone can be a priest, but the priestly element can strive to become the powerful, the dominant estate. We see it doing this in the third post-Atlantean period; there we see it coming to life again in the hierarchical, theocratic, Roman force. And we can see the second caste, the kingly estate in ancient Greece and Rome, coming to life again in the second post-Atlantean element, where the diplomatic, political element is particularly active; for the republican element in France is only the opposite pole of this, just as everything generates its own counterpart. The actual character of the French state corresponds solely to the monarchic principle, so that even now France is a Republic in name only. In reality she is ruled by a king, who happens to be a lawyer who used to conduct cases in Romania. It is not a question of terminology but of facts. What is so terrible today is the way people allow themselves to be so easily intoxicated by words. If somebody is called a president it does not necessarily mean that he is a president, for what matters is the actual situation.

The third estate, as we know, is the industrial element, what was commerce in ancient Egypt and Greece. This is striving to come to the fore again in the British Empire and for the moment must still be dominant over the fourth element, which will eventually be the general, human element. It is interesting to observe this in one particular phenomenon. You do have to gain some insight into what is really going on if you want to understand the world. Ask the question: Where has the theory of Socialism been worked out with the greatest discernment? You will receive a curious answer: Among German Socialists. For in accordance with the principle I explained to you, the Germans always have the mission to work concepts out in their purest form. So even for Socialism the Germans have worked out pure concepts, but the German concept of Socialism does not fit in at all with the state of affairs in Germany.

Social conditions in Germany do not correspond in any way to the German theory of Socialism! For instance, it is quite comprehensible that, after teaching in a Socialist school for a while, I should have been banned from teaching there, after I said that it ought to be in keeping with Socialism to develop a theory of freedom. On behalf of the leader of the Social Democrats I was told: It is not freedom that matters, but reasoned persuasion! Socialist theory does not fit in with social conditions. In other words, social theory ought to be developed on the basis of the evolution of mankind. On this basis its three great principles are developed: Firstly the principle of the materialistic view of history, secondly the principle of added value, and thirdly the principle of class war.

The three principles are minutely worked out, but they do not fit in with social conditions in Germany. However, they correspond exactly to social conditions in England. That, after all, is where they were worked out. That is where Marx worked on them first of all, and then also Engels, and Bernstein. This is their source. Here they fit in because—to take the third principle—they are founded on the class war. And this class war is waged, basically, in the British soul. Think of Cromwell. If you study all the impulses that have reigned in the British soul since Cromwell, you will wind up with material for the third principle, the principle of class war. Furthermore, since the invention of the spinning-jenny and the commencement of the social life which came into being as a result, everything that has flowed into the theory of added value has been uppermost in the British Empire. And the materialistic view of history is, when you look at it, nothing but Buckle's view of history translated into a pedantic German way of thinking. Look at Buckle's History of Civilisation. It is written in accordance with the way such things are written within the framework of British culture: namely, according to the principle of never entering into consequences. Darwin, too, did not enter into the consequences. He limited himself in a certain way. But in Karl Marx's materialistic view of history the matter is transformed with severity—regardless of consequences—in, if you like, a pedantic, German way.

It is interesting that no theory has been worked out for the general human element, the fourth caste or class. In this element there can be no question of dominance, for there is nothing below it over which dominance might be exercised; it is solely a matter of laying the foundation for human beings to relate with one another. A theory for this will only come about when the general human element given in anthroposophical spiritual science is made the foundation.

This, if it is not misunderstood, will lead to that other, second sentence which is to be added to the first: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ The second sentence is: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.’ This means that a proper attitude to life, a real cultivation of life, can only come about when one realizes that the spiritual element must be cultivated, because the spiritual world must penetrate down into the physical world. But there is no point in making any statements at all unless they can be comprehended wholeheartedly in the soul. These statements must be comprehended: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's’ and ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ Then the atmosphere of the spiritual world will come, an atmosphere that has nothing to do with those materialistic things which have especially to develop in the fifth post-Atlantean period. But for this to happen, things must be seen in their true guise.

To summarize what we have been considering, let me say: May your hearts strive to see things in their true guise. Only if hearts exist which see things in their true guise and penetrate that terrible fog of untruth which shrouds everything in the world today, can we progress in an appropriate way. As I said: Since the bow-string is stretched to its limit, it will break. In this sense this document that people have had the temerity to present to the world at this late stage, and whatever is said in response to this document, does in the first instance hold out a prospect of improvement. Whatever horrors still lie ahead of us, this document represents a challenge to the Spirit of Truth himself, and he will certainly intervene in these matters in an appropriate manner! You need only remember—let me say this in conclusion—the exemplary, or should I say non-exemplary, manner in which we ourselves have been treated.

We have endeavoured to be as cosmopolitan as possible over the years. We have tried in the most conscientious way to preserve this archetypal German trait of cosmopolitanism. And what is the consequence? Read the slanderous things said about us in Britain; the theosophists there have slanted everything to make it appear that we have some kind of Germanic aspirations. We have no such aspirations; they have been foisted on us by others.

Edouard Schuré,—one on whom we relied so heavily in France, and towards whom we have never been tempted to display any kind of Germanic quality, since he is fundamentally himself the bearer of German cultural life to France—even he has interpreted things containing no trace of nationalism as being ‘pan-Germanic’. How curious that only the other day we should have found under ‘Edouard Schuré’ in an encyclopaedia: ‘The mediator of German culture to France.’ This is entirely apt, for truly the only French thing about Schuré is the language he speaks. Of course, if language is taken to be paramount, then naturally the whole man can be considered French. So one is a pan-Germanist if one does not speak about the Germans in the manner preferred by the French chauvinist Schuré . And one is a German agent if one does not speak about the Germans in the way required by Mrs Besant. Similar things are beginning to appear in Italy, too, among our former friends.

So it became necessary to defend ourselves. And the present time is proving most opportune for those who want to point fingers at us and say: See what attacks they are making; that shows who is the aggressor! There is the Vollrath method, and there is the Gösch method. We see it everywhere and we know it from within our own circles. First you force the other fellow to defend himself and then you treat him as the aggressor. It is a very effective method and one that plays an enormously strong role in the world today. The attacker hides behind the clamour he raises after he has forced the other to defend himself by labelling him the aggressor.

Yet we have no other purpose than to serve the mission of furthering spiritual life and gaining recognition for spiritual life. This is linked on the one hand with the principle: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, and on the other with the principle: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.’ Both are also, as you know, good Christianity. But it will be a long time before such things are understood in every detail.

Nowadays strange things are once again being said. Let me just mention this as my very last point. It is said: The Entente has stated its aims with regard to the war; now let the Central Powers state their aims, so that like can be compared with like. Indeed, this clamour for the war aims of the Central Powers has been heard for some time. Well, we have discussed some of the war aims of the Entente. But why should Central Europe name its war aims? It never had any! It has none! So quite naturally it took the stand: We will gladly negotiate, for then it will become clear what it is you want and then we shall have something on which to base our talks; but as far as we are concerned, we have nothing in particular to say; we merely want to live. Of course this does make it possible for the others to say: They are not willing to tell us what their war aims are; that means there must be something suspicious going on. There is nothing suspicious going on. Central Europe wants nothing now that it did not want in 1913 and 1912. It had no war aims then and it has none now.

It is not what is said that is important but whether what is said conforms with reality. On every side we now hear the loud cry that a particularly cunning, wily trick lies at the bottom of the Central Powers' Christmas call for peace. So this Christmas call for peace is supposed to contain some trick, some wish to dupe everybody else. On many sides it is said that the Central Powers never wanted peace but were only seeking for some clever way of carrying on the war. The answer to that is: If only they had reacted to this call for peace! All they needed to do was accept it and they would soon have known whether it was some kind of trick. Along this path lies genuine thinking rather than an inclination to believe in empty phrases. We must, my dear friends, overcome the empty phrase with all the forces of our soul. This is the most intimate task we have to accomplish in our own soul.

This last lecture of the winter series will be devoted to that realm in the life of the soul which has been enriched by so many of the greatest treasures that spring from man's inner life. We will consider the nature and significance of art in the evolution of mankind. Since the field is so wide, we will confine ourselves to the art of poetry, and you will understand that we have time to consider only the highest achievements of the human spirit in this realm.

Now someone might say: “The lectures this winter have been concerned with various aspects of the human soul, and their central purpose has been to seek for truth and knowledge in relation to the spiritual world—what have these studies to do with the human activities which strive, above all, to give expression to the element of beauty?” And in our time it would be easy to take the view that everything connected with truth and cognition should be kept far, far apart from the aims of artistic work. A widely prevalent belief today is that science in all its branches must be subject to strict rules of logic and experiment, whereas artistic work follows the spontaneous promptings of the heart and the imagination. Many of our contemporaries, accordingly, would say that truth and beauty have nothing in common. And yet, the great leaders in the realm of artistic creation have always felt that true art should flow from the same deep sources in the being of man as do knowledge and cognition.

To take one example, only, we will turn to Goethe, a seeker both for beauty and for truth. As a young man he strove by all possible means to acquire knowledge of the world and to find answers to the great riddles of existence. Before the time of his journey to Italy, which was to take him to a country enshrining longed-for ideals, he had pursued his search for truth, together with his Weimar friends, by studying, for example, the philosopher Spinoza,⁵⁹ who sought to find a uniform substance in all the phenomena of life. Spinoza's dissertations on the idea of God made a deep impression on Goethe. Together with Merck⁶⁰ and other friends he believed he could hear in Spinoza something like a voice which spoke through all surrounding phenomena and seemed to give intimations concerning the sources of existence—an idea which could appease in some way his Faustian aspirations. But Goethe's soul was too richly endowed for him to gain from a conceptual analysis of Spinoza's works a satisfying picture of truth and knowledge. What he felt about this, and what his heart longed for, will emerge most clearly if we accompany him on his travels in Italy where he beheld great works of art and caught in them an echo of the art of antiquity. In their presence he experienced the feeling he had hoped in vain to draw from the ideas of Spinoza. Thus he wrote to his friends in Weimar: “One thing is certain: the ancient artists had as much knowledge of Nature, and as sure an idea of what can be represented and of how it should be done, as Homer himself. Unfortunately, works of art of the highest order are all too few. But when one contemplates them, one's only desire is to get to know them rightly and then to depart in peace. These supreme works of art have been created by men as the highest products of Nature in accordance with true natural laws. Everything arbitrary or merely fanciful falls away; there is necessity, there is God.”⁶¹

Goethe believed he could discern that the great artists who had created works of art of this high order had drawn them out of their souls in accordance with the same laws that Nature herself had followed. This can mean only that in Goethe's view of the laws of Nature, which operate in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, are raised to a new level and gain new strength in the human soul, so that they come to full expression in the soul's creative powers. Goethe felt that in these works of art the laws of Nature were operative again and thus he wrote to his Weimar friends: “Everything arbitrary or merely fanciful falls away; there is necessity, there is God.” At such moments, Goethe's heart is stirred by the recognition that art in its highest manifestations comes from the same sources as do knowledge and cognition, and we realise how deeply Goethe felt this to be true when he declares: “Beauty is a manifestation of Nature's secret laws, which would otherwise remain forever hidden.”⁶² Thus Goethe sees in art a revelation of Nature's laws, which in its own language confirms the findings of cognition in other fields of investigation. If now we turn from Goethe to a modern personality who also sought to invest art with a mission and to bestow on mankind, through art, something related to the sources of existence—if we turn to Richard Wagner, we find in his writings, where he tries to clarify for himself the nature and significance of artistic creation, many similar indications of the inner relationships between truth and beauty, cognition and art. In writing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he says that these sounds convey something like a revelation from another world something quite different from anything we can grasp in merely rational or logical terms.⁶³

Of these revelations through art, one thing at least can be said with certainty. They act upon the soul with convincing power and permeate our feeling with a conviction of their truth, in face of which all merely rational or logical considerations are powerless.

Again, in writing about symphonic music, Wagner says that something resounds from it as though its instruments were an organ for revealing the feelings that went into the primal act of creation, when chaos was ordered and harmonised, long before any human heart was there to echo those feelings. Thus in the revelations of art Wagner saw a mysterious truth that could stand on an equal footing with knowledge gained by the intellect.

Something else may be added here. When we make acquaintance with great works of art in the sense of spiritual science, we feel that they communicate their own revelation concerning man's search for truth, and the spiritual scientist feels himself inwardly related to this message. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that he feels more closely related to it than he does to many of the so-called spiritual revelations that people accept so light-heartedly today.

How is it, then, that truly artistic personalities attribute to art a mission of this kind, while the spiritual scientist feels his heart so strongly drawn to these mysterious revelations of great art? We will approach an answer to this question by bringing together many things that have come before our souls during these winter lectures.

If we are to study the significance and task of art from this point of view, we must not go by human opinions or the quibblings of the intellect. We must consider the development of art in relation to the evolution of man and the world. We will let art itself speak to us of its significance for mankind.

If we wish to trace the beginnings of art, as it first appears among men in the guise of poetry, then according to ordinary ideas we have to go back very far indeed. Here we will go back only as far as the extant documents can take us. We will go back to a figure often regarded as legendary—to Homer, the originator of Greek poetry, whose work has come down to us in the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Whoever was the author—or authors, for we will not go into that question today—of these two poems, the remarkable thing is that both poems begin on a quite impersonal note:

Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles ...

Sing, O Muse, of much-travelled man ...

are the opening words of the second Homeric poem, the Odyssey. The author thus wishes to indicate that he is indebted to a higher power for his verses, and we need only a little understanding of Homer to realise that for him this higher power was not a symbol but a real, objective Being. If this invocation to the Muse means nothing to modern readers, this is because they no longer have the experiences from which a poem as impersonal as Homer's could derive. And if we are to understand this impersonal element in early Western poetry, we must ask: What preceded it? Whence did it arise?

In speaking of human evolution, we have often emphasised that in the course of millennia the powers of the human soul have changed. In the far-distant past, beyond the reach of external history but open to spiritual-scientific investigation, human souls were endowed with a primitive dreamy clairvoyance. In times before men were so deeply embedded in material existence as they came to be later on, they perceived the spiritual world as a reality all around them. We have pointed out also that the ancient clairvoyance was different from the trained, conscious clairvoyance that can be attained today, for this is bound up with the existence of a firm centre in the life of the soul, whereby a man takes hold of himself as an ego. This ego-feeling, as we now have it after its gradual development through long ages, was not present in the far-distant past. But for this very reason, because man lacked this inner centre, his spiritual senses were open and with his dreamy, ego-less clairvoyance he looked into the spiritual world from which his true inner being had emerged in the primal past. Powerful pictures, like dream-pictures, of the forces behind our physical existence came before his soul. In this spiritual world he saw his gods, he saw the actions and events that were played out among them. And present-day research is quite wrong in supposing that the sagas of the gods, found in various forms in different countries, were the product merely of popular fantasy. If it is thought that in the remote past the human soul functioned just as it does today, except that it was more prone to imagine things, including the imaginary gods of the sagas that is sheer fantasy and it is those who believe it who are imagining things. For people in that remote past, the events described in their mythologies were realities. Myths, sagas, even fairy-tales and legends, were born from a primeval faculty in the human soul. This is connected with the fact that man had not yet acquired the firm central point in his soul which now enables him to live within himself and in possession of himself. In the far past he could not shut himself up in his ego, within the narrow boundaries of his soul, separated from his environment, as he came to do later on. He lived in his environment, feeling that he belonged to it, whereas a modern man feels that he stands apart from it. And just as man today can feel in his bodily organism the inflow and outflow of the physical strength he needs to sustain his life, so primeval man, with his clairvoyant consciousness, was aware of spiritual forces flowing in and out of him, so that he lived in inward reciprocity with the forces of the great world; and he could say: “When something takes place in my soul, when I think, feel or will, I am not a separate being. I am open to forces from the beings who come before my inward sight. By sending their forces into me, they stimulate me to think and feel and will. “That was the experience of man when he was still embedded in the spiritual world. He felt that spiritual powers were active in his thinking, and that when he accomplished anything, divine-spiritual powers had poured into him their willing and their purpose. In those primeval times, man felt himself to be a vessel through which spiritual powers expressed themselves.

Here we are looking back to a period far away in the past, but this period extended, through all sorts of intermediate stages, right up to the time of Homer. It is not difficult to discern how Homer was giving continued expression to the primeval consciousness of mankind: we need only look at some features of the Iliad. Homer describes a great armed struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans, but how does he do this? What did the struggle signify for the Greeks of that time?

Although Homer may not start out from this aspect, there was more in this struggle than the antagonism generated by the passions, desires and ideas which stem from the human ego. Was it merely the personal and tribal emotions of Trojans and Greeks that clashed in this fighting? No! The legend which provides a connecting link between primeval and Homeric consciousness tells how three goddesses, Hera, Pallas Athene and Aphrodite, competed at a festival for the prize of beauty, and how a human connoisseur of beauty, Paris, son of the king of Troy, was appointed to judge the contest. Paris gave the prize to Aphrodite, who had promised him the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife. The woman was Helen, wife of king Menelaus of Sparta. In order to gain possession of Helen, Paris had to abduct her by force. In revenge for this outrage, the Greeks armed themselves for war against the Trojans, whose country lay on the far side of the Aegean sea, and it was there that the struggle was fought out.

Why did human passions flare up in this way, and why did all the events described by Homer's Muse take place? Were they merely physical events in the human world? No. Through the consciousness of the Greeks we see depicted the antagonism of the goddesses behind the strife of men. A Greek of that time could have said: “I cannot find in the physical world the causes which have brought human beings into violent conflict. I must look up to a higher realm, where the gods and their powers are set against one another.” The divine powers, as they were seen at the time in the images which we have just described, were actively involved in human conflicts. Thus we see the first great work of poetic art, Homer's Iliad, growing out of the primeval consciousness of mankind. In Homer we find presented in metrical form, from the standpoint of a later consciousness, an echo of the clairvoyant vision which came naturally to primeval humanity. And it is precisely in this Homeric period that we must look for the first time when clairvoyant consciousness came to an end for the Greek people, and only an echo of it remained.

A primeval man would have said: “I can see my gods battling in the spiritual world, which lies open to my clairvoyant consciousness.” In Homeric times this was no longer possible, but a living memory of it endured. And just as primeval man had felt inspired by the divine worlds wherein he had his being, so the author of the Homeric epics felt the same divine forces holding sway in his soul. Hence he could say: “The Muse that inspires me inwardly is speaking.” Thus the Homeric poems are directly connected with primeval myths, if these are rightly understood. From this point of view, we can see arising in Homer's poetic imagination something like a substitute for the old clairvoyance. The ruling cosmic powers withdrew direct clairvoyant vision from man, and gave him, instead, something that could live similarly in the soul and could endow it with formative power. Poetic imagination is compensation for the loss of ancient clairvoyance.

Now let us recall something else. In the lecture on Conscience we saw that the withdrawal of the old clairvoyance occurred in quite different ways and at different times in various countries. In the East the old clairvoyance persisted up to a relatively late date. Over towards the West, among the peoples of Europe, clairvoyant faculties were less widely present. In the latter peoples, a strong ego-feeling came to the fore while other soul-powers and faculties were still relatively undeveloped. This ego-feeling emerged in the most varied ways in different parts of Europe—differently between North and West, and notably different in the South. In pre-Christian times it developed most intensively in Sicily and Italy. While in the East men remained for a long time without an ego-feeling, in these regions of Europe there were people in whom the ego-feeling was particularly strong because they had lost the old clairvoyance. In the proportion that the spiritual world withdraws externally from man does his inward ego-feeling light up.

Hence there was bound to be a great difference at certain times between the souls of the Asiatic peoples and the souls living in the parts of Europe we are concerned with here. Over there in Asia we see how the cosmic mysteries still rise before the soul in great dream-pictures, and how man can witness the deeds of the gods as they unroll externally before his spiritual eye. And in that, which such a man can relate, we can discern something like a primeval account of the spiritual facts underlying the world. When the old clairvoyance was succeeded in Asia by the substitute for it, imagination, this gave rise especially to visionary symbols in picture form.

Among the Western peoples, in Italy and Sicily, a different faculty, arising from a firmly-grounded ego, produced a kind of excess of strength, an enthusiasm that broke forth from the soul, unaccompanied by any direct spiritual vision but inspired by a longing to reach up to things unseen. Here, therefore, we find no recounting of the deeds of the gods, for these were no longer evident. But when with ardent devotion, expressed in speech and song, the soul aspired to the heights it could only long for, primitive prayer and chant were born, addressed to powers which could not now be seen after the waning of old clairvoyant consciousness.

In Greece, the intermediate country, the two worlds meet. There we find men who are stimulated from both sides. Pictorial vision comes from the East; from the West comes the enthusiasm which inspires devotional hymns to the unseen divine-spiritual powers. This intermingling of the two streams in Greek culture made possible a continuation from Homeric poetry, which we can locate in the 8th or 9th century B.C., to the works of Aeschylus, three or four hundred years later.

Aeschylus comes before us as a personality who was certainly not open to the full power of Eastern vision, the convincing power we find in Homer as an echo of the old clairvoyant vision of the deeds of the gods and their effect on mankind. This echo was always very weak, and in Aeschylus so weak that he came to feel a kind of unbelief in the pictorial visions of the world of the gods that ancient clairvoyance had brought to men. Homer, we find, knew very well that human consciousness had once been open to these visions of the divine-spiritual powers which stand behind the interplay of human passions and emotions in the physical world. Homer, accordingly, does not describe merely a human conflict. Zeus and Apollo intervene where human passions are involved, and their influence is apparent in the course of events. The gods are a reality which the poet brings into his poem.

How different it all is with Aeschylus. The stream of influence from the West, with its emphasis on the human ego and the inward isolation of the human soul, had a particularly strong effect on him. For this reason he was the first dramatist to portray man as acting from out of his ego and beginning to release his consciousness from the inflow of divine powers. In Aeschylus, in place of the gods we find in Homer, the independent man of action appears, though still at an initial stage. As a dramatist, Aeschylus puts this kind of man at the centre of things. The epic had to emerge under the influence of the pictorial imagination that came from the East, while Western influence, with its emphasis on the personal ego, gave rise to drama, wherein the man of action is the central character.

Let us take, for example, Orestes, who is guilty of matricide and as a consequence sees the Furies. Yes, that is still Homer: things do not pass away so quickly. Aeschylus is still aware that the gods were once visible in picture form, but he is very near to giving up that belief. It is characteristic that Apollo, who in Homer acts with full power, incites Orestes to kill his mother, but after this no longer has right on his side. The human ego begins to stir in Orestes, and we are shown that it gains the upper hand. The verdict goes against Apollo, he is repudiated, and we see that his power over Orestes is no longer complete. Aeschylus was thus the right and proper poet to dramatise the figure of Prometheus, the divine hero who titanically opposes the might of the gods and represents the liberation of mankind from them.

Thus we see how the awakening ego-feeling from the West mingles in the soul of Aeschylus with memories of the pictorial imagination of the East, and how from this conjunction drama was born. And it is decidedly interesting to find that tradition wonderfully confirms the findings derived entirely from spiritual-scientific research.

One remarkable tradition partly acquits Aeschylus of the charge that he had betrayed certain secrets of the Mysteries; he replied that he could not have done so, for he had not been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. It certainly never was his intention to present anything derived from temple secrets, from which Homer's poems had originated. In fact, he stood somewhat apart from the Mysteries. On the other hand, the story goes that at Syracuse, in Sicily, he had gained knowledge of secrets connected with the emergence of the human ego. This emergence took a particular form in regions where the Orphic devotees cultivated the older form of ode, the hymn, addressed to the divine-spiritual worlds that could no more be seen but only aspired to. In this way art took a step forward. We see it emerging naturally from ancient truths and finding its way to the human ego. Inasmuch as man, after living predominantly in the outer world, took possession of his own inner life, the figures in the Homeric poems became the dramatic characters of Aeschylus; and so, side by side with the epic, drama arose.

Thus we see primeval truths living on in another form in art, and the achievements of ancient clairvoyance reproduced by poetic imagination. And whatever was preserved from ancient times by art was applied to the human personality, to the ego becoming aware of itself.

Now we will take an immense step forward in time—on to the 13th and 14th centuries of the Christian era. Here we encounter the great mediaeval personality who leads us so impressively to the region which the human ego can reach when, by its own endeavours, it ascends to the divine-spiritual world. We come to Dante, whose Divine Comedy (1472) was read and re-read by Goethe. It affected him so strongly that when an acquaintance sent him a new translation of it, he wrote his thanks to the sender in verse:

Great gratitude is due to him
Who brings us freshly to this book once more,
The book which in a glorious manner makes us cease
All our searchings and complaints.⁶⁴

How did art progress from Aeschylus to Dante? How does Dante bring before us a divine-spiritual world once again? How does Dante lead us through its three stages, Inferno, Purgatory and Heaven—the worlds which lie behind our physical existence?

Here we can see how the fundamental spiritual impulse that guides human evolution has continued to work in the same direction. Aeschylus, quite clearly, is still in touch with spiritual powers. Prometheus is confronted by the gods, Zeus, Hermes and so on, and this applies also to Agamemnon. In all this we can discern an echo of the ancient clairvoyance. With Dante it is quite different. He shows us how, solely through immersing himself in his own soul, developing the forces slumbering there and overcoming all the obstacles to this development, he was able, as he says, in “the middle of life”—which means his thirty-fifth year—to gaze into the spiritual world. Where as men endowed with the old clairvoyance directed their gaze to their spiritual environment, and whereas Aeschylus still reckoned with the old divinities, in Dante we see a poet who goes down into his own soul and remains entirely within his personality and its inner secrets. By pursuing this path of personal development he enters the spiritual world, and is thus able to present it in the powerful pictures we find in the Divine Comedy. Here the soul of Dante is quite alone with his personality; he is not concerned with external revelations. No one can imagine that Dante could have taken over from tradition the findings of the old clairvoyance. Dante relies on the inner development that was possible in the Middle Ages, with the strength of human personality as its only aid; and he brings before us in visionary pictures something often emphasised here—that a man has to master everything that clouds or darkens his clairvoyant sight. Whereas the Greeks still saw realities in the spiritual world, Dante here sees pictures only—pictures of the soul-forces which have to be overcome. Such are those lower forces of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul which tend to hold the ego back from higher stages of development. The good, opposite forces were already indicated by Plato: wisdom for the consciousness soul, self-reliant courage for the intellectual soul, moderation for the sentient-soul. When the ego goes through a development which enlists these good forces, it comes gradually to higher soul experience which lead into the spiritual world; but the hindrances must first be overcome.

Moderation works against intemperance and greed, and Dante shows how this shadow-side of the sentient soul can be met and mastered.

He depicts it as a she-wolf. We are then shown how the shadow-side of the intellectual soul, senseless aggression, depicted as a lion, can be overcome by its corresponding virtue, self-reliant courage. Finally we come to wisdom, the virtue of the consciousness soul. Wisdom which fails to strive towards the heights, but applies itself to the world in the form of mere shrewdness and cunning, is pictured as a lynx. The “lynx-eyes” are not the eyes of wisdom, able to gaze into the spiritual world, but eyes focused only on the world of the senses. After Dante has shown how he guards against the forces which hinder inner development, he describes how he ascends into the world which lies behind physical existence.

In Dante we have a man who relies upon himself, searches within himself, and draws from out of himself the forces which lead into the spiritual world. With him, poetry takes closer hold of the human soul and becomes more intimately related to the human ego. Homer's characters are woven into the doings of the divine-spiritual powers, as indeed Homer felt himself to be, so that he says: “Let the Muse sing the story I have to tell.” Dante, alone with his soul, knows that the forces which will lead him into the spiritual world must be drawn from within himself. We can see how it becomes less and less possible for imagination to depend on external influences. A small fact will show that on this point we are concerned not with mere opinions but with forces deeply rooted in the human soul. Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock⁶⁵ was a deeply religious man and a profounder spirit even than Homer. He wished to write a sacred epic poem, with the conscious intention of doing for modern times what Homer did for antiquity. He sought to revive Homer's manner, but without being untrue to himself. Hence he could not say, “Sing for me, O Muse,” but had to open his Messias with the words: “Sing, immortal soul, of the redemption of sinful man.” Thus we see how progress in artistic creation does indeed occur among men.

Now let us take a further giant stride over several centuries, from Dante to another great poet, Shakespeare. Here again we see a remarkable step forward in the sense of a progression. We are not concerned with criticism of Shakespeare or with setting one poet above another, but solely with facts that point to a necessary, legitimate advance.

What was it about Dante that specially impressed us? He stands there by himself, with his own revelations of the spiritual world, and describes the great experience that came to him from within his own soul. Can you imagine that Dante would have given so effective expression to the truth as he saw it if he had described his visions five or six times over in various ways? Do you not feel that the world into which Dante has transposed himself is such that it can be described once only? That is indeed what Dante did. The world he describes is the world of one man at the moment when he feels himself to be at one with what the spiritual world is for him. Hence we must say: Dante immerses himself in the element of human personality, and in such a way that it remains his own. And he sets himself to traverse this human-personal aspect from all sides.

Shakespeare, on the other hand, creates an abundance of all possible characters—a Lear, Hamlet, Cordelia, Desdemona; but we have no direct perception of anything divine behind these characters, when the spiritual eye beholds them in the physical world, with their purely human qualities and impulses. We look only for what comes directly from their souls in the form of thinking, feeling and willing. They are all distinct individuals, but can we recognise Shakespeare himself in them, in the way that Dante is always Dante when he immerses himself in his own personality? No—Shakespeare has taken another step forward. He penetrates still further into the personal element, but not only into one personality but into a wide variety of personalities. Shakespeare denies himself whenever he describes Lear, Hamlet and so on; he is never tempted into presenting his own ideas, for as Shakespeare he is completely blotted out; he lives entirely in the various characters he creates. The experiences described by Dante are those of one person; Shakespeare shows us impulses arising from the inner ego in the widest diversity of characters. Dante's starting-point is human personality; he remains within it and from there he explores the spiritual world. Shakespeare has gone a step further: he, too, starts from his own personality and slips into the individuals he portrays; he is wholly immersed in them. It is not his own soul-life that he dramatises, but the lives of the characters in the outer world that he presents on the stage, and they are all depicted as independent persons with their own motives and aims.

Thus we can see here, again, how the evolution of art proceeds. Having originated in the remote past, when human consciousness was devoid of ego-feeling, with Dante, art reached the stage of embracing individual man, so that the ego itself became a world. With Shakespeare, it expanded so far that other egos became the poet's world. For this step to be possible, art had to leave the spiritual heights from which it had sprung and descend into the actualities of physical existence. And this is just what we can see happening when we pass on from Dante to Shakespeare. Let us try to compare Dante and Shakespeare from this point of view.

Superficial critics may reproach Dante for being a didactic poet. Anyone who understands Dante and can respond to the whole range and richness of his work will feel that his greatness derives precisely from the fact that all the wisdom and philosophy of the Middle Ages speak from his soul. And for the development of such a soul, endowed with Dante's poetic power, the totality of mediaeval wisdom was a necessary foundation. Its influence worked first on Dante's soul and was again evident, later on, in the expansion of his personality into a world. We cannot properly understand or appreciate Dante's poetic creation unless we are familiar with the heights of mediaeval spiritual life. Only then can we come to appreciate the depths and subtleties of his achievement.

Certainly, Dante took one step downwards. He sought to bring the spiritual down to lower levels, and this he did by writing in the vernacular, not in Latin as some of his predecessors had done. He ascends to the loftiest heights of spiritual life, but descends into the physical world as far as the vernacular of his place and time.

Shakespeare descends still further. The origin of his great poetic characters is nowadays the subject of all sorts of fanciful speculation, but if we are to understand this descent of poetry into the everyday world—still often looked down on by the highly placed—we must bear in mind the following facts.

We must picture a small theatre in what was then a suburb of London, where plays were produced by actors who, except for Shakespeare, would not be rated highly today. Who went to this theatre? The lower orders. It was more fashionable in those days to patronise cockfights and other similar spectacles than to go to this theatre, where people ate and drank and threw eggshells to mark their disapproval and overflowed on to the stage itself, so that the players acted in the midst of their audience. Thus it was before a very low-class London public that these plays were first performed, although many people today fondly imagine that from the first they were acclaimed in the highest circles of cultural life. At best, unmarried sons, who allowed themselves to visit certain obscure resorts in disguise, would go now and then to this theatre, but for respectable people it would have been highly improper. Hence we can see that poetry came down into a realm of the most unsophisticated feelings.

Nothing human was alien to the genius who stood behind Shakespeare's plays and the characters in them. So it happened—in respect even of external details—that art, after having been a narrow stream flowing on high levels, descended into the world of ordinary humanity and broadened into a wide stream running through the midst of everyday life. And anyone who looks more deeply into this will see how necessary it was that a lofty spiritual stream should be brought down to lower levels in order that such vital figures as Shakespeare's highly individual characters should appear.

Now we will move on to times nearer our own—to Goethe. We will try to connect him with his own creation—the figure of Faust, in whom were embodied all his ideals, endeavours and renunciations during the sixty years he worked on his masterpiece. Everything he experienced in his innermost soul in the course of his rich life, while he climbed from stage to stage of knowledge in his search for higher answers to the riddles of the world—all this is merged in the figure of Faust that we encounter today. What sort of figure is he in the context of Goethe's poetic drama?

Of Dante we can say that what he describes is portrayed as the fruit of his own vision. Goethe had no such vision: he makes no claim to having had a special revelation at a particularly solemn time, as Dante does with regard to the Divine Comedy. Everywhere in Faust Goethe shows that he has worked inwardly on what he presents. And whereas the experiences that came to Dante could be described only in his own one-sided way, Goethe's experiences were no less individual but they were translated into the objective character of Faust. Dante gives us his most intimate personal experience; Goethe, too, had personal experiences, but the actions and sufferings of Faust are not those of Goethe's life. They are free poetic transformation of what Goethe had experienced in his own soul. While Dante can be identified with his Divine Comedy, it would take almost a literary historian to identify Goethe with Faust. Faust is an individual character, but we cannot imagine that an array of Faust-like figures could have been created, as numerous as the characters created by Shakespeare. The ego depicted by Goethe in his Faust can be created once only. Besides Hamlet, Shakespeare created Lear, Othello, and so on. Goethe, it is true, also wrote Tasso and Iphigenia, but the difference between them and Faust is obvious. Faust is not Goethe; fundamentally he is every-man. He embodies Goethe's deepest longings, but as a poetic figure his is entirely detached from Goethe's own personality. Dante brings before us the vision of one man, himself; Faust is a character who in a certain sense lives in each one of us. This marks a further advance for poetry up to Goethe.

Shakespeare could create characters so individualised that he immersed himself in them and enabled each one of them to speak with a distinctive voice. Goethe creates in Faust an individualised figure, but Faust is not a single individual; he is every-man. Shakespeare entered into the soul-natures of Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Cordelia and so on. Goethe entered into the highest human element in all men. Hence he creates a representative character relevant to all men. And this character detaches himself from Goethe's personality as a poet, and stands before us as a real objective figure in the outer world.

Here is a further advance of art along the path we have outlined. Starting from the direct spiritual perception of a higher world, art takes hold of man's inner life to an ever-increasing degree. It does so most intimately when—as with Dante—a man is dealing with himself alone. In Shakespeare's plays the ego goes out from this inwardness and enters other souls. With Goethe, the ego goes out and immerses itself in the soul-life of every-man, typified by Faust. And because the ego is able to go out from itself and understand other souls only if it develops its own soul-powers and sinks itself in another's spirituality, so it is in line with the continued advance in artistic creation that Goethe should have been led to depict not only physical acts and experiences in the outer world, but also the spiritual events that everyone can experience if he opens his ego to the spiritual world.

Poetry came from the spiritual world and entered the human ego; with Dante it took hold of the ego at the deepest level of the inner life. With Goethe we see the ego going forth from itself again and finding its way to the spiritual world.

The spiritual experiences of ancient humanity are reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey; and in Goethe's Faust the spiritual world comes forth again and stands before man. That is how we should respond to the great final tableau in Faust, where man, after having descended into the depths, works his way up again by developing his inner forces until the spiritual world stands open to him once more. It is like a chorus of primal tones, but ever-renewed in ever-advancing forms. From the imperishable spiritual world resounds the imagination, bestowed on man as a substitute for spiritual vision and given form in the perishable creations of human genius. Out of the imperishable were born the perishable poetic figures created by Homer and Aeschylus. Once more poetry ascends from the perishable to the imperishable, and in the mystical chorus at the very end of Faust we hear:

Everything transient is but a parable ...⁶⁶

And so, as Goethe shows us, the power of man's spirit ascends from the physical world into the spiritual world again.

We have seen artistic consciousness advance with great strides through the world and in representative poets. Art emerges from the spiritual, its original source of knowledge. Spiritual vision withdraws more and more in proportion as the sense-world commands ever-wider attention, thereby stimulating the development of the ego. Human consciousness follows the course of world evolution and so has to make the journey from the spiritual world to the world of the ego and the senses. If man were to study the world of the senses only through the eyes of external science, he would come to understand it only intellectually in scientific terms. But in place of clairvoyance, when this passes away, he is granted imagination, which creates for him a kind of shadowy reflection of what he can no longer perceive. Imagination has had to follow the same path as man, entering eventually into his self-awareness, as with Dante. But the threads that link humanity to the spiritual world can never break, not even when art descends into the isolation of the human ego. Man takes imagination with him on his way; and when Faust appears, we see the spiritual world created anew out of imagination.

Thus Goethe's Faust stands at the beginning of an epoch during which man is to re-enter the spiritual world where art originated. And so the mission of art, for all those who cannot reach the spiritual world through higher training, is to spin the threads that will link the spirituality of the far-distant past with the spirituality of the future. Art has indeed already advanced so far that it can give a view of the spiritual world in imagination, as in the second part of Faust. Here we have an intimation that man in his evolution is at the point when he must learn to develop the powers which will enable him to re-enter the spiritual world and to gain conscious knowledge of it. Moreover, having led man towards the spiritual world with the aid of imagination, art has prepared the way for spiritual science, which presupposes clear vision of the spiritual world, based on full ego-consciousness. To point the way towards that world—the world that human beings long for, as we have seen in the examples drawn from the realm of art—that is the task of spiritual science, and it has been the task also of this winter's lectures.

Thus we see how great artists can be justified in feeling that reflections of the spiritual world are what they have to give to mankind. And the mission of art is to mediate these revelations during the time when direct revelations of the spiritual world were no longer possible. So Goethe could say of the works of the old artists: “There is necessity, there is God!” They bring to light the hidden laws of nature which would otherwise never be found. And so could Richard Wagner say that in the music of the Ninth Symphony he could hear revelations of another world—a world which a mainly intellectual consciousness can never reach. The great artists have felt that they are bearers of the spirit, the original source of everything human, from the past, through the present, into the future. And so with deep understanding we can agree with words spoken by a poet who felt himself to be an artist: “The dignity of mankind is given into your hands.”⁶⁷

In this way we have tried to describe the nature and mission of art in the course of human evolution, and to show that art is not as separate from man's sense of truth as people today may lightly suppose. On the contrary, Goethe was right when he refused to speak of the idea of truth and the idea of beauty as separate ideas. There is, he said, one idea, that of the necessary workings of the divine-spiritual in the world, and truth and beauty are two revelations of it.

Everywhere among poets and other artists we find agreement with the thought that the spiritual foundations of human existence find utterance in art: or there are artists with deeper feelings who will tell you that art makes it possible for them to believe that their work carries a message to mankind from the spiritual world. And so, even when artists are most personal in expression, they feel that their art is raised to a universal human level, and that in a true sense they speak for humanity when the characters and revelations of their art give effect to the words spoken by Goethe's Mystical Chorus:

Everything transient is but a parable ...

And on the strength of our spiritual-scientific considerations we may add: Art is called upon to transfuse the transient and the perishable with the light of the eternal, the imperishable. That is the mission of art.

• 59. Baruch Spinoza, 1632–1677. For Goethe's relationship to Spinoza cf. Goethe's description in Dichtung und Wahrheit, Part III Book 14.
• 60. Johann Heinrich Merck, 1741–1791. Writer.
• 61. See Italienische Reise, Rome, 6th September 1787.
• 62. See Goethe, “Sprüche in Prosa”, in: Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, ed. Rudolf Steiner, reprint Dornach 1975, vol. V, p. 495.
• 63. Cf. “Beethoven,” 1870, in vol. XI of Wagner's Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen.
• 64. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zahme Xenien VIII, dated 23rd July 1824.
• 65. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, 1724–1803. He concluded his “Messias” in 1773.
• 66. Concluding lines to Goethe's Faust (Faust II, 1. 12, 104ff.).
• 67. Friedrich von Schiller in the poem “Die Künstler”.

While it is of vital importance in Spiritual Science to study the whole spiritual life of humanity as it advances from one epoch to another, rising slowly to the surface from hidden depths, it is perhaps of still greater significance to study the culture and civilisation of ancient Egypt. We realise this the more strongly when we try to penetrate deeply into this ancient Egyptian spiritual life.

The echoes sounding to us across the ages seem at first to be as full of mystery as the Sphinx itself, standing there as a memorial of the civilisation of ancient Egypt. The mystery grows deeper still when we find that even external research has recently been compelled to go back to ages more and more remote in order to explain the culture of later Egyptian times of which certain physical evidence is still available. According to external research the prime of Egyptian culture must be dated at least seven thousand years before our era, perhaps even earlier still. This may be one reason for the great interest evinced to-day in Egyptian culture, but another is that man of the present day feels, whether he likes it or not, that there is a mysterious connection between this ancient civilisation and his own aims and purposes. It is not without significance that Kepler, at the very dawn of the development of modern Natural Science should have spoken of the achievements of Science up to that time and his own contributions to knowledge, in words like these: “When I have endeavoured to unravel some of the mysteries of the course of the planets round the Sun, I have tried to peer into the secrets of cosmic space. And it has often seemed to me as though I have actually penetrated to the mysterious sanctuaries of the Egyptians and brought their holy vessels into our modern age. I have felt then that the significance of my message to the world will only be understood in the future.” So strongly did one of the greatest minds of modern times feel himself related to ancient Egyptian culture that he could only express the keynote of his knowledge by speaking of it as a renewal of the wisdom given to the disciples in the secret sanctuaries and places of learning in ancient Egypt, although it was clothed, naturally, in different words. It must therefore be of great interest to us to understand how these ancient Egyptians themselves conceived of their whole culture, of their whole nature as human beings.

A certain very significant incident has been preserved by Greek tradition. It indicates not only what the Egyptians themselves felt but the way in which Egyptian culture was regarded by the civilised world in general in olden times. An Egyptian sage once said to Solon: “You Greeks are still children. All you know is the outcome of your own contemplation and vision; you have no ancient traditions, no wisdom hoary with age, and children you will remain.” Wisdom hoary with age—the significance of this expression only dawns upon us when the light of Spiritual Science is cast upon the whole mode and nature of Egyptian thought and feeling.

In the successive epochs different forms of consciousness have unfolded in humanity. Our consciousness to-day, the way in which we grasp the outer world by means of our senses and the combining of intellect and reason, in short, our scientific mode of thought, has not always been in existence; consciousness has ever been subject to the laws of evolution. Not only is the external world of form subject to these laws but man's qualities of soul and consciousness also. This is an indication of the fact that we can only understand ancient centres of culture if we begin by admitting what Spiritual Science tells us, namely, that in olden times, in the place of our present intellectual consciousness, men possessed a clairvoyant consciousness unlike our waking consciousness and yet unlike the complete absence of consciousness during sleep. Traces of this consciousness of prehistoric man are now only retained atavistically as a waning heritage, in the picture world of dreams. But whereas our dreams are chaotic and meaningless in ordinary life, the picture consciousness of the Ancients was “clairvoyant,” although, indeed, of a hazy, dreamlike nature. The pictures referred not to the physical world but to the spiritual world behind. In reality, all clairvoyant consciousness, that of prehistoric man, as well as the clairvoyance acquired by true discipline in this age, works in pictures and not in the concepts and ideas of outer physical consciousness. The pictures must be related to the spiritual realities lying behind the sense-realities of the physical world.

The marvellous pictures that have come down to us in the mythologies are not merely phantastic concepts of Nature, as materialistic consciousness imagines to-day. On the contrary, these pictures indicate an actual vision of the spiritual world. If we study the old mythologies and legends—not with the materialistic consciousness of to-day, but with a true feeling for man's spiritual achievements—the strange stories related in the mythologies will reveal a wonderful connection with cosmic laws higher than our laws of physics, chemistry and biology. A note of spiritual reality permeates the old mythologies and religious systems.

Now it must be clearly understood that the several peoples built up this world of pictures in different ways, according to their own nature, temperament and race. These picture-worlds represented, to the several peoples, the higher forces underlying the purely external forces of Nature. We must also realise that in the course of evolution there have been many transitional stages between the old clairvoyant consciousness and the objective consciousness of modern man. The ancient clairvoyance grew dim and gradually faded away. Clairvoyant powers decreased little by little in the different peoples and the pictures arising before the souls of those still able to gaze into the spiritual world contained less and less of spiritual force. The higher worlds gradually closed their doors until only the lowest stages of spiritual activity were perceptible to lower clairvoyance. Then, so far as humanity in general was concerned, the old clairvoyance died out entirely. Waking consciousness was limited to the physical world around and to ideas and conceptions of physical phenomena. Thus arose our modern science. The old clairvoyant powers gradually faded as the development of present-day consciousness proceeded—although of course the process varied in the different peoples.

All that we know from olden times, even what external documents have told us in recent Egyptian research (if we understand aright) proves the truth of what Spiritual Science asserts, namely, that the mission of the ancient Egyptian people was to look back to still earlier times when their leading Individualities were able, with their wonderful powers of clairvoyance, to gaze into the spiritual worlds. In the people of Egypt a somewhat feebler clairvoyant power was preserved on into relatively late times. The later Egyptians—down to the last millennia before the Christian era—knew from actual experience of another mode of vision besides that of ordinary daily life, a vision enabling man to see into the spiritual world. But they only knew the lowest images of the realm of which this vision made them aware, and they looked back to olden times when their Priest-Sages were able, in the golden prime of Egyptian civilisation, to gaze into the very depths of the spiritual world.

The mysteries of the spiritual worlds were preserved, more especially by the earlier Egyptians, with great piety and reverence for thousands of years. Those who lived in the later Egyptian epoch could say: “Even now we can still perceive a lower spiritual world; vision of the spiritual world is possible and to doubt it would be as senseless as to doubt that our eyes can behold the external world.” These later Egyptians had, it is true, only a dim perception of the spiritual worlds, but they felt that there had once been an age when their predecessors had gazed more deeply into all that lies behind the physical world. And this old Wisdom-teaching—of which the Egyptian Sage spoke to Solon—was preserved in wonderful scripts in the Temples and on the columns, bearing witness to deep and all-embracing clairvoyant powers in days of hoary antiquity. The Being to whom the Egyptians looked up as the embodiment of the primal glory of that old clairvoyant wisdom, was called by the name of HERMES. And when in later times a man came forth with a message which was to renew the ancient wisdom, he also (according to the custom of Egyptian sages) called himself “Hermes,” and his disciples, believing that he had revived the primeval wisdom of the old Hermes, called this first Being, “the Thrice-Greatest,” “Hermes Trismegistos.” (It was of course, only the Greeks who called him Hermes; among the Egyptians he was known as Thoth). We can only understand this primeval Being if we realise what the Egyptians, under the influence of the later teachings of Hermes or Thoth, took to be the true Mysteries of the Cosmos.

Such beliefs as have been handed down to us from Egyptian times by external evidence seem very strange. Various Gods, of whom the most important are Osiris and Isis, are represented in forms not wholly human; we often find human bodies and animals heads, or an amalgamation of human and animal forms. Wonderful legends of this world of Gods have come down to us and there is something very remarkable in the Egyptian animal-worship, the worship of the cat and so forth. Certain animals were even recognised as being sacred animals; deep veneration was paid to them for they were regarded as the embodiment of higher beings. It is even said that cries of lamentations were uttered at the death of cats. Again, we are told that if an Egyptian saw a dead animal, he dared not approach for fear of being accused of having killed it, in which case he would have been severely punished. It is said too, that in the age when Egypt was subject to Rome, any Roman who had killed a cat was in danger of death, because his act aroused such fury among the Egyptians. This animal-worship is an enigma in the sphere of Egyptian thought and feeling. And again—what a curious impression is made on modern man by the Pyramids, standing on their four-cornered bases, with their triangular sides! Strange indeed are the Sphinxes and everything that is being continually excavated and brought to our knowledge from the depths of Egyptian civilisation. And now we will ask ourselves: of what nature was the life of feeling and ideas among the ancient Egyptians? What had Hermes taught them? How did they acquire all these strange conceptions?

We must realise that all these Legends, especially the more significant, contained a deeper wisdom and their purpose was to convey in picture form, knowledge of definite laws of spiritual life, laws higher than those of external Nature. The Egyptian legend of the God and Goddess, Osiris and Isis, is a case in point. According to the legend, Osiris was a Being who lived in dim primeval times in regions later inhabited by human beings. Osiris is represented in the legend as the benefactor of humanity under whose wise guidance Hermes or Thoth gave the Egyptians their ancient culture. Osiris had an enemy, for whom the Greek name was Typhon. Typhon pursued Osiris, killed him, dismembered the body, hid it in a coffin and threw it into the sea. Isis, the sister and spouse of Osiris, sought unceasingly for him who had been torn from her by Typhon or Seth, and when at length she found the fragments of his dismembered body, she buried them in different places in the land where Temples were then erected. Then, after the death of Osiris, Isis gave birth to Horus. A spiritual ray descended upon Isis from Osiris, who had meanwhile passed into another world. The mission of Horus was to conquer Typhon and, in a certain sense, to re-establish the dominion of a life, which, proceeding from Osiris himself, was again to stream into mankind.

Such a legend must not be analysed merely in the sense of allegory or symbol. It should be used as a means whereby we are led into the whole world of feeling and perception of the old Egyptians; for only so can our understanding of such figures as Osiris and Isis become really living. It is not right to state crudely that Osiris is the Sun, Isis the Moon and so forth. An astronomical interpretation of this kind leads men to believe that the legend only contains symbolical images of certain occurrences in the Heavens. This is not the case. Rather must we go back to the feelings living in the ancient Egyptians and envisage the nature of their upturned gaze to super-sensible, invisible Powers underlying the world of sense, and typified in the figures of Osiris and Isis.

Let us try to conceive what the names of Osiris and Isis conveyed to the ancient Egyptian. He said to himself: “Behind man there is a higher spiritual essence, which does not proceed from his material existence. This spiritual essence has ‘condensed' into material, human existence. The real evolution of man has proceeded from a more spiritual existence. When I look into my own soul I realise that I have a longing for the Spiritual, a yearning towards the spiritual wellsprings of being from which I myself have descended. The forces from which I came forth are still living within me. My highest powers are inwardly related to these primordial Osiris-powers within me, bearing witness that I was once a super-sensible being dwelling in other worlds, in worlds of Spirit. And although this being of Spirit has but a dim and instinctive life, although it had perforce to be clothed with the physical body and its organs in order to perceive the physical world, yet in days gone by this being lived a purely spiritual existence.”

According to the ancient Egyptian conception, human evolution must be regarded as a duality, consisting of the Osiris-forces and the Isis-forces. “Osiris-Isis”—this was the duality. Let us consider our own being, as we now exist. The idea of a triangle, for instance, must have been preceded by active thinking. After having been active in soul, we may then be passive as regards the result of our thinking and conceptual activity. Ultimately we perceive in our soul the form that has been built up by our active thinking. Now the act of thinking bears the same relation to the final thought, the conceptual act to the final concept, the active principle to the product of the active principle there before us, as Osiris to Isis. In short, activity per se is a Father-Principle, a masculine Principle. The Osiris-Principle is male, active—filling the soul with thoughts and feelings. The old Egyptian said to himself: “Man as he stands here to-day has within him substances living in his blood or forming his bones, but these substances were not always within his blood or bones, they were spread over cosmic space. This physical body is a combination of substances which have now passed into the human form, whereas they once filled the Cosmos. The same is true of the powers of thought. The active principle of thought has become the power of ideation in man. Just as the substances in the blood now live in the human form but were formerly spread over cosmic space—so the Osiris-power now living within us as the active principle of thought was once spread over the spiritual universe as the Osiris-power that permeates and weaves in the Cosmos, pouring into human beings, just as in the case of the substances composing blood and bones in the bodily nature of man. Into the thoughts and ideas there flow, from out of the Cosmos, the living and weaving Isis-Powers.”—This is how we must envisage the attitude of soul in the ancient Egyptians towards Osiris and Isis.

This old consciousness could find no expression for such ideas in the world surrounding physical existence on Earth; for everything here was known to be of the world of space and it could offer no outer image of the super-sensible world. And so, in search of some form of language, some kind of script in which to clothe such conceptions as “the Osiris-Power is active within me”—men reached out to the script placed by heavenly bodies in cosmic space. They said: “The super-sensible power of Osiris may be envisaged as the active power of light proceeding from the Sun, living and moving through space. Isis may be seen in the sunlight reflected by the dark Moon—just as the soul is dark when the active principle of thought does not enter. The Moon awaits the light of the Sun in order to reflect it, even as the soul awaits the Osiris-Power to reflect it back as Isis-Power.” But when the old Egyptian said—“The Sun and Moon out there show me how I can best picture the activities of my soul,”—he knew at the same time: there is no mere chance connection between the Sun with its outpouring light and the reflecting Moon, but this radiating and reflected light has some inner connection with the super-sensible forces I feel within my soul.

Although we would not describe a clock as something that drives its hands with the help of little demons, but as a mechanical contrivance, we realise, nevertheless, that the thought of the inventor, the thought proceeding from the soul of a human being is at the back of the construction of the clock. Something spiritual, therefore, is responsible for its mechanism. Just as the hands of a clock are interrelated and dependent upon each other, so did the Sun and Moon appear to the Egyptians as the expressions of a mighty cosmic clock. When we gaze at this mighty clock in space, it seems at first sight to be subject to mechanical laws, yet in the last resort it is subject to those laws which a man felt in his soul when he spoke of the powers of Osiris and Isis. The old Egyptian did not merely say: “Sun and Moon are images of the relation between Osiris and Isis.” He also felt: All that lives in my being was once subject to the mysterious relationship between light and the Sun and Moon.

Again, a relation similar to that between Osiris and Isis and the Sun and Moon was seen to exist between the stars and planets and the other Gods. The Egyptians saw in the positions of the Heavenly Bodies, images of their own super-sensible life, or of traditional experiences of ancient Seers, but in these expressions of the mighty cosmic clock they saw a portrayal of forces within their own souls. Thus the great cosmic clock, with the movements of its stars and the relation of its moving stars to the fixed stars, was a revelation of underlying spiritual, super-sensible forces—forces which had determined the positions of all the stars and had created in a cosmic script, an expression of super-sensible activities.

Such were the feelings in regard to this higher world, feelings which had been handed down to the Egyptians by their traditions of ancient clairvoyance. They knew of the existence of this spiritual world because they themselves still possessed the last remnants of ancient clairvoyance. But now they said: “We have descended from this spiritual world and we are now placed in a world of matter manifesting in physical phenomena, physical processes. We come from the world of Osiris and Isis; the highest qualities within us, the qualities which make us strive towards higher perfection, came forth from Osiris and Isis. These qualities live invisibly within us as energy and power. The physical part of man's being is derived from external circumstances, is taken from the outer world. This physical part of man is but the vesture of Osiris-Isis.”

Now this conception of primeval wisdom was the one dominating feeling in the soul of the old Egyptian; it filled his whole life of soul. A man may imbue his soul with abstract ideas and yet remain untouched in his moral and ethical life; his sense of destiny or his happiness may be quite unaffected. Abstract and mathematical concepts of Natural Science may be so deeply absorbed that a man can discuss electricity and other forces of a similar nature without feeling any need to concern himself at the same time with problems of destiny. Now the feeling of kinship with Osiris and Isis, the vision of the spiritual world existing in ancient Egypt—these things could not be conceived of apart from thoughts of destiny, happiness and moral impulses. For the ancient Egyptian said to himself: “I bear a higher Self within me, but since I have entered into a physical body this higher Self withdraws to the background and is at first not wholly manifest. Osiris and Isis are the primal source of my being; but Osiris and Isis belong to the archetypal worlds, to the golden, holy ages of long ago. The Osiris-Isis nature is now subject to the forces which have condensed outer physical substances into man's body. Osiris and Isis are fettered within the corruptible body, and this body is subject to decay even as the outer forces of Nature.”

The legend of Osiris and Isis must thus be interpreted in terms of the inner life. Osiris, the higher power in man, spread over cosmic space, is overcome by forces which are subject to destruction in the realm of human nature. The Osiris-power living in man is fettered by Typhon—fettered within a form that is the “coffin” of the spiritual nature of man. Into this coffin the Osiris-nature in man disappears and is invisible to the outer world. The mysterious Isis-nature remains, in order that in future ages, after it has been permeated by the power of the intellect, it may again reach the well-springs of man's being. Thus there lives in man a hidden quality which strives to bring Osiris to life again. The Isis-power lives in the human soul in order gradually to lead man back again to Osiris. So long as man remains a physical being he cannot of course be separated from the world of matter, yet it is the Isis-power which enables him, while he remains a physical being in the outer physical world, to maintain in his inner being a striving towards a higher Ego. And according to every true thinker, this higher Ego is there, deeply concealed in all the powers of man. This being—who is not the outer physical man but the man who has an unceasing urge to rise to the light of spirit, who is ever impelled by the hidden Isis-forces—appears as the earthly son of One who did not arise in the earthly world. He is the earthly son of Osiris who remained in the spiritual worlds. This invisible being—the being who strives to reach the Higher Self, was known by the name of Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris.

Thus the old Egyptians looked up with a certain sadness to the Osiris-origin of man, but at the same time they gazed into their innermost being, saying: “The soul has retained something of the Isis-power and this Isis-power gives birth to Horus who has the urge to strive towards spiritual heights. In these heights man finds Osiris.” Man can attain to Osiris in a twofold way. The Egyptian said: “I came forth from Osiris and to Osiris I shall again return. Osiris, my spiritual origin is within me: Horus will lead me back to Osiris his Father; but Osiris can only be attained in the spiritual world. He could not enter into the physical nature of man. In the physical nature of man he was vanquished by the Typhon-forces which are subject to decay because they are forces of external Nature.”

Osiris can therefore only be reached along two paths. One is the path leading through the Portal of Death; the other is the path through the Portal leading not to physical death but to Initiation. The Egyptian therefore said: When man passes through the Portal of Death and has passed the stages of preparation, he comes to Osiris. When he is freed from the sheaths of his earthly body in the spiritual world, the consciousness of his kinship with Osiris awakens within him. The dead man feels that in the spiritual world he may himself be called “Osiris.” And so, after death, everyone was an “Osiris.”

The other path to Osiris—the other path into the spiritual world—is through Initiation. To the Egyptian this path was a means whereby man could learn to know the Invisible, the Supersensible in human nature—Isis, or rather the Isis-power. In the knowledge gleaned from everyday life man does not penetrate to the depths of his soul, he does not reach the Isis-power. Yet there is a means whereby he can pierce through to this Isis-power, whereby he reaches the true Ego and realises that it is enveloped in physical matter. If we follow this path we reach the spiritual home of the Ego. This, then, was the teaching of ancient Egypt: Man must descend into his own innermost being; there he first understands his physical nature—the expression of his Ego. He must force his way through this physical nature. He beholds the outer world, the creation of spiritual, super-sensible Powers, in the three kingdoms of Nature: in the stones with their forms based on mathematical laws, in the plants with their life-filled forms which are the dwelling place of Divine Powers, and in the animals. But when he beholds Man he must penetrate through the outer form to the Isis-powers of the soul.

Part of the Initiation into the Isis-Mysteries, therefore, consisted in showing man how he was clothed in matter. The processes enacted when a man thus plunged into his own nature, were practically the same as occur at death but they were enacted in a different way. The aspirant had to pass in actual life through the Portal of Death, to learn of the transition from physical to super-physical vision, from the physical to the spiritual world—in short the transition experienced in actual death. He had to follow this path of descent into his own inner being, to learn what can only be experienced there. And in this region he learnt, in the first place, how the blood, the physical instrument of the Ego, is formed from Nature. Now the system of nerves is the physical instrument for the soul-activities of Feeling, Willing and Thinking and the instrument of the Ego is the blood. If a man would descend into his instruments—so thought the old Egyptians—he must descend into his physical-etheric sheaths, into the etheric qualities of soul. He must learn to be independent of the forces in his blood upon which he otherwise depends, and, after having first freed himself from these forces, he must then enter into the marvellous processes of his blood. He must learn to know his higher nature in its physical aspect. This he can only do when he is able to contemplate himself as he contemplates an outer object. Now man can only know an object as object if he himself is outside it; thus if he wishes to perceive himself, he must stand outside his own being. That is why Initiation develops forces which enable the soul-powers to have real experiences without making use of physical instruments. The physical instruments are there objectively before man, just as after death his spiritual being looks down at his physical body.

And so the pupil in the Isis-Mysteries was first taught the secrets of his own blood. He passed through an experience which may be described as an approach to the Threshold of Death. This was the first stage of Initiation into the Isis-Mysteries. The pupil had to behold his own blood, to behold himself as object, to plunge down into the sheath that is the instrument of his Isis-nature. In the sanctuaries of Initiation he was led to two Portals, where he was shown in picture form the processes taking place in his inner being. Two doors stood before him, one open, the other closed. These teachings, echoing down to us across the ages, harmonise most wonderfully with what man believes at the present day, although he now gives a materialistic interpretation to everything. The old Seers of Egypt said: “When man is in the underworld he comes to two doors; through two doors he enters into his blood and his inner being.” The modern anatomist would speak of the two entrances lying beside the valves of the heart. If the pupil wished to penetrate into his body he would have to pass through the “open” door, for the “closed” door is there to prevent the blood stream from taking a wrong path. These anatomical phenomena are material images of what the ancient sages experienced in clairvoyant form. The forms were of course not so exact as the structures confronting the modern anatomist, yet they represented what clairvoyant consciousness perceived when it gazed at the inner being of man from without.

The next stage of the Isis-Initiation may be described as follows: The pupil was led through the tests of Fire, Air and Water—that is to say he learnt to know the nature of the sheaths around his Isis-nature. He learnt to know Fire as it courses through his body, using the blood as its instrument; he learnt to know how air enters the body in the form of oxygen; he learnt to know his watery nature. Fire, Air and Water—the warmth of the breath, the fluidity of the blood. And his knowledge of the sheaths, of Fire, Air and Water purified him until he finally attained to his Isis-nature. This again may be expressed by saying: Only when the pupil reached this stage did he feel that he had really “come to himself,” realising his spiritual existence, no longer limited to the human faculties pertaining to the outer world but able to gaze into the spiritual world. In the outer world we can only see the physical Sun by day; at night it is hidden from us by matter. In the spiritual world, however, it is not so; in the spiritual world man beholds the spiritual Powers at the very time the physical eyes are not functioning. In the Isis-Initiation it was said: When a man is purified he beholds the spiritual beings face to face; he can see the Sun at Midnight. That is to say, when darkness prevails, the spiritual life and the primal spiritual Powers behind the Sun are visible to those initiated in the Isis-Mysteries.

Such was the path of the soul to the Isis-powers, the path which might be traversed by those who while still living sought to energise their deepest forces of soul. There were still higher Mysteries—the true Osiris-Mysteries. In these Mysteries man learnt how through the Isis-power he might find himself one with the spiritual super-sensible Power whence he himself had come forth.—He knew Osiris and Osiris arose within his soul.

Now when the old Egyptian wished to depict the relation between Isis and Osiris, he used a script drawn from the movements of the Sun and Moon in the Heavens; he used the relationships of the other starry bodies to express the activities of the other spiritual Powers. His script was drawn from the Zodiac in its condition of comparative rest, and from the Planets moving across the constellations. In all the mysteries thus revealed, the ancient Egyptian saw a spiritual script. He knew: Nothing that is on the Earth can help me to express what man experiences if he goes forth to seek Osiris with the Isis-power within him. The starry constellations themselves must be the script.

Hermes, or Thoth, the mighty Sage of antiquity, was revered by the Egyptians as having had the most profound insight into this relation of man to the Cosmos. It was Hermes who expressed with the greatest sublimity the relation of the stars to these spiritual Powers and to events in the Cosmos. The language of Hermes was the language of the stars themselves. The relation of Osiris to Isis, for instance, could be explained exoterically to the people in the form of legends. Those who were preparing for Initiation were taught in greater detail of the light proceeding from the Sun, its reflection by the Moon, and the marvellous processes enacted by the light passing from the new Moon through different phases to the full Moon. The primal forms of writing were derived from processes taking place in the Heavens. Man little knows to-day that the consonants are images of the Zodiacal constellations, of a cosmic element that is at rest; the relations of the vowels to the consonants are images of the connections between the moving Planets and the Zodiac. The earlier forms of the letters of the alphabet were in this sense derived from the Heavens.

The ancient Egyptians felt that the great Hermes had himself been taught by the Powers of the Heavens and that he expressed, in his own being, the deepest soul life of man. All that was expressed in the deeds of man, even in daily pursuits where mathematical sciences, geometry (which Pythagoras afterwards learnt from the Egyptians), land-surveying and the like, were needed—all these things were traced back to the wisdom of Hermes who had seen the processes and phenomena of Earth to be reflections of heavenly activities as expressed in the stellar script. This script was brought down by Hermes into mathematics and geometry and he taught the Egyptians to find, in the stars, the counterpart of earthly happenings.

Now we know that the whole life of Egypt was deeply bound up with the floods of the Nile, with the deposits swept down by the Nile from the mountainous lands in the South. And we can realise how necessary it was for the Egyptians to know in advance when these floods would occur. They reckoned time according to the stellar script in the Heavens and when Sirius, the Dog Star, was visible in the Sign of Cancer, they knew that the Sun would shortly enter this Sign and that its rays would charm forth all that the flooding of the Nile bestowed upon the soil. They said: “Sirius is the Watcher; it is he who tell us what is to come.” And they looked up in gratitude to the Dog Star, to Sirius, for it was he who enabled them to cultivate their land aright and provide for the needs of their daily life. They looked back to ages of hoary antiquity when mankind had first been taught that the movement of the stars is the expression of the mighty cosmic timepiece.

Thus did the Egyptians take counsel from the stellar script. Hermes, or Thoth, was the great Spirit who, according to the oldest traditions, had given the original script of the Cosmic Wisdom and with the inspiration flowing into him from the stars, had built up the alphabet, had taught men the principles of agriculture, geometry, land-surveying—in short all they needed for their physical life. Physical life, however, is but the body of a spiritual life, a cosmic spiritual life whence Hermes drew his inspiration. Thus all culture and civilisation came to be bound up with the name of Hermes, and indeed the Egyptians felt themselves connected with him in a still more intimate sense.

Suppose, for example, that an Egyptian living in the year 1322 before our era, were looking up to the Heavens. He would behold a certain constellation. The ancient Egyptians had a convenient method of reckoning time-conditions, convenient, that is to say, for purposes of calculation; twelve months of thirty days each, with five additional days—making three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. They had reckoned thus for centuries, for the method was really a mathematical convenience. After three hundred and sixty-five days a year had run its course. Now as we know from Astronomy, this leaves a quarter of one day unaccounted for; that is to say, the Egyptian year fell a quarter of a day too early. If you reckon it out, you will see that every successive year began a little earlier than the last. So month by month the year receded until, after a lapse of four times three hundred and sixty-five years it returned to the beginning. Thus it always happened after a period of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years that the heavenly relationships were readjusted with the earthly calculation. In the course of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years the year receded through a complete cycle. If you reckon this back three times from the year 1322 before our era, you have the epoch to which the Egyptians ascribed their holy primal Wisdom. They said: “In those ancient times men possessed the very highest clairvoyance. Each of the great Solar Years denoted a stage in the waning of clairvoyant power. We are now living in the fourth stage. Our culture has reached a point where we have only traditions of the teaching of antiquity. But we look back through three great Cosmic Years to an age when the greatest of our Sages taught his pupils and successors what we to-day possess—though in much changed form—in writing, mathematics, geometry, the science of land-surveying and astronomy.” At the same time the old Egyptians said: “Our human calculations—which adhere to the convenient numbers of twelve times thirty plus five supplementary days—bear witness how the divine-spiritual world must correct our affairs, for our intellect has estranged us from Osiris and Isis. We cannot reckon the year accurately. But we look up to a hidden world where the Powers guiding the stars correct us.”

Thus even in their Chronology the old Egyptians looked up, as it were beyond the feeble quality of the intellect, to spiritual Beings and Powers living in hidden worlds, who in accordance with deeper laws, supervised protected and watched over all that man has to experience on Earth. And in Hermes, or Thoth, they revered the Being whose inspiration flowed from these watchful Powers of Heaven. Hermes was not only a great Teacher, but a Being to whom the old Egyptians looked up with feelings of deepest gratitude and reverence, saying: “All that I possess comes from Thee! Thou wert there in days of old and lo! Thy blessings stream into the world for the healing of men through those who have been Thy messengers.” Thus both the original source of Power—Osiris—and Hermes, or Thoth,—the Guardian of that Power—were not only known to the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, but their souls were filled with a deep moral feeling, a feeling of reverence and gratitude. All external evidence shows that the wisdom of the Egyptians (especially in very ancient times, and later to a less and less degree) was permeated with religious feeling. All human knowledge was bound up with feelings of holy awe, all wisdom with piety, all science with religion. In the later Egyptian epoch this no longer appears in its purest form. For just as in the successive epochs it is the mission of the several peoples to express the Spiritual in different forms, so do the several civilisations begin to fall into decadence when their prime has been reached. Most of what has been preserved from ancient Egyptian culture belongs to the period of decadence and one can only surmise what lies behind the marvellous pyramids, for instance, and the strange animal cults. The Egyptians knew: The age when wisdom itself was working was preceded by another, when all beings—not only man—descended from divine-spiritual heights. If we would understand the innermost nature of man we must not look at his outer form, but penetrate to his inner being. What we see externally are stages at which primordial creation has remained stationary; such stages are to be seen in the three kingdoms of Nature. The first stage is the world of the minerals and stones—the forms of which are expressed in the Pyramids. The second stage is the world of plants and the inner forces of this world are expressed in the Lotus flower. The third stage is represented by the animal forms, strewn, as it were, along the path to man. Divine forces which have not attained to the human stage have poured and crystallised into the different animal forms. Such were the feelings of the old Egyptian when he beheld the retarded forces of the Gods. He looked back to primeval ages when all creation sprang from Divine Powers. He felt that Divine Powers had remained at an earlier stage of development in the beings of the three lower kingdoms of Nature and had finally risen to human form in his own being. We must always be mindful of the feelings, the consciousness of the old Egyptians, for then we shall realise that their wisdom had a moral effect in their souls. Their conception of the Divine world and Supersensible forces gave rise to a relation to the animals, which only assumed a grotesque form when Egyptian culture entered upon its period of decline. The imperfections of later Egyptian culture were not there at the beginning when it was filled with spiritual revelation. We must not—as is so often done to-day—ascribe primitive and simple conditions to the early stages of civilisations. On the contrary, primitive conditions belong to periods of decadence which set in after the original spiritual treasures have been lost. Barbaric conditions are not to be regarded as the original states of civilisation; they are in reality the result of the decadence of civilisations which have fallen from their spiritual prime.

Such a statement may be a cause of irritation to the science that describes all civilisations as having originated from old primitive conditions such as survive in savage tribes to-day. Primitive states of culture still in existence are to be regarded as stages of decadence; at the beginning of human life on Earth the early civilisations were directly inspired from the spiritual world by the Spiritual Beings standing behind external history. This is what we are told by Spiritual Science.

Again it may be asked: Does the science of to-day, representing as it does, the heights of modern culture, come into collision with this statement of Spiritual Science? I should like here to quote from a recent work by Alfred Jeremias, The Influence of Babylon on the Understanding of the Old Testament, which shows that outer research too has found its way back to an ancient culture permeated with sublime and far-reaching conceptions and that the so-called barbaric civilisations must be regarded as the outcome of decadence. This point is clearly made in the book:

The oldest records, as indeed the whole cultural life of the Euphratean civilisations, postulate the existence of scientific and at the same time religious conceptions not only in the secret lore of the Temples but according to which the State organisation was regulated, justice declared, property administered and protected. The further back we go into ancient times, the more do we find the domination of these conceptions; only when the ancient Euphratean culture enters on its period of decadence do other forces make themselves felt.

External science is here beginning to open up paths which can unite with what Spiritual Science has to introduce into modern civilisation. If it advances along these paths it will gradually abandon the dead image of primitive conditions at the starting-point of human civilisations and will come instead to the Great Individualities. And they appear before us in all sublimity because it was their task to transmit to men who still possessed the power of clairvoyance, the greatest blessings in every branch of culture. And so we look back to mighty figures—to Zarathustra, to Hermes—who appear so sublime because they were the first to give the great spiritual impulses to mankind in those remote ages of which the Sage spoke to Solon. Hermes stands there as a great Guide of mankind. As we contemplate these great Individualities, we feel a strengthening of our own powers. We realise that the Spirit not only lives in the Cosmos but flows into cosmic deeds, into the evolution of man himself. Our own life is fortified, we have greater confidence in our own actions, our hopes and purposes are strengthened by the contemplation of these great Individualities. We who are born in after ages look up to Them, seeking the fulfilment of our own existence in Their mighty powers of soul, understanding our own actions in the light of the eternal Spirit pouring into humanity through Them.

In a brief outline of philosophical thought Lessing alluded once to the only doctrine he considered worthy of the human soul—the doctrine he then expounded, in a form suited to Western consciousness, in his masterly treatise, ‘The Education of the Human Race’. He speaks there of reincarnation, of the repeated earthly lives experienced by the human soul, and continues somewhat as follows. Why, he asks, should this doctrine, so obvious in primeval days to the soul of man and one of its earliest treasures, while the soul was still uncorrupted by all kinds of theorising—why should this doctrine be less true than many other doctrines which in the course of time have been accepted as the result of philosophical speculation? After plainly indicating how this theory of repeated earthly lives is the only reasonable one for the human soul, Lessing says we might well expect that any unprejudiced man, willing to let the true nature of the soul work upon him, would grow accustomed to the doctrine—were it not for two things. We are certainly eager to know what Lessing meant by these two things that hindered the human soul from accepting the doctrine of repeated earthly lives. Lessing, however, never finished his sentence, having presumably been disturbed. He breaks off with the words: ‘were it not for two things’, and a colon. Nowhere in his writings, moreover, do we find anything to tell us what he considered these two things to be, although all kinds of speculations have been advanced by scholars who have made a special study of his work.

Now perhaps our conscience may allow us to assume that Lessing was most probably thinking of two things generally repellent to people when reincarnation is mentioned—two impulses rising up in the soul against the idea. One impulse may be expressed thus: whatever may be maintained by any form of spiritual science in favour of reincarnation, one thing is certain—that in normal consciousness we have no recollection of having lived before on Earth. Therefore, even should repeated earthly lives be in accordance with truth, they would seem to be of no significance for human consciousness and must therefore appear to it as an arbitrary hypothesis. That, for many souls, is certainly one of the objections to the idea of reincarnation. The second arises from a sense of justice towards oneself. Repeated earthly lives require an acceptance of destiny—whether we are fortunate or unfortunate, gifted or not in worldly affairs—as a consequence of what we have done in previous lives; so that, to a far greater extent than is generally believed, we ourselves would be the makers of our good fortune and abilities, or the reverse. Many souls may well exclaim: ‘If I have to accept my destiny, if my earthly existence is indeed burdened with that, have I got to accept also that I myself—the Ego within me—has in earlier lives on Earth created the destiny in which I am now involved?’ This is what could be called a man's sense of justice towards himself.

Anyone who delves more deeply into Lessing's ways of thinking and into his whole nature, making it part of his own soul will not doubt that this pioneer of the reincarnation theory meant to indicate these two objections to it. In the course of our study of eternity and of man's soul in connection with it, it will be well to pay attention to the facts just described. So now we will once again call to mind something said by the German philosopher Hegel about eternity—how if eternity belongs by nature to the human soul, it must certainly not reveal itself only after death, but must be capable of being experienced during life on Earth. Hegel puts it like this: Eternity cannot begin for the soul only at death but must belong to it already during earthly life. If we seek it in man's soul, if we seek to know how eternity lives in us and how we can investigate it by looking into our own depths, why should it not reveal itself at once, if, in the sense of Spiritual Science, it is so intimately bound up with the soul?

Former lectures have shown that this close connection holds good between what we may call the outgoing activity of the soul during its existence from birth to death and everything contained in the idea of reincarnation and in that of karma—the working of causes from earlier lives into the present one, and of the causes we are now creating to take effect in our next life on Earth. We must think of the human soul as enmeshed in this whole web of causes, bound up during its present life with all it has experienced in earlier stages of existence, and with all it has still to experience in future lives. Hence a study of the present life of the soul can lead to an outlook on the past and also on the future. If we do not take eternity as an abstract idea, but consider the human soul perceiving in itself its own being, then we come to something which could lead us to a true perception of the nature of eternity. For—to take a comparison—are we not more likely to discover what a chain is by examining it link by link rather than in its whole length? This latter method would mean tackling directly the study of eternity as such, whereas with the first method we consider the single life of a human soul as just one of the links in a whole chain representing for us the complete life of the human being throughout earthly existence.

Now it is true that anyone who looks for an assurance about eternity generally concerns himself with the present time. The lectures previously given here have shown from manifold aspects how, when a man surveys his life of soul, he repeatedly finds that all that takes its course there converges ultimately towards one central point which he calls his ego. Indeed, when we look around, at the philosophical thinkers of today, we meet with frequent indications that the only way of coming to any conclusion about our own being is by considering the nature of our ego; for it is the ego that holds together, as at a central point, everything experienced in our soul. Does it not seem, therefore, that all we experience in our heart, in our soul, in our thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, might simply arise and then pass away again? What, then, remains? To whose destiny do all those thoughts, feelings and will-impulses belong? It is this ego that proves itself to be the enduring central point. We are quite aware that if the experiences of our soul are not related to this enduring point, we can no longer speak of being an individuality. Yet, whatever fine things may be said about the ego by philosophers and thinkers, especially in quite recent times, their speculations about its nature are all open to one fatal objection. Intimately as we may come to know how this centre of our soul-life remains the same in all our conceptions, feelings and will-impulses, yet there is something able to wipe out this experiencing of the ego in normal consciousness; and this something is a constant reminder of how easy it is to refute all philosophical speculation about the endurance of the ego as normal consciousness knows it. This refutation consists in something we experience repeatedly every twenty-four hours: sleep. It is not only our thoughts, sensations and will-impulses that sleep obliterates, but also this central point, the ego. Hence, we cannot with truth speak of permanence in connection with the ego known to normal consciousness.

Nevertheless—as we have seen in previous lectures—it is possible for anyone to speak of the ego, not by focusing his attention on this central point to which he is at the moment relating his conceptions, moods of soul and will-impulses, but by considering something quite different. Here the question arises: Do we meet the ego among all the things experienced in the external world from morning till night? Anyone who asks this question without prejudice can say to himself: No, in all the experiences that come to me from the external world and make their impress on my conceptions, feelings and will impulses, no ego can be found. From nothing in the outer world can I derive the idea of the ego, yet it is there from the moment I wake until I fall asleep. What then can it be that lives in the flow of our concepts, states of feeling and impulses of will and is always to be found there, until sleep wipes it out? Since it is not to be found outside in the world, it must be sought in our own inner world. But our inner world is so constituted that we obliterate what we have in normal consciousness as our ego. Among the innumerable concepts a man is able to form, not one will really throw light on a fact of this kind, except the idea that the thought of the ego arising in normal consciousness and not received from any external source, is not a reality; for realities do not vanish as the idea of the ego vanishes in sleep. If, then, it is not a reality, what is it? Well, there is only one way of understanding it—by assuming it to be an image, a picture, but one outside the world of our experience and comprehensible only by comparing it to someone confronted by his own reflection.

Now suppose someone had never had an opportunity of seeing his own face; he would then be in the same position regarding his outward appearance as he is to his ego, which normally he always experiences as an image, never discovering its true nature. A man cannot see his own face from outside. Standing before a mirror he sees his face, but it is only the image of his face. If he looked around him what other reflections would he see? Tables, chairs, objects of that kind; but not everything around him would be reflected. Yet if he can say that there is something not in his surroundings, something which is a reflection for him alone—for nothing out there can be reflected in our consciousness in the way the ego is—it is then our own being which must experience the ego as a reflection, although in ordinary consciousness it is never directly perceived. Since it is a fact that nothing can be reflected that is not there, so, if a reflection of the ego is produced, the ego must be there, for the cause of the reflection cannot be anything else. A glance at general facts is enough to show the truth of that. We then have to say: As the ego is given to man only as a reflection, it may vanish in the way our face vanishes when we no longer look into the mirror. An image can disappear whereas reality endures and is still there, whether perceived or not. Anyone who wanted to question the truth of that would be forced to maintain that only what a man perceives exists in reality; but on following up this assertion he would soon be convinced of its absurdity.

Hence we must say: In the idea of the ego there is no reality, but the idea enables us to assume the reality of our ego. But how do we gain certain knowledge of the ego in ordinary life? We can acquire this knowledge by living not only in the present but also, through memory, in the past. If, on looking back to preceding days, weeks, years, even decades, to the point of time in our childhood where memory can take us, we could never link in one chain, as it were, all the experiences of our own inner life; it would indeed be impossible to speak at all of ego. What certain psychologists have said is quite correct: a man loses his ego, or at least consciousness of it, to the extent that the recollection of his experiences up to the time in question is wiped out. In so far as our memory fails, our ego breaks up.

We have frequently pointed out that a man is able, especially by thinking, to increase the backward stretch of his memory. Today, however, we will consider what effect it has when anyone experiences in memory not just a picture, of his ego, but his ego in its true reality. Were we simply to remember our experiences back to early childhood, there would be no great difference between that and the emergence of the idea of the ego at the present moment. Ultimately it is immaterial whether we experience the reflection of the ego while relating to this single point our present conceptions, sensations and impulses of will, or whether we draw them from the past. In both cases the ego with which we connect these experiences is but an image. Were we merely to relate our experiences to our ego, we should never, even in memory, discover its reality, for we arrive at that only by learning to know the ego in its activity, in its creative impulse; and this experience proves to us that this creative element, unaffected by the external world, maintains its activity even during sleep. What then is it that continues to live and weave within us while we are asleep?

Anyone who practises this looking back in memory seriously and without bias will say: In life I have gained knowledge of my experiences in a way that not only enables me to relate them to my ego, for it is undeniable that I have worked inwardly on my experiences, quite apart from anything external, and by so doing I have enriched them. Whoever is alive to the ripening and enhancement of life going on in his own depths knows that this cannot be due to any external reality, but to something at work within himself. Moreover, anyone who surveys life as a whole will realise that if we are to succeed in this enhancement of life, in this inner evolution, sleep is needed. We know quite well how lack of sleep creates havoc in our ideas, and to some extent lays waste our states of soul. We realise our need of sleep as a creative element, if what we experience and perceive in the outer world is really to contribute to the ripening of our inner life. By this means we become certain how it is not the ego we observe during the day that works upon us, but that behind this image stands its reality, always at work in us, even when we are asleep, for lack of sleep proves indeed to have a disturbing effect on the soul's progress. Thus, in the enhancement, the ripening, of the life of soul, we recognise the working of the ego. By acknowledging how disorganised we become if we do not sleep at the appointed time, when the ego should be released from its connection with the bodily nature and enabled to work in freedom—by knowing the lack of sleep to be an obstacle to the ripening of life, we come to be aware of the true ego working within us. We do not then perceive it as an image but as an inner force, ceaselessly at work in our life—whether we are awake or asleep.

There we have the first indication—penetrating straight to the reality—of the force that lives and weaves within us, quite independently of the world outside. On going more deeply into this inner experience, what do we find? Many of the details to be referred to today—including the following important fact—have been mentioned in former lectures. For it is a fact that we make a certain progress in life, that we become increasingly mature. But a remarkable thing comes to light: that all that is best in this maturity—everything that enables us to make the most progress in life and by means of which we can best observe the nature of the ego—is something that we can learn from our faults and shortcomings. When we have failed badly in some matter, or have done something which shows us how imperfect, how incapable we are, our very failure teaches us what we should have done. We have become more mature. By means of such opportunities in life—whether our thinking, feeling, willing or acting is concerned—we develop our wisdom, our maturity. But we should go on to say: Through the wisdom and maturity gathered from life, which become an ever stronger inner force, we learn how—because we never meet the same situation a second time to learn once more from our faults—we must store up this all-important force, for we shall never by able to use it in this life again.

We see therefore that throughout our earthly existence we are continually storing up forces that find expression in our maturity. If a life has been well spent, these forces will have gathered their greatest strength by the time the gate of death is reached. We see that we have something living in us that cannot find an outlet in the external world. We live in our souls by being able to look back on the past: it is memory that holds together the threads of the soul. But out of this memory comes forth something that lives and weaves in us as inner ripeness of life; something appearing in earthly existence as a surplus force. The spiritual scientist need only apply a law that is valid for all ordinary science: the law of the conservation of energy. Any scientist, any physicist, will accept this law for the external world. It is universally recognised that, when a finger is drawn lightly across the surface of a table, even this slight pressure is transformed into warmth. Hence we say that energy can be transformed, can go through a metamorphosis, but can never vanish away. Once we have consciously experienced that in the ripe content of our life we have stored up forces which at first cannot be used but are tested to their utmost when we pass through the gate of death, then it should not be difficult to understand that these forces, brought about by the activity of the ego independently of the body, can never be annihilated. Hence the bodily sheath, which contributes nothing to our ripeness in life, can be cast off and revert to its elements, but these forces remain intact. Because in them we have the active ego as powerful centre, the ego is present also in the ripened forces of life when the human being passes through the gate of death. This may be contested by those disinclined to apply to the spiritual life the laws of ordinary physics; but they should be aware that they run into an inconsistency directly they rise from the truths of ordinary physics to the reality of the spirit. We only need common sense in order to follow what Spiritual Science tells us, that when we go through the gate of death there lie, deep within us, stored up forces acquired in life, forces which, exerted to their utmost, in a world differing from that of the physical body, have then to work with the greatest intensity. After death these forces have to work on in a world which must obviously be presupposed, and there these forces, that is, the inner nature of man, permeated and strengthened by the ego, continue to live when man is free of the body. Thus our ordinary intelligence gives us some idea of life after death—not only showing in general terms that there is such a life, but also describing the forces which play into it.

When, however, Spiritual Science goes on to speak in more detail about life between death and rebirth, this naturally causes laughter among those who believe they are standing on the firm ground of ordinary science. This can well be understood by the spiritual scientist, for he knows that neither their laughter nor what they say depends upon reason and evidence but upon the way they think, which makes it impossible for them to acquiesce in what the spiritual scientist, as a result of his researches, is able to say about life after death. They are bound to find it ridiculous, or altogether fantastic, the figment of a dream. You know how Spiritual Science shows that a man, having passed through the gate of death, meets first with a phenomenon only occasionally arising in life—though this does sometimes happen and has, in fact, been repeatedly observed. This first experience is a quite unemotional looking back over the course of his earthly life. I say expressly that in this survey neither feeling nor emotion has any part; the whole panorama of his last life on earth passes quickly before him as if in pictures. This can be experienced in ordinary life if anyone has a shock, such as being nearly drowned, but without losing consciousness—for if that is lost the phenomenon does not occur. Those, however, who have had some great fright, endangering their life, have experienced this backward survey. That much is conceded even by the natural scientist whose research is confined to the external world. I have already reminded you how the distinguished criminologist and anthropologist Moritz Benedikt, having been nearly drowned, spoke of experiencing this backward survey of his past life. From such a natural scientist the spiritual scientist can learn a good deal, and willingly, although today in this sphere his kindly feeling will not be reciprocated.

Now what occurs when anyone experiences this sudden fear of losing his life? For a moment, though retaining consciousness, he ceases to use the external organs of his body. During the experience he loses the power of seeing with his eyes, of hearing with his ears; he is torn away, as it were, by his inner being from the physical body and from ordinary life, but without loss of consciousness. The fact that he is able to have this backward vista of his present life is proof that, when he thus looks consciously into his own depths, all that arises in his memory must be attributed to his inner being. For he retains his memory when thus torn from his physical body. Anyone experiencing a violent shock of this kind must realise that whatever it is which fills him with memories goes with him all through life but has no connection with his outer sense organs. Hence we must say that man is united with some more delicate soul-vesture that is the bearer of his memories, although at such a moment it is lifted free from his bodily organs. Obviously he cannot be asleep, for then it would be the usual thing in sleep to have this backward survey. So it follows that during a fright of this kind he has within him something not present in sleep.

This confirms what Spiritual Science has to say—that in sleep a man goes out with his soul from the physical body, leaving behind the bearer of memories, the vesture upon which he is working throughout his life, so that his memory-pictures can be preserved. In sleep he is outside the physical body, and also that external vesture of the soul, called in Spiritual Science the etheric body, which in ordinary sleep remains bound to the physical body. At the moment of death, however, this etheric body, which is also the activator of life, leaves the physical body, and only this outer physical shell of the human being remains. Death indeed comes because the etheric body, though present in ordinary sleep, is no longer there.

Hence, for a short time after death, the same phenomenon occurs as during a terrifying shock in ordinary life—a backward survey in memory.

Now, as the facts show, this survey experience is bound up with something so closely connected to the physical body that not even sleep can break the link. After death a man takes with him something that belongs not to his innermost soul but, in a certain sense, to his physical body. Spiritual Science shows that within a relatively short time—a few days only—after the discarding of the physical body, the human being becomes free of the etheric body and is then constituted in the main as he is during sleep. But Spiritual Science goes on to show how the inner soul-being is then in a situation different from its situation during life, when every morning a man has to return to his physical body and etheric body. He is closely bound to his physical body, to everything that enfolds him, and this does not specially belong to what we recognise as the real content of his life of soul.

If we are clear that during the whole of a man's waking life he is wearing out his physical body and that life in the daytime has fundamentally a destructive effect—as indeed we realise when we get tired—it will be evident that since in the morning we are able to go on consciously with our work, the destruction can be made good during the night. So, whereas in our waking state we are working all the time destructively on our bodily organism, at night, on the contrary, we are engaged in repairing the damage by replenishing our bodily vigour. We are then carrying out an activity beyond the range of consciousness. Directly we revert to any degree of consciousness, there arise those strange dream pictures that are so closely related to life in the body. We need remember only how bodily ailments may sometimes find expression in these pictures, showing where consciousness is involved. Since after death the physical body disappears, no effects of exhaustion have to be made good. Hence the forces expended during sleep on the physical body withdraw again into the soul after death, enabling it, free of the physical body, to use them for itself; and between death and a new birth they become the soul's consciousness. In proportion as the soul is freed from the physical and etheric bodies, with everything belonging to them, so does another consciousness arise, one that is not engaged in work on the physical body and for that reason unable to be aware of itself.

All this will seem to be nothing but a set of assertions. However, apart from the fact that reference can be made to the methods given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, life itself can draw attention to those things. For how does a man's life take its course in face of death? If we follow up the way in which thoughts and memories arise in us, what has been said becomes evident to the soul. We can precisely and repeatedly recall our past experiences as memory-images, but we remember very little of all we have gone through in the way of feelings and sensations, and in the exertion of our will. Who would deny that, when some painful experience comes back to him in memory, he recalls the pain in his thought but without feeling over again the pain itself? Many other things there are, too, experienced in our heart and soul, which are not felt again. But they live on withal us in a different form, to the point of making themselves felt in our whole disposition, so that afterwards this is made up of everything we have experienced in pain and sorrow, or in times of joy and pleasure. Who can fail to realise, on looking with inquiring sympathy at someone of an obviously despondent, melancholic disposition, that the experiences he has gone through in heart and soul have been drawn down deep within him, there to remain, though perceptible to an observer in this particularly melancholy guise? It is the same with the sanguine man and his joyful response to life. It can be said that our experiences are divided between those we can always recall and those that remain below, working on us and ultimately appearing in the very life of our body. If we look thoroughly at this, we become convinced that our thoughts and concepts are so weak, so lacking in colour and life, because the emotional shading, the particular mood of soul pervading the thought as it was experienced at the time, has been suppressed and is working below the level of consciousness, leaving thought empty of feeling.

When the whole course of life is observed impartially, however, this relationship between feeling and will on the one hand, and thought on the other, can be seen to change. Thus at a certain time of life a man will repress the feelings and impulses connected with his thoughts, whereas at another time he will keep them more together. Youth is the period when we are most apt to yield over our joys, sorrows and impulses of will to our subconscious. It is then that we are most easily inclined to send down to the subconscious the experiences of heart and soul that will eventually work into our whole disposition—even into our bodily condition. But as the body becomes more firmly knit, the elements of our consciousness come to be less and less like what they were, with the result that we are less and less able to work on the subconscious, and our feelings and will impulses come by degrees to remain bound up with our thoughts. When with genuine self-knowledge a man observes life, he feels, as he grows older, how in youth a person sends down most of his moods of feeling, so that they live on in the make-up of his body. But the more rigid and dried-up a man becomes later on, the more do these experiences and the impulses of will not exhausted in action, remain united with his thoughts. Thus we see how, in this respect, the inner life is enriched as we approach death. We see how the bodily organism gradually dries up and becomes less capable of absorbing the soul's experiences, whereas, if we continue to learn from life as though from a school, the soul will become more alive, more mature. For this reason all that in youth is connected with ideals, ideas, even with mere concepts, flashes through our unconscious being, lays hold of our blood, our nervous system, and settles there, in order later to emerge as our capability for living—or the reverse. Later on we feel that our blood will no longer be, is no longer in harmony with our enthusiasm for ideals. Because of our wrong methods of education this feeling is now to some extent repressed, but in future it will belong increasingly to the best things and blessings of life. For when we are approaching the winter of life, the feelings and impulses that in earlier years we gave over to our bodily organism will add to our strength of soul, no longer being able to pass down into the body on account of the resistance they meet with there.

Bearing this in mind, we shall say: If we look into our own inner being we find how, on approaching the gate of death, it becomes ever richer. The contention that a man weakens with age is not valid; it originates in materialistic habits of thought and prejudices. In proportion to the decline of the body, the inner life of the soul gains vigour, becoming inwardly more childlike; we see a kind of approach towards those forces which are at their highest tension when we are nearing the gate of death. This is particularly true of people who are enabled, through the training indicated in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds to have some perceptive experience independently of their bodily organs. It is also described there, how, by means of meditation and concentration, we can so school ourselves that experience and knowledge of the spiritual world can become absolute reality for our souls. At the same time the soul knows with certainty that this experience is acquired with no help from eye or ear, or from any bodily organ, for it is then outside the body. In a case of this kind, feeling and will-impulses must permeate livingly a person's meditation and concentration: thought alone is not enough. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds there is an exact account of how the person must not lose touch with his feelings and perceptions—with everything, indeed, that in youth withdraws into the depths of the soul. He has to meditate and concentrate with his mind, but his thoughts must be fired by his heart and soul, and infused with life by those impulses of will that are then not transformed into action but into thinking.

When a human being has developed the genuine clairvoyance appropriate for our times, he wins through to what otherwise would be experienced only after passing through the gate of death. All such clairvoyance, however, is experienced by him in such a way that he is aware of the following distinction: ‘I can certainly experience’, he says to himself, ‘a spiritual world, a world where men live between death and rebirth, for I live with them there. But all my knowledge of it I gain by simply perceiving it. The difference between me and these souls is that I perceive all this without being able to work and create in it.’ The soul is aware of this distinction, but it derives only from being closely linked to the physical body, for directly the clairvoyant consciousness is freed from it and from the etheric body, there follows a release of those forces which, while they are held in tension by the physical body, permit the seer to gain perceptive knowledge of the spiritual world beyond the gate of death. It is these forces which are pre-eminent in a man during the time between his death and rebirth. What the clairvoyant experiences is like the force of a drawn bow. He can use it only for perception, but directly the tension is released the bow springs at once into movement. So it is for the clairvoyant when he goes over from life in the physical body to life in the world after death. And he can say to himself: ‘I am able only to perceive the spiritual world, only to see what is going on there. But after death, the body having fallen away, forces are set free, just as they are with a bow when the arrow is shot off.’ These forces are available in a man's soul for other activities after his death until he is reborn. This is the period when he can look on his past earthly existence, and can then work upon his next incarnation, when he will wake to a new life on Earth. It is not only by looking at the matter in this light that we can furnish evidence for it. We can obtain satisfying evidence—though not a mathematical proof—by turning to nature. In the growth of a plant we see how leaf after leaf develops until the blossoms unfold: how these blossoms are fructified and seed develops from the fruit. Then the plant withers away. But does its force then come to an end? No, on the contrary: at this very time the forces which call the whole plant back to a new cycle of life are at their strongest. They are now inwardly concentrated at one point, as it were, and they appear again in a new form when the seed is sown in the earth. We then watch the whole plant being renewed; the beginning and the end of its life are thus united. In like manner the highly concentrated forces in ourselves when we pass through death are united with those seen at the outset of life on Earth. We see how the human being as an infant sleeps through a sort of twilight condition into life. This condition gives free play for work on the body, and this is carried out in such a way that the bodily organs harmonise with the life of the soul. It would be a sad pity if anyone wanted to maintain that the ego is not active until self-consciousness begins. No, its activity begins long before that, and afterwards the human being has only to turn its forces to the building up of consciousness and memory. Before this the forces of the ego are already working on moulding the bodily organs so that the still soft and pliable body shall be skilfully made ready to harbour the coming consciousness. Hence we see how the ego is engaged in its greatest work of art at the outset of a person's life, and this shows that he is already in possession of active forces when his memory begins to develop. if we observe the human being quite impartially, we see how he comes to relate himself to the world in his own individual way, and how his undefined features and faculties gradually take form. Finally we see how the force which had previously passed through the gate of death in a concentrated form, in readiness for building up a new body, is now actually at work on it, so that the human being can enter his new body bearing with him the fruits of his former life. In this way the ego proceeds from one earthly life to the next. By actively enhancing the life of a soul, it proves to be endowed with those potent forces which—after continuing to increase until death—maintain their activity during the time between death and rebirth in such a way that the ego can imprint them on another earthly incarnation.

Hence we see how we ourselves are responsible for the causes which take effect in our next life, since this life is the continuation of the one before; and we see how each link in the chain joins on to the next. We have only to compare this with Buddhism to see how modern Spiritual Science, speaking from an evolutionary standpoint based throughout on clairvoyance, can accept the good thought in Buddhism while rejecting the other. Buddhism is the last fruit of a primeval culture dating from the times when primitive clairvoyance was a natural gift, directly experienced, and when therefore the idea of repeated earthly lives held good. At the same time Buddhism maintains that everything working over from a man's former life, and gathered together as the ego of his present life, is merely a semblance. Fundamentally, Buddhism knows nothing of the true ego, but only of the ego we have spoken of as an image. Hence it says that our ego passes away like our body, like our sheaths, and our former experiences. All that the Buddhist recognises as playing over from the preceding life into the present one, are deeds—Karma. According to Buddhism, these deeds combine into a pattern which, in each new life, evokes the semblance of an ego, so that no real ego, but only a man's Karma works on from one life into the next. Hence the Buddhist says: the ego is mere semblance, Maya, like everything else, and I must endeavour to overcome it. The deeds of my former life, now forming a pattern as though round a central point, seem to be an ego, but that is an illusion. Therefore I have to wipe out all that Karma has thus brought into my life.

Spiritual Science says the opposite: that the ego is the concentrating deed of Karma. Whereas all other deeds are temporal and will be compensated in time, this karmic deed, that makes a man conscious of his ego, is not temporal. With ego-consciousness therefore, something enters in that we can describe only by saying—as we have done today—that its existence is rising continually to a higher level; and that when we re-enter earthly life we form ourselves again round the ego. The Buddhist, on the other hand, obliterates the ego and recognises nothing but Karma, which, working on from one life to the next, creates a fresh illusion of an ego. Adherents of modern Spiritual Science, however, for whom Karma and ego do not coincide, say: ‘My ego passes on from its present stage on Earth, with the enhancement thereby gained, to re-appear later in a further incarnation, when it will unite itself with the deeds then performed. When as an ego I have done something, it remains with this central point, and goes on with all my deeds from incarnation to incarnation.’

That is the radical difference between Spiritual Science and Buddhism. Although they both speak in a similar way of Reincarnation and Karma, it is the ego itself that progresses from one life to another and shapes our inner life of soul. When we contemplate this progress, we find it leading us back in each existence to some point in early childhood before which we recall nothing, relying on what is told us by parents and others. Then, at a certain point of time, memory awakes, but we cannot say that the forces of memory were not previously in us; they were definitely there, at work on our inner life. Evolution itself depends upon our memory arising at a certain point in our early life. Moreover, Spiritual Science shows that, just as memory awakes at a certain time in childhood, so it is possible for a man, by raising his consciousness to ever higher levels, to remember not only his immediate past but also his previous lives on earth. This is a fact of evolution which is at present evident only to clairvoyant consciousness. It is in full agreement, however, with what can be learned by other means. When a justifiable objection to reincarnation is said to be that people cannot recall their previous lives the answer is: Just as our ordinary memory is a reality, although we cannot recall our past experiences from the time before that faculty developed, so a memory that can look back to earlier lives must also be first developed. In this way memory becomes an ideal of evolution, and we have to admit: As a child I had to develop a memory for my present life: I must now go on to develop memory for previous earthly lives. Thus we arrive at the comforting fact—though narrow-minded people will certainly not be in sympathy with it—that many ideals lie ahead still for mankind, besides those derived from ordinary consciousness; and these others include a striving for the power to recall past earthly lives. But I repeat that this is not a matter on which philistine souls can be in accord with Spiritual Science. Only recently I was reading a statement by a man held in great esteem today, in which he advanced the opinion that it would never be possible for human reason to solve all the riddles of the universe—nor would this be desirable, for if all the riddles were solved there would be nothing left for us to do on Earth. Evidently he cannot conceive of evolution progressing beyond its present stage, bringing men new faculties for new tasks, nor can he imagine that what is for people's ‘good’ changes with the enhancement of their consciousness.

One of the blessings flowing from Spiritual Science is that it opens out a perspective which does not lead off into vagueness. We have no occasion to complain of looking ahead into empty time. All eternity lies before us. We can see how each link of the whole chain joins on to the next link and we can say to ourselves: You bear in you now the forces acquired in this present life, and with them you are building a future existence when there will be opportunity for you to develop these forces further. Thus, little by little, we experience how real the thought of eternity becomes, how it spreads out before the soul as a vast, everlasting perspective. One of our gains from Spiritual Science is that we no longer ask the abstract question: What is eternity?—nor do we receive a merely abstract answer, for by truly studying human life we see how eternity arises, how each link in the whole is formed, and all abstract considerations are thus driven from the field. The reality then shows—as reality always must—how everything is built up out of single parts, member by member. Thus Spiritual Science points to the nature of man's soul as throwing light upon the nature of eternity and on the way these two are connected.

If now we turn to the second objection, to which perhaps even a personality such as Lessing gave credence, someone might say : ‘On these lines my destiny becomes clear to me, but if I am to suppose that I prepared it for myself through my Karma, this makes it even more painful, for then I would have to blame my shortcomings on myself.’ In the light of Spiritual Science, however, this idea can be transformed. Before our last birth we chose to have the misfortune that now befalls us: by seeking it, and especially by overcoming it, we acquire full capability of which, previously, we could not realise our need. In our disembodied state we became convinced of our need, and only by steering our way to this misfortune do we fit ourselves for rising to a higher level. Thus, through karmic law, the school of life proves to be the bringer of good fortune; and misfortune is seen to add strength to the ideal of eternity.

There is no time now to show how our earthly bodies are continually changing their original form; and how, when the Earth comes to an end, it will be succeeded by another kind of existence. Hence our present lives on Earth do not cover the whole of human existence; they too have had a beginning. Whatever a human being has acquired during repeated lives on Earth will avail him for other forms of existence. In studying the earthly it is enough to consider the essence of the human soul. That is how we can learn that eternity does not begin only after death, for it can be discerned already in the nature of the embodied soul.

Spiritual Science, therefore, raises from the past to a new and higher level something that was foreseen to a certain extent and even investigated by searchers after the spirit in days gone by. Hegel was right in saying, that eternity could not begin for the soul only at death, but must be inherent there during its earthly existence. Here is something on which Spiritual Science will throw more and more light, with a clarity so permeated by feelings and impulses of will that it becomes the very elixir of life—something that has always been thought of as an essential part of the being, the nature, of the human soul. So I can now quote an old saying which, though not summing-up the content of this lecture, is in harmony with its character. It was uttered in the third century after Christ by the great mystic and philosopher, Plotinus, who meditated deeply upon the nature of time and eternity—upon everything, in fact, that forms the basis of what we have been considering today:

Eternity is not bound up with the soul and spirit of man's essential being as a merely fortuitous characteristic, but is a necessity for the nature of the human soul. Neither is Eternity a fortuitous characteristic of the spirit.

Eternity belongs to the spirit, is in the spirit, comes forth from the spirit.

Eternity lives through the spirit.

In the course of our winter talks on spiritual science, we have already dealt with some unpopular and only tolerated issues. However, one can say that no issue is less popular and tolerated than the object of our today's consideration: the initiation.

If one speaks of the spiritual, higher worlds, the thought will also appear of course: how does the human being come to the knowledge of these higher worlds? The today's consideration on initiation can only give a preliminary answer—only all talks of this winter can give a complete answer. We must assume two principles of any spiritual science that we have already touched in the first talk. The first principle is the knowledge that there is another or even a number of other supersensible worlds behind the sense-perceptible one. The second knowledge is that to the human being these supersensible worlds can become accessible gradually, so that he can recognise them by his own development.

Of course, with it, spiritual science causes the opposition of all those people who speak about such matters and say, “we” or “one” cannot recognise. With it from the start, the speaker concerned who wants to make himself the standard measure of any human knowledge postulates a kind of knowledge monopoly, of infallibility.

Spiritual science stands exactly on the opposite point of view. It has the point of view that the human being has abilities and cognitive forces that are embryonic in him and can be developed higher and higher. One has to admit that it is quite right if anybody says, he cannot recognise certain higher worlds. However, at the same time, one has to say that these higher worlds are not to be penetrated just only with those cognitive forces that he means, and that logically nobody has a right to say: my cognitive forces are the absolute only ones; what I recognise signifies the limit of any possible knowledge.—For one rejects the human ability of development with it, denies from the start that the human being can ascend to higher and higher stages. However, it is the basic conviction of any human being who looks impartially at the world, and especially within our German education, it is easy to acknowledge this principle.

Goethe repeatedly pronounced and emphasised in the most various, wonderful sentences what founds a way of thinking leading to initiation. I would like to place some words of Goethe's deep-thought fragment The Secrets (The Mysteries) at the head of our considerations today. He points there to the inner human force that strives on and on and higher and higher, indeed, that is hindered by that what surrounds us at every moment what is forced upon us from the outside, from the sensuous as the inhibiting force. However, the inner force has still a means to come to the inner, to the world knowledge.

Goethe says in this poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) in which he speaks of a special initiation of the Rosicrucians and indicates the principle of initiation with the profound words:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

It completely complies with Goethe's way of thinking to search this force of the human being that can be developed to higher cognitive forces, to look for means and ways to an objective knowledge and wisdom beholding into the inside, into the spiritual of the things. It complies with his way of thinking if we eavesdrop on him where he expresses his level of knowledge most intimately. There we find many tips, which pronounce this clearly.

At the beginning of his Theory of Colours, Goethe says that the eye is created “by the light for the light.” The time has not yet come to understand this work of Goethe; perhaps, in some time if the perspectives prevail which I have mentioned in my talk The Natural Sciences Facing a Crucial Decision. He says, it was an indifferent, not photosensitive organ. The light caused the organ to see the light, to perceive the illumined objects. One has to think in the sense of Goethe what I have said in the sense of spiritual science: the human being had no eyes in primeval times, which could perceive light; the eyes arose from quite different organs. Which force accomplished this change? The light! It conjured up the eye that had become photosensitive. At the same time, Goethe indicates that there are other, unknown and misjudged abilities in the human being which—if they are developed—just open a new world as the eye opens the world of light and colours if it is elicited. In no other sense, we speak in spiritual science of the higher, extrasensory worlds.

Exactly in the sense of the dictum of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great thinker, we speak of such extrasensory perception. Fichte says, if a sighted man goes among blind people and tells them about light and colours, they regard him probably as a daydreamer. Also is that what he, Fichte, had to say to his listeners in those days only for an organ which has to originate only, and this—only on a higher stage—can be compared to the organ of the blind-born who has recognised the world only touching before the operation and sees it lighting up in colours and light afterward. Thus, it is also possible to elicit abilities by the development of forces slumbering in the human being to perceive new forces and objects in the surroundings that one can only perceive with spiritual abilities. In this logical sense, one speaks in spiritual science of higher worlds.

He who doubts the higher worlds is on the same level of the power of judgement as someone who is born blind and says, there is no world of light and colours because I do not see them. Nobody can really assess the possibility. However, someone can decide on the reality who knows it. Not anybody has to decide on a matter who knows nothing about it, but only someone who knows something of it. Indeed, only the principle of experience has to decide on initiation.

However, is it unnecessary to talk about these matters? No, it is necessary; for in which sense does anybody talk who informs about such higher worlds? He talks about them because he knows that merely by these communications, merely by this report the abilities and forces slumbering in all human beings can be woken up to penetrate to these worlds. Someone who is reluctant to receive information about these worlds resembles someone who was once reluctant to take part in the development of the eyes with which the human being can see the sun. He could also have said, why shall I develop anything, so that I can recognise the sun and the light? He did not know the sun and the light before. Only by a foreign power approaching us, the inner disposition can develop in the human being. Only if we can open the soul freely to the communications about the higher worlds, we get the first impulse to develop the higher forces which make us sighted, initiated finally.

One spoke of the principle of initiation at all times of the human development. Only the relation to the public working was different from that in our age. If we go back to the ancient Indian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Egyptian, or Greek-Roman culture-epochs, if we go up then to the Middle Ages, to the 16th, 17th centuries and our time, initiates and disciples of the initiates always existed. However, one did not speak about that publicly. What meant to be initiated? One differentiates an initiate, a clairvoyant, and somebody who applies the higher forces in the service of the physical world.

However, we do not want to get involved in these finer differences. Somebody is a clairvoyant who is able to behold into the extrasensory worlds to whom the worlds that are concealed to the usual human being are obvious, discernible worlds. Why was the introduction to such higher worlds pursued, so to speak, secretly? Why did one not speak of it publicly in former times? We speak of the dangers of initiation next time. I would like today to draw your attention only to the fact that on the border between the sensuous-visible world and the invisible-extrasensory world, indeed, a certain danger lies in wait for the human being, and that someone who wants to become an initiate has to overcome this danger at first. It consists in the fact that it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish illusion from reality, dreams from reality, vision from the real view at the border of the physical and the supraphysical worlds. In this area, it is very easy to confuse own fantastic things of the soul with the objective reality. One needs different qualities that are explained in the following: keeping cool, retaining certainty of the soul, courage, perseverance and energy at the border. If the human being lost the clearness about that which is appearance and what is reality at this border, he would have lost his mind, then he would be a fool instead of an initiate.

Nowadays an immense greed, a true fury exists with most people indeed, if they hear of such matters to behold something of the higher worlds. However, with most human beings the perseverance and the will and above all the strength to overcome everything that must remove the indicated dangers do not exist. Hence, at all times it was necessary that one examined the people whom one admitted to initiation concerning their intellect, their spiritual and moral abilities and their feelings. Only those who could stand the test before the pervasive view of the initiate could be admitted to initiation. There were such persons who were able because of their living conditions to submit to that, which enabled them to distinguish appearance and truth, vision and reality on the border between the physical and the spiritual worlds.

The question may now arise: why are those not quiet also today who know something about these matters after one could be quiet so long? Why does one not carry out the principle of the strict seclusion also today concerning the introduction to the higher worlds? Why is it broken? This has good reasons. Humanity advances. It is different in the different epochs of its development. History is also much more different in its organisation and developmental stages than the nonprofessional believes it. Someone who does not know the matters imagines that the human beings are the same today as they were centuries ago. Those who studied history and anthropology also have the same idea tacitly. The human beings of different centuries differ really very much who are apparently the same to the external anatomy and physiology. The differences are not obvious at first sight, and the external anatomy and physiology know nothing at all about them. Humanity progresses, and the human mind and the human soul have advanced so far that one needs the knowledge of the world secrets, the views, concepts, and ideas that lead us into the depth of the things, which were always preserved in the so-called secret schools to the general welfare and progress of humanity.

I present the further details in the following talks. We need only to point to the immense difference that took place in humanity in the course of a few centuries. We need only to mention one thing that deeply intervened in the human development: the art of printing.

Imagine once how the human beings lived concerning their soul, their spiritual education before the invention of the art of printing, how the communication was between those who knew something, and those who wanted to learn something, before there were books. Compare how today the communications of science and scholarship penetrate to any soul by thousands and thousands means, by popular writings and newspaper articles. If you go on imagining, you can get the idea that today it looks different in the souls, and you do not think that the sensations, thoughts, and impulses in the souls have no influence on life as a whole. Someone who believes that everything obvious is an imprint of the spiritual says to himself that the human beings have other physical and social needs today than in past times. Once it was possible that single persons knew something of certain events, of truth and wisdom. Today, however, the principle of initiation must be made accessible to everybody. Because of a duty towards humanity the strict secrecy and seclusion of former times was broken through. That is why today not only about that is spoken which is to be said about the higher worlds from the viewpoint of the spiritual research, but one also speaks in a certain way at least in the elements how the human being ascends even to these worlds, how he can accomplish the first steps of initiation. However, from the start one has to call attention to the fact that nobody should believe that the principle of initiation is to be taken easily and less seriously because the first steps of initiation are accessible to everybody today. Everybody can accomplish these first steps in every situation, as you will hear. Then higher and higher stages begin up to that of an initiate in the true sense of the word.

I have to characterise this concept first. What is an initiate? If I assume that there are higher and higher worlds behind our sensuous world, an initiate would be someone who has an insight into these higher worlds. The training for the initiation gives the human being the means and instructions how he can develop his spiritual eyes and ears to be able to behold into this spiritual world as he looks with his physical organs at the physical world.

Strictly speaking, all that is only a preparation for the real initiation. He who becomes a pupil of initiation receives certain instructions from his teacher how he can develop the abilities slumbering in him. All that aims to a point that leads him into a preliminary depth of the world to the highest degree, to a centre from which the rays of world creation and world principles go out. Such a thing does exist. This secret would be pronounceable even in words and, nevertheless, it is not pronounced. Allow me this indication from the start, because even if it sounds apparently mysterious, someone who thinks a little bit about it will find that even the kind in which such a thing is pronounced is very significant for the sensation that one should appropriate to understand the principle of initiation.

One prepares the pupil for the acceptance of the world secret that would be pronounceable if one is allowed to pronounce it. The initiate is somebody who knows a certain secret that is significant to the highest degree, for the life of the human beings. A secret, because if it were pronounced in the everyday life it would appear mad, brainless, paradoxical. Now, this would still be the less. However, there are other reasons why, nevertheless, someone who could pronounce the secret is not allowed to pronounce it. The reason is so deep that the secret that finishes certain stages of initiation cannot be wrested from anybody who knows it even not if one tormented and tortured him. He can never wrest this secret from himself. For this secret is not informed in words from human being to human being. The essentials consist of the fact that one brings the pupil to the point where he gets around by the imparted development of his own abilities and forces to solving the riddle by himself which is behind the matter, so that, so to speak, the pupil faces the teacher with that luminous eye which announces: I have found it!

Training means leading to finding oneself. A big part of that what the human being has to gain for the penetration into the higher worlds lies just in that big and immense sensation of the soul when it awakes and feels as newborn, after it was led to the higher capabilities and stages of development. One can compare that feeling on a lower level with that of a blind-born who could only touch the things up to now, and to whom after the operation light, colours, and forms appear from the darkness. Only if this relationship exists between teacher and pupil, the relationship is a healthy one. It is built on the highest that there can be between human being and human being: on freedom. That relationship must be there in which nothing at all of an unjustified influence from the teacher is there, because everything that should be developed is got out from the pupil himself.

After we have characterised the mood that should control the principle of initiation, we want to go somewhat more precisely into the development of the abilities slumbering in the human being. We start from the obvious matters and advance to the more distant ones. Three abilities are already there for the usual observation: thinking, feeling and willing, thought, feeling and will. This is the level of the average human being. All three abilities are developable. At first the thinking: it cannot lead the human being beyond the physical world, even if it is developed ever so subtle, ever so intimate. However, the thinking is still the first stage of development if it is a matter of getting beyond the physical world. We shall solve this ostensible contradiction, however, straight away. I have to speak immediately of those principles of initiation which were usual in the course of the last centuries in the secret schools and which are informed initially today to the public by those who know something of them.

First, the pupil has to develop the thinking free from sensuousness. What does one call thinking free from sensuousness? If the human being looks at the world around himself by his senses, he creates mental pictures and ideas of the world. These mental pictures and ideas make the world comprehensible to him. However, all that is no thinking free from sensuousness. The modern science, because of a certain inner weakness, often does not want to accept another thinking. Nevertheless, another thinking has its origin solely in the human inside, in the human soul. The modern human being only knows very little of the big extent of this thinking that is free from sensuousness and if anybody hears anything of it, he rejects it, and does not want to accept it.

The human being cannot only have thoughts referring to the sense-perceptible world; he can also have thoughts that arise from an inner power that the senses can never stimulate. Even philosophers do not see that today. I can produce evidence. Mathematics, geometry, can deliver it. Nobody can outdoors see a real cycle; nobody can outdoors see the principle that two times two are four.

However, one can get out by inner meditation without counting beans that two times two are four, or one can construct the circle by inner view, so that the circle line is always equidistant to the centre. What did the great Plato write above his school? He wrote that nobody could be accepted without knowledge of geometry. That does not mean that he had to know the entire geometry, but that he had a suitable sense for it. If we reproduced the external circle in concepts only, we would never be able to form a true circle. However, we can form a circle and its principles in our mind that way. Thus, we must work out the circle from own mind. This is thinking free from sensuousness. Mathematics is not popular, and, nevertheless, it is the only thinking free from sensuousness that is done in our schools. However, most people laugh at someone if he says that there are still other concepts that one can find wholly spiritually, as those of space and number and figures. One ignores and despises the philosophers and thinkers who asserted that the human being is able to put up a building of ideas that harmonises with the world.

Someone who has put up such ideas free from sensuousness within our German education and culture for other fields than geometry is Goethe again. It is a wonderful great achievement of the spiritual life of humanity what Goethe performed with the type of the plants, with the archetypical plant, and the type of the animal, the archetypical animal. What sort of thoughts are these? Goethe himself tries to make clear them his way. Many people wrote about that. However, the most is nonsense because most people are not able to understand how a spiritually constructed circle whose principles we can see relates to the circle drawn on the board which is nothing but a number of little chalk particles. However, Goethe's archetypical plant relates to the external sense-perceptible plant. Outdoors are the different plants—Goethe thought—, the one looks this way, the other that way. However, an inner spiritual strength lives in us with which we are able to find the concept of the archetypical plant out of inner production. The botanists thought that Goethe meant an imperfect plant. This is nonsense! He meant the spiritually beheld plant! I tried in one of my books to reconstruct this archetypical plant, as one also constructs the circle in mind. Goethe's archetypical plant contains possible plants if one is able to conjure up all possibilities out of it. His archetypical animal contains all possible animals. Goethe created a spiritual biology there. It enables us to create in spirit what cannot appear to our senses. However, there we start from a profound, significant spiritual fact. Goethe started from this fact, from which he got what he found as archetypical plant. This was no mere idea to him, but it was the creating force in all plants. The archetypical animal was the creative in any animal to him.

I have often cited a famous conversation about the plants that immediately at the beginning of their acquaintance Goethe and Schiller had with each other. They came from a talk of the society of naturalists in Jena. Schiller said that it is unsatisfactory to look at the creatures in such a way that one cannot see their coherence. Goethe answered that there could be also another method where one can see the common, the spiritual tie, which holds everything together. Goethe describes the conversation to us, and that he took his pencil then and drew the picture of the archetypical plant with some characteristic lines.

There Schiller, the speculative poet, said, this is no fact; this is an idea, no reality. Goethe answered, if this is an idea I see the ideas outdoors with my eyes. In the plant is the force creating life. Because of the deep view that the Goethean mind had of such a being it was possible that in his mind that was awoken which creates in all animals and plants. A mysterious tie exists between the human inside and that which is spread out in the animal and plant realms. If the human being conjures up the archetypical plant in himself, he conjures up that form after which the plants have been created. We regard ourselves in this way as spiritual participants in the productions of nature. Goethe as it were immerses in the things and conjures up in his mind the spirit living in the things. Goethe presents this to the human being.

One can try the same in higher fields. A German philosopher did it, not sufficiently but fundamentally and profoundly, but one did not understand him. If an anecdote were true, it would prove this fact in its depth. For Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770–1831) should have said: “Only one understood me, and also he misunderstood me.” Hegel tried to create concepts free from sensuousness of the surroundings and history of the human beings. His Philosophy of History has now appeared in Reclam's Universal Library in which he gives a great survey of the whole world history. Many things in it are not right, unfortunately. Many things are as one-sided as just only Hegel could be one-sided, so that the book can serve only as suggestion. However, it may serve to find the principle. Hegel cared about thinking free from sensuousness, so that he lets everything appear in its own spirit, which is the same spirit that led humanity. He, who wants to do this, needs a more intimate knowledge of the human spirit and that of the peoples than Hegel could possess. Hence, everything seems abstract, grey, and logical in the bad sense; however, the things are ingenious and stimulating. One has to say, what is wrong there can be even more useful to humanity than many right but trivial things.

Just as one can think in mathematics free from sensuousness and create as one can do it also in history, my The Philosophy of Freedom should give a picture of the inner development of the human being with his entire cognitive faculties as one can grasp this from the thinking free from sensuousness. This is a book like an organism where a sentence follows the other, a book of a thinking that moves in itself and is self-contained. I wanted to show in it how the human being who wants to go from sensuousness to the extrasensory has to cultivate his thinking.

However, there are easier means, namely those about which spiritual science informs. What we can read in the spiritual-scientific books about the different human members, about reincarnation and karma, the life after death, the development of the human races and cultures and about what we shall still speak you cannot see with senses, but it is something that you can understand if you generally get involved with human understanding. Spiritual science gives the human beings a thinking free from sensuousness as it was given in the secret schools once, and as the human being must have it, before he is able to behold into the spiritual worlds. Clairvoyance and initiation are necessary for that. However, he who has got the possibility to inform in a certain way can form a bridge. Then everybody can convince himself by enclosing logical thinking and a healthy power of judgement that the things are right. Clairvoyance is necessary to find the higher profundities, only a healthy mind and logic to understand them.

Indeed, today many people are possessed by a more or less materialistic thinking or by that arrogance of infallibility that is due to the positivistic science. This is a real pipe dream. If the people only know that they live, strictly speaking, under suggestions, that they do not know what is real and what is not real! Indeed, they do not want to acknowledge the infallibility of the pope; however, they regard themselves as infallible. That who stands on the viewpoint of science is the most intolerable one. He regards the spiritual scientist as a fool and himself as an infallible man! One can inform about the world that is not accessible to the senses only with a thinking free from sensuousness. Hence, the first training is the training of thinking which only makes it possible to develop the thinking and to lead to a real beholding into the spiritual worlds.

The second is the development of feeling. Nobody should train the feeling, before he has not brought the thinking free from sensuousness to a certain level. That who knows how it looks in these higher worlds tells you: if you ascend to the higher worlds, you come to the astral world and then to the spiritual or devachanic one. The impressions are completely different there than the human being can imagine who knows the physical world only. Even if all experiences are different, one thing remains: the logic, the healthy thinking. The human being who appropriates the healthy thinking who is a reasonable person firmly standing on his legs cannot go astray if he ascends to the worlds that offer many surprises. That who develops this self-assured thinking working from the origin of the soul has a sure leader also beyond that border where one can hard distinguish between the physical and the supraphysical.

With healthy thinking one gets over the abyss which opens there. If anyone lives without healthy thinking and says, you give me thoughts only; however, a divine power lives in me, why should I not be able to ascend to the higher worlds?—Then I can only answer: those who speak in such a way have no idea of the conditions of the higher worlds where the outer world does not correct us where we must have the leader in ourselves if we should not go astray.

The development of the feeling happens with the help of Imagination at the school of those to be initiated. The pupil creates a figurative notion of the world at first; then he has to carry out his world consideration rather quietly under the Goethean saying: “All that is transitory is only a symbol.” I would like to give you an example that I have given several times how one leads someone who aims at a spiritual development into the depths of the things, how one teaches the development of the feeling by Imagination (anthroposophic concepts of initiation are capitalised). If you want to understand the development of the beings and stop at the thinking, you never can go fairly beyond this sensory world. You can appropriate the most different concepts how subordinated beings develop higher and higher up to the human being, you can take even the spiritual-scientific evolutionary theory how the logos poured forth and formed more and more complex forms and worlds: plants, animals, human beings, how all differentiations formed, evolutions and involutions and so on. These are teachings that you find in theosophical books, nice and interesting concepts. However, you cannot come into the higher worlds this way. You can thereby form ideas, which are analogies of higher worlds, but you never can come with them into these worlds. You need Imagination. This is not anything that one imagines.

It is something that is produced with a productive power and amounts to nothing more than concepts only, so that these concepts, like Goethe's archetypical plant and archetypical animal, correspond to the outer realities; but pictures are formed corresponding to the spirit that creates behind these things. I would like to explain in the form of a dialog what one said always in such secret schools to the pupils. I say this to you to make clear the principle, the method of initiation. What I speak in a few words takes a long period of training. The dialog that I describe never did take place, but that what it shows has always taken place in any spiritual school. One says to the pupil, look at the plant, which points with its root to the earth, which lets grow its stalk, its leaves, and blossoms upwards, and compare it to the human being. You would compare wrongly if you wanted to compare the head to the blossom and the foot to the root.—I would like to remark that also that who founded the newer natural sciences so greatly gets to this view. He compares the root to the head of the human being and regards the plant as the reverse human being and the human being as the reverse plant.—The root is the head that the plant sticks toward the centre of the earth, just as the human being sticks his head that he holds in the opposite direction toward the sun or the heavenly forces. The plant turns its reproductive organ, the blossom, virginally to the sunbeam that one called the “holy lance of love” in the medieval secret schools. The human being is the exact opposite. He sticks his organs of conceptions toward the centre of the earth, the head toward the space. In between, one says to the pupil, is the animal who does half a turn, so that the spine is horizontal. Look at plant, animal, and human being and you understand the dictum of Plato that the world soul is crucified on the cross of the world. Plato understands plant, animal, and human being by the world. The plant stands vertically, the human being reversely to it so that he looks with the head at the free world ether, and the crossbar is the animal. This is the prototype of the cross, as one knew it in ancient times and in all secret schools.

Then one says the following to the pupil: imagine the plant and its pure, chaste substance. The human being is on a higher level than the plant. The plant resembles the sleeping human being. It has physical body and etheric body as the sleeping human being has physical body and etheric body. The human being is, actually, beyond the physical and etheric body. That what thinks in him and feels desire and pain has been cut off in the sleeping state. The plant has a consciousness that we know as sleep consciousness.

What does the development from the horizontal line up to the entire turn mean? It means that be the human being has attained his present bright day consciousness. With the transition from the animals, the human being has become a being with bright day consciousness. He had to lose something else for it. Look at the plant: a body of desires, an astral body does penetrate it. The plant has physical body and etheric body. The human being must go through the animal and integrate instincts, desires, and passions. He has higher risen integrating the astral body into the plant body.

Now spiritual science puts a great Imagination before him. This spiritual science shows how he can gradually develop the strength that leads him back again to the purification of his desire nature that leads him up to that point where he lives again in the pure, chaste body on higher developmental stages while retaining his current state of consciousness. There he has overcome what he had necessarily to absorb in himself with the transition to the higher stages. What the teacher put before the pupil was a future ideal: you will have the plant nature again! One gave him the means to attain it. One said to him, the entire humanity comes again to this stage once when the human beings have developed the purely spiritual strength. Then he is no longer tied to the desire nature, he no longer sticks his organs of conception toward the spiritual sunbeam. In the initiatory training, one calls this organ the Holy Grail, which then the human being has attained, and which is a spiritual organ.

Imagine the difference between the dry abstractions that one puts in mathematics or in idealistic writings before you and this idea where we go up through the animal state to the human being and again up to other future stages of humanity. If we visualise that, we accompany this Imagination with our sensations and feelings if we are generally able not only to think the spirit but also to feel it. We shall see this development not only in spirit, but we shall feel it. The evolution in the universe appears immense and big to us if we visualise it that way, not in abstractions. The whole universe with all world riddles was presented to the pupils. They claim not only his thinking, but also his feeling and sensing. It was to him, as if his whole soul went out and lived in everything that was round him. As with the Goethean archetype something is created in us that lives in all plants and animals, it is also, if the developed feeling rises from us, as if we felt the world soul which flows as power through all beings.

Thus, everything came to life that was around the pupil, it became Imagination. Where he went through woods and meadows, everywhere the pictures worked in his soul. This loosened the inner power in him and he looked behind the beings and behind the things gradually. If one tells this in such a way, it seems almost unbelievable. If the pupil was introduced under the guidance of the teacher in the Imaginative of the world, he was guided not only to the thinking, but also to the feeling and the impulses that have gushed out from the soul of the world creator. He was introduced in an essential world. Then the development continues from the feeling to the willing.

As well as the feeling develops by pictures, the will develops by the occult letters. This will is the deepest of the concealed power. This will becomes something like a skeleton that the human being squeezes out by the will into the outer world. If you remember the pictures of the Munich congress, of the columns and seals, they are there to train the will. In the portfolio, which we edited as Pictures of Occult Seals and Columns, they are reproduced. I want to discuss the principle of these occult seals and columns once and give their meaning for the initiation. Any seal explains what you can find in the Apocalypse or The Revelation of John. In this portfolio, you find signs. Any sign has an immense, stimulating effect on the human being.

You find a human figure on the first seal. The feet are like from liquid brass, a fiery sword goes out from the mouth. I do not want to describe the remainder. He who becomes engrossed in this seal sees that just this seal gives him something marvellous in particular by this contrast. We shall hear in the last talk of this winter on Sun, Moon and Stars that we are led back by spiritual science also to states of the earth where the earth was in a fiery-liquid state and that—in contrast to the materialistic science—the human being already existed. Spiritual science can make the objection to itself that the human being could not live in a fiery-liquid state. At that time, the human being was formed from fiery liquid mass. This beginning of the earth is shown in the fiery-liquid metal feet. A later future state is shown with the fiery sword that comes out of the mouth, and appears in all myths again. I can only indicate what it concerns here. You will see how spiritual science is connected deeply with the innermost essence of the world.

How does the mediation happen, if I speak to you? What I speak are my thoughts at first. These accept tones that make the air vibrate. The air is thereby set in motion in this hall. The oscillations of the air come to your ear, come to your soul, and impart themselves to your soul. My words live here in the room in certain forms of oscillation. If you could see them, you would see particular oscillations if I pronounce the word “soul.” As well as the human being is able today to form the air and make arise that what lives in his soul in the oscillating air, he will also be able to form organs. There are organs in the human being, which are at the beginning, and other organs are at the end of their development. The larynx and the heart are at the beginning of development. I know that I assert something scandalous for the positive science, because one regards these two organs as mechanical apparatuses, the heart like a pump. However, just the theories of the heart and the blood circulation will experience reorganisations in the not too distant future. One will find that the circulation of the blood is due to something quite different from the heart, and that the heart moves only by the blood circulation. If the human being feels abashed, he blushes. This is an influence of the blood. The heart will be in future a voluntary muscle, and it prepares itself to become one.

Here something is given that will almost coin the future of the human being externally-physically. The heart is a crux to the usual anatomy and physics. It has the configuration of a voluntary muscle, while it is no voluntary muscle today. A voluntary muscle has striated muscle fibers. The heart has such striated fibers, although it is not voluntary even today. However, it is on the way of becoming a voluntary muscle.

The larynx will also have another function. It will be the reproductive organ of the human being. The larynx that produces words of the soul will undertake the reproduction. The fire principle is the speech, and the fire principle of the speech will be a creative principle; hence, the sword in the mouth. This fiery sword is intimately related to the world forces. If the human being becomes engrossed in its picture, this strengthens his willpower. One can say that only that way. He who does it experiences it. Then he anticipates, thinks, and feels not only, but he penetrates with his willpower into the things. This is the way through the occult writing. One can state quite concretely, in which way one should develop thinking, feeling, and willing. If one has woken the forces slumbering in the human being, thinking, feeling, and willing become particular organs, which one calls spiritual eyes. From them the spiritual eyes originate which show the world of the flooding spiritual light and its colours and the spiritual forces behind our physical world. The trained willpower becomes the spiritual ears of which also Goethe speaks who was deeply initiated into these matters:

In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres
the sun still sings its glorious song,
and it completes with tread of thunder
the journey it has been assigned.

Goethe remains in the right picture. If one is introduced in the higher spiritual world, one is introduced by the ear. If one comes in the spiritual realm, it is immediately said: “In these sounds the new day is already born for spiritual ears.” Those who believe to understand Goethe but say, this is nonsense, and need an explanation of it, which one cannot expect the poet to accept, one has to answer: no, one cannot expect that Goethe wrote nonsense: “the sun still sings ...” is nonsense only if one applies it to the physical world.

Thus, we have seen that the principle of initiation is based on the fact that one gets out particular forces slumbering in the human being, so that these forces guide the human beings into the spiritual world surrounding him. What gets out these forces of the human being? We have to explain the matter completely in the sense of Goethe. Once there was a sense organ, an indifferent organ in his sensuous body, which was flooded from light. The light made it the eye, so that the human being could see the colours and forms round himself with the eyes. The eye originated that way. Unknown and unrecognised organs which one does not want to recognise slumber in the human being. In addition, other worlds are round us, except the world of light and colours. As well as with the blind human being the eye was woken for seeing, the spiritual ears and eyes are trained with the clairvoyance and clairaudience, so that the human being can behold into the surrounding spiritual world.

The human being has gained self-consciousness. He has become in such a way that he can relate everything to himself. However, because he develops the spiritual eyes and ears following the principle of initiation he immerses again in the outer world. He finds his higher self in this world. We are not allowed to say that we find the divine and spiritual in ourselves. This is a wrong expression. Recognise yourself! Is an old saying. However, one has to understand it in such a way as Adam recognised his woman. He fertilised her. Thus, that applies also to the organs. Fertilise yourself, be fertilised by the world.—Thus, the human being should develop the forces slumbering in him. It is true what Goethe says:

Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own strength were in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Indeed, the sun force is in us, and the eye does not create the divine being, does not create the sun, but it sees it, after it has been created.

We can develop higher forces and penetrate deeper and deeper into the world this way. Then the outer world does no longer appear to us as something that restrains and restricts us, but as that which brings true and spiritual reality. Harmony is created between the human being and the world. Thereby we overcome the lower self that looks out into the sensuous world. We attain the higher ego of the human being that is spread out in the whole universe. Goethe means this indicating the principle of initiation in his poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) with the words with which we want to close. They show how the human being flows out by self-conquest and into the feeling permeating the world, into the spiritual of the world, into the will of the cosmic spirits pulsating through the world:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

The title of today's lecture no doubt reminds you of a passage in Goethe's Faust, when Faust, representing striving man, enters into a pact with evil powers, represented by the emissary from hell, Mephistopheles. Faust is to sign the pact in blood. At first he regards this as a joke, but Goethe undoubtedly meant the words spoken by Mephistopheles at this point to be taken seriously: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

Goethe¹ commentators usually provide curious interpretations of this passage. You will be aware that so much has been written about Goethe's Faust that it can fill libraries. I naturally cannot go into what every commentator has said about this particular passage, but it all amounts more or less to what is said by a recent commentator, Professor Jacob Minor.² Like others, he regards Mephistopheles' remark to be ironic, but Minor adds a curious sentence. I quote it in order to illustrate the amazing things said about Goethe's Faust. Minor states: “The devil is an enemy of blood.” He goes on to point out that as blood invigorates and sustains human life, the devil, being an enemy of the human race, must of necessity be also an enemy of blood. Minor is quite right when he further demonstrates that in sagas and legends blood always plays the kind of role it plays in Goethe's Faust. The oldest version of the Faust legend clearly describes how Faust makes a slight cut in his left hand with a penknife, dips a quill in the blood in order to sign the agreement, and as he does so, the blood, flowing from the wound, forms the words: “Oh man, escape!”

This is all quite correct, but what about the remark that the devil is an enemy of blood and for that reason demands the signature written in blood? Can you imagine anyone wishing to possess the very thing he abhors? The only reasonable interpretation of the passage is that Goethe, as well as earlier writers of Faust legends, wishes to show that the devil regards blood as especially valuable, and that to him it is important that the deed is signed in blood rather than in neutral ink. The supposition must be that the representative of the powers of evil believes, or rather is convinced, that he will gain a special power over Faust by possessing at least a drop of his blood. It is quite obvious that Faust must sign in blood, not because the devil is his enemy, but because he wants to have power over him. The reason behind this passage is a strange premonition that if someone gains power over an individual's blood, one gains power over the person. In short, the feeling is that blood is a very special fluid and it is the real issue in the fight for an individual's soul between good and evil.

A radical change must come about in our modern understanding and evaluation of the sagas and myths handed down since ancient times. We cannot go on regarding legends, fables and myths as childlike folklore or pretentiously declare them to be poetical expressions of a nation's soul. The poetic soul of a nation is nothing but a fantasy product of donnish officialdom. Anyone with true insight into the soul of a people knows with certainty that the contents of fables and myths, depicting powerful beings and wonderful happenings, is something very much more profound than mere invention. When with knowledge provided by spiritual research we delve into sagas and myths, allowing the mighty primordial pictures to act on us, we begin to recognize the profound ancient wisdom they reveal.

To begin with, one naturally wonders how it was possible for primitive man, with his unsophisticated views, to depict in the form of fables and myths, cosmic riddles that are unveiled and described in exact terms by means of modern spiritual research. This at first seems very surprising. However, as further research reveals how these ancient fables and myths came into existence, one ceases to be amazed, and all doubt vanishes. One discovers that myths and fables, far from containing naive views, are filled with primordial wisdom. A thorough study of myths and fables yields infinitely more insight than today's intellectual, experimental sciences. Admittedly the approach to such a study must be with spiritual scientific methods. Whatever legends have to say about blood is important, because in earlier times an individual's inherent wisdom made him aware of the true significance of blood, this special fluid that in human beings is a stream of flowing life.

Whence this wisdom came in ancient times is not our concern today; it will be the subject of a later lecture, though an indication will be given at the close of this one. Today we shall look at the significance of blood in human evolution and its role in cultural life. However, our discussion will not be from a physiological, or any other natural scientific point of view, but from that of spiritual science. It will be a help if before pursuing our subject we remind ourselves of a maxim that originated within the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of Hermes held sway. This maxim, which expresses a fundamental truth, is known as the Hermetic maxim and runs as follows: As above, so below.

All kinds of trivial explanations of this saying are to be found, but the one that concerns us today is the following. It is obvious to spiritual science that the world accessible to our five senses, far from being complete in itself, is a manifestation of a spiritual world hidden behind it. This hidden world is called, according to the Hermetic axiom, the “world above, or the upper world.” The sense world spread all about us, perceptible to our senses and accessible to our intellect, is called the “world below,” and is an expression of the spiritual world above it. The physical world is therefore not complete to the spiritual researcher, but is a kind of physiognomic expression of the soul and spirit world behind it, just as when looking at a human face one does not stop short at its shape and features, but recognizes them as an expression of the soul and spirit behind them.

What everyone does instinctively when faced with an ensouled being, the spiritual researcher does in regard to the whole world. The axiom, As above, so below, when applied to a human being, means that a person's soul impulses come to expression on the face. A hard, coarse face denotes coarseness of soul, a smile inner joy, and tears inner suffering.

Let us now apply the Hermetic axiom to the question: What is wisdom? Spiritual science has often pointed to the fact that human wisdom is related to experience, particularly to painful experience. For someone actually in the throes of pain and suffering, the immediate experience will no doubt be inner discord. But when pain and suffering have been conquered, when only their fruits remain, a person will say that from the experience a measure of wisdom is gained. The happiness, enjoyment and contentment life brings one gratefully accepts; but more valuable by far, once it is overcome, is the pain and suffering, for to that people owe what wisdom they possess. Spiritual science recognizes in wisdom something like crystallized pain; pain transformed into its opposite.

It is interesting that modern research, with its more materialistic approach, has come to the same conclusion. A book well worth reading was published recently about the mimicry of thought. The writer is not an anthroposophist, but a natural scientist and psychologist. He sets out to show that a person's thought life reveals itself in the physiognomy, and draws attention to the fact that a thinker's facial expression always suggest assimilated pain.

Thus, you see emerging, interspersed with more materialistic views, a confirmation of an ancient maxim that originated from spiritual knowledge. This will happen more and more frequently; you will find ancient wisdom gradually reappearing within the framework of modern science.

Spiritual research confirms that everything that surrounds us in the world: the configuration of minerals, the covering of vegetation, the world of animals, is the physiognomic expression of the life of spirit behind it. It is the “below” reflecting the “above.” Spiritual science maintains that what thus surrounds us can be properly understood only when one has knowledge of the “above,” that is, knowledge of the prototypes, the primordial beings from whom it all originated. Today we shall turn our attention to that which creates on earth its physiognomic expression in the blood. Once the spiritual background of blood is understood, it will be recognized that such knowledge must of necessity influence our spiritual and cultural life.

The problems human beings are facing today are momentous and pressing—especially educational problems involving not only the young but also entire populations. These particular problems are bound to increase as time goes on. The great social upheavals taking place make this evident to anyone. Demands causing anxiety are continually made, whether in the guise of the woman question, the labor question or the peace question. These are all problems that become understandable once insight is gained into the spiritual nature of blood.

Another question, similar in nature, which is again coming to the fore, is that of race. The racial problem cannot be understood unless one understands the mysterious effect when blood of different races is mingled. And finally, there is the problem of colonization that also belongs in this category. This problem has become even more pressing since attempts have been made to tackle it more consistently than was formerly the case. It arises when cultivated people are to share their lives with uncultivated people. Certain questions ought to be asked when attempts are made to tackle the problem: To what extent is it possible for a primitive people to assimilate a strange culture? Can a savage become civilized? What here comes under consideration are vital and far-reaching questions of existence, not just concern about doubtful morality. It is unlikely that one will find the right way of introducing a strange culture to a people if it is not known whether it is on an ascending or descending line of evolution; whether this or that aspect of its life is ruled by its blood. When the significance of blood is discussed, all these things come under scrutiny.

The physical composition of blood will be known to you from science in general. In humans, and also in the higher animals, blood is truly the stream of life. Our inner bodily nature is in contact with the external world through the fact that we absorb into the blood the life-giving oxygen from the air, a process by which the blood is renewed. The blood that meets the instreaming oxygen acts as a kind of poison, as a kind of destroyer within the organism. This blue-red blood, by absorbing the oxygen, is transformed into red, life-giving blood through a process of combustion. This red blood that penetrates all parts of the organism has the task to absorb directly into itself substances from the outer world, and deposit them as nourishment along the shortest route within the body. Humans and the higher animals must of necessity first absorb nutritive substances into the blood, then, having formed the blood, absorb into it oxygen from the air and finally build up and sustain the body by means of the blood.

A knowledgeable psychologist once remarked that the blood circulating through the body is not unlike a second person who, in relation to the one made of bone, muscle and nerve, constitutes a kind of outer world. And indeed our entire being constantly takes from the blood what sustains it, and gives back what it cannot use. One could say that a person carries in his or her blood a double (Doppelgänger) who, as a constant companion, furnishes him or her with renewed strength and relieves a person of what is useless. It is entirely justified to refer to blood as a stream of life and compare its importance with that of fibre. What fibre is for the lower organism. blood is for the human being as a whole.

The distinguished scientist Ernst Haeckel³ has probed deeply into nature's workshop, and in his popular works he quite rightly points out that blood is the last to develop in an organism. When tracing the stages of development in a human embryo, one finds rudiments of bone and muscle long before there is any indication of blood formation. Only late in embryonic development does formation of blood and blood vessels become apparent. This leads natural science to rightly conclude that blood made its appearance only late in world evolution, and that forces already in existence had first to reach a stage of development comparable to that of blood before they could accomplish what was necessary in the human organism. When as embryos human beings repeat once more the earlier stages of human evolution, they adapt to what existed before blood first made its appearance, This a person must do in order to achieve the crowning glory of evolution: the enhancement and transmutation of all that went before into that special fluid that is blood.

If we are to enter into the mysterious laws of the spiritual realm that hold sway behind blood, we must first take a brief look at some of the basic ideas of spiritual science. You will come to see that these basic ideas are the “above,” and that this “above” comes to expression in the laws that govern blood, as it does in all other laws, as if in a physiognomy.

There are in the audience some who are acquainted with the basics of spiritual science; they will allow a brief repetition for the sake of others who are present for the first time. In any case, repetitions help to make these basic ideas clearer, as light will be thrown on them from a different aspect. In fact, what I am going to say may well appear as just a string of words to those who as yet know nothing about spiritual science, and are therefore unfamiliar with this outlook on life. However, when ideas behind words seem to have no meaning, it is not always the ideas that are at fault. In this context a witty remark made by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg⁴ is apt. He said: If a head and a book collide and the result is a hollow sound, it is not always the book's fault. So, too, when some of our contemporaries pass judgment on spiritual truths, which to them seem like a string of words, it is not always spiritual science that is at fault. However, those acquainted with spiritual science will know that the references made to higher beings are to beings that really do exist, even if they cannot be found in the physical world.

Spiritual science recognizes that humans, as they appear in the sense world to physical sight, represent only a part of their true being. In fact, behind the physical body there are several more principles that are invisible to ordinary sight. Human beings have the physical body in common with the so-called surrounding lifeless mineral world. In addition, they have a life body, or ether body. What is here understood by ether is not that of which natural science speaks. The life body or ether body is not something speculative or thought out, but is as concretely visible to the spiritual senses of the clairvoyant as are physical colors to physical sight.

The ether body is the principle that calls inorganic matter into life and, in lifting it out of lifelessness, weaves it into the fabric of life. Do not for a moment imagine that the life body is something the spiritual investigator thinks into the lifeless. Natural science attempts to do that by imagining something called the “principle of life” into what is found under the microscope, whereas the spiritual investigator points to a real definite entity. The natural scientist adopts, as it were, the attitude that whatever exists must conform to the faculties a person happens to have; therefore, what he or she cannot perceive does not exist. This is just about as clever as a blind person saying that colors are nothing but a product of fantasy. The person to pass judgment on something must be the one who has experienced it, not someone who knows nothing about it.

Nowadays one talks of “ignorabimus” and “limits of knowledge”; this is possible only as long as human beings remain as they are. But, as spiritual science points out, we are constantly evolving, and once we develop the necessary organs, we will perceive, among other things, the ether body, and will no longer speak of “limits of knowledge.” Agnosticism is grave obstacle to spiritual progress because it insists that, as human beings are as they are, their knowledge can only be limited accordingly. All that can be said to this is that then human beings must change, and when they do they will be able to know things they cannot now know things they cannot now know.

Thus, the second member of a person's being is the ether body, which one has in common with the vegetable kingdom.

A human being's third member is the astral body. This name, as well as being beautiful, is also significant; that it is justified will be shown later. Those who wish to find another name only show that they have no inkling as to why the astral body is so named. In humans and animals, the astral body bestows on living substance the ability to experience sensation. This means that not only do currents of fluid move within it, but also sensations of joy, sorrow, pleasure and pain. This capacity constitutes the essential difference between plant and animal, although transitional stages between them do exist.

A certain group of scientists believes that sensation should be ascribed also to plants, but that is only playing with words. Certainly some plants do react when something approaches them, but it has nothing to do with sensation or feeling. When the latter is the case, an image arises within the creature in response to the stimulus. Even if certain plants respond to external stimuli, that is no proof that they experience inner sensation. The inwardly felt has its seat in the astral body. Thus, we see that creatures belonging to the animal kingdom consist of physical body, ether or life body, and astral body.

Human beings tower above the animal through a specific quality, often sensed by thoughtful natures. In his autobiography, Jean Paul⁵ relates the deep impression made upon him when, as a small child, standing in the courtyard of his parent's house, the thought suddenly flashed through his mind: “I am an ‘I,’ I am a being who inwardly calls himself ‘I.’ ” What is here described is of immense significance, yet generally overlooked by psychologists. A subtle observation will illustrate what is involved: In the whole range of speech, there is one small word that in its application differs from all others. We can all give a name to the objects in this room. Each one of us will call the table, “table,” the chairs, “chairs,” but there is one word, one name that can only refer to the one who speaks it: the little word “I.” No one can call someone else “I.” The word “I” must sound forth from the innermost soul to which it applies. To me, everyone else is a “you,” and I am a “you” to everyone else.

Religions have recognized that the “I” is that principle in us that makes it possible for the human soul to express its innermost divine nature. With the “I” begins what can never enter the soul through the external senses, what must sound forth in its innermost being. It is where the monologue, the soliloquy, begins in which, if the path has been made clear for the spirit's entry, the divine Self may reveal itself.

In religions of earlier cultural epochs, and still in the Hebrew religion, the word “I” was called: “The unutterable name of God.” No matter how it is interpreted according to modern philology, the ancient Hebrew name for God signifies what today is expressed by the word “I.” A hush went through the assembly when the initiate spoke the “Name of the Unknown God”; the people would dimly sense the meaning contained in the words that resounded through the temple: “I am the I am.”

Thus, the human being consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and the “I” or the essential inner being. This inner being contains within itself the germ of the three further evolutionary stages that will arise out of the blood. They are: Manas or Spirit Self, in contrast to the bodily self; Buddhi or Life Spirit; and a human's true spiritual being: Atma or Spirit Man, which today rests within us as a tiny seed to reach perfection in a far-off future; a stage to which at present we can only look to as a far-distant ideal. Therefore, just as we have seven colors in the rainbow and seven tones in the scale, we have seven members of our being that divide into four lower and three higher.

If we now look upon the three higher spiritual members as the “above” and the four lower as the “below,” let us try to get a clear picture of how the above creates a physiognomic expression in the below as it appears to physical sight. Take first what we have in common with the whole inorganic nature, that is, that which crystallized into the form of a person's physical body. When we speak of the physical body in a spiritual-scientific sense, it is not what can be seen physically that is meant, but the combination of forces behind it that constructed this form. The next member of our being is the ether body, which plants and animals also possess, and by means of which they are endowed with life. The ether body transforms physical matter into living fluids, thus raising what is merely material into living form. In animal and human the ether body is permeated by the astral body, which calls up in the circulating fluid inner participation of its movement, causing the movement to be reflected inwardly.

We have now reached the point where the being of humans can be understood insofar as they are related to the animal kingdom. The substances, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and so forth, out of which our physical body is composed, are to be found outside in inorganic nature. If the substances transformed by the ether body into living matter are to attain the capacity to create inner mirror images of external events, then the ether body must be permeated by the astral body. It is the astral body that gives rise to sensations and feelings, but at the animal level does so in a specific way.

The ether body transforms inorganic substances into living fluids; the astral body transforms living substance into sensitive substance. But—and of this please take special note—a being composed of no more than the three bodies is only capable of sensing itself. It is only aware of its own life processes; its existence is confined within the boundaries of its own being. This fact is most interesting, and it is important to keep it in mind. Look for a moment at what has developed in a lower animal: inorganic matter is transformed into living substance, and living mobile substance into sensitive substance. The latter is to be found only where there is at least the rudiment of what at a higher stage becomes a developed nervous system.

Thus, we have inorganic substance, living substance, and nerve substance capable of sensation. In a crystal you see manifest certain laws of inorganic nature. (A crystal can be formed only within the whole surrounding nature.) No single entity could exist by itself separated from the rest of the cosmos. If we were to be transferred a mile or two above the earth's surface, we would die. Just as we are conceivable only within the environment to which we belong, where the necessary forces exist that combine to form and sustain us, so too, in the case of a crystal. A person who knows how to look at a crystal will see it as an individual imprint of the whole of nature, indeed of the whole cosmos. Georges Leopold Chrètien Cuvier⁶ is quite right when he says that a competent anatomist is able to deduce from a single bone to what kind of animal it belongs, as each kind has its own specific bone formation.

So you see that in the form of a crystal a certain aspect of the whole cosmos is reflected, just as an aspect of the whole cosmos is imprinted on living substance. The fluid circulating in a living creature is a small world that mirrors the great world. When substance possesses not only life, but also experiences inner sensation, it mirrors universal laws; it becomes a microcosm that dimly senses within itself the whole macrocosm. As the crystal is an image of cosmic form, so is sentient life an image of cosmic life. The dullness of consciousness in simple creatures is compensated by its immense range, for mirrored in it is the whole cosmos.

The constitution of humans is simply a more intricate structure composed of the three bodies already found in simple sentient creatures. If you consider people while disregarding their blood, you have beings built up from the same substances as those to be found in their environment. Like the plant, human beings contain fluids that call mineral substances to life, which in turn incorporate a system of nerves. The first nerves to appear are those of the so-called sympathetic nervous system. In humans it extends along both sides of the vertebral column, forming a series of knots from which it branches out and sends threads to the various organs, the lungs, the digestive tract and so on.

In the first instance, the sympathetic nervous system gives rise to the kind of sentient life just described. But a person's consciousness does not reach down far enough to experience the cosmic processes it mirrors. The surrounding cosmic world out of which the human being, as a living being, is created, mirrors itself in the sympathetic nervous system. There is in these nerves a dull inner life. If human beings could dive down consciously into the sympathetic nervous system, while the higher nervous system fell asleep, they would behold in a world of light the workings of the great cosmic laws.

Human beings once had a clairvoyant faculty that has been superseded. However, it can still be experienced, if through certain measures the function of the higher nervous system is suspended, setting free the lower consciousness. When that happens, the world is experienced through the lower nervous system in which the environment is mirrored in a special way. Certain lower animals still have this kind of consciousness. As explained, it is extremely dull, but provides a dim awareness of a far wider aspect of the world than the tiny section perceived by humans today.

At the time when evolution had reached the stage of the cosmos being mirrored in the sympathetic nervous system, another event occurred in human beings. The spinal cord was added to the sympathetic nervous system. The system of brain and spinal cord extended to the organs, through which contact was established with the outer world. Once their organisms had reached this stage, humans were no longer obliged to be merely a mirror for the primordial cosmic laws; the mirror image itself now entered into relationship with the environment. The incorporation of the higher nervous system in addition to the sympathetic nervous system denoted the transformation that had occurred in the astral body. Whereas formerly it participated dully in the life of the cosmos, it now contributed its own inner experiences.

Through the sympathetic nervous system, a being senses what takes place outside itself; through the higher nervous system, what takes place within itself. In individuals at the present stage of their evolution, the highest form of the nervous system is developed; it enables people to obtain from the highly structured astral body what is needed to formulate mental pictures of the outer world. Therefore, a person has lost the ability to experience the environment in the original dull pictures. Instead, individuals are aware of their inner life, and build within the inner self a new world of pictures on a higher level. This world of mental pictures mirrors, it is true, a much smaller section of the outer world, but does so much more clearly and perfectly.

Hand in hand with this transformation, another one occurred on a higher evolutionary level. The reorganization of the astral body became extended to the ether body. Just as the ether body through its reorganization became permeated with the astral body, and just as there was added to the sympathetic nervous system that of the brain and spinal cord, so what was set free from the ether body—after it had called into being the circulation of living fluids—now transformed these lower fluids into what we call “blood.”

Blood denotes an individualized ether body, just as the brain and spinal cord denote an individualized astral body. And through this individualizing comes about that which expresses itself as the “I.”

Having traced man's evolution up to this point, we notice that we are dealing with a gradation in five stages: First the physical body (or inner forces); second the ether body (or living fluids, to be found also in plants); third the astral body (manifesting itself in the lower or sympathetic nervous system); fourth the higher astral body emerging from the lower astrality (manifesting itself in the brain and spinal cord); and finally the principle that individualizes the ether body.

Just as two of humanity's principles, the ether, and astral bodies, have become individualized, so will the human being's first principle, built up out of external lifeless substances, that is, the physical body, become individualized. In present day humanity there is only a faint indication of this transformation.

We see that formless substances come together in the human body, that the ether body transforms them into living forms, that through the astral body the outer world is reflected and becomes inner sensation, and finally this inner life produces of itself pictures of the outer world.

When the process of transformation extends to the etheric body, the result is the forming of blood. This transformation manifests itself in the system of heart and blood vessels, just as the transformation of the astral body manifests in the system of brain and spinal cord. And, as through the brain the outer world becomes inner world, so does this inner world become transformed through the blood into an outer manifestation as the human body. I shall have to speak in similes if I am to describe these complicated processes. The pictures of the external world made inward through the brain are absorbed by the blood and transformed into vital formative forces. These are the forces that build up the human body; in other words, blood is the substance that builds the body. We are dealing with a process that brings the blood into contact with the outer world; it enables it to take from it the most perfect substance, oxygen. Oxygen continually renews the blood, endowing it with new life.

In tracing human development, we have followed a path that leads from the outer world to humanity's inner world and back to the outer world. We have seen that the origin of blood coincides with our ability to face the world as an independent being, a being able to form his or her own pictures of the external world from its reflection within the self. Unless this stage is reached, a being cannot say “I” to itself. Blood is the principle whereby “I-hood” is attained. An “I” can express itself only in a being who is able independently to formulate the pictures the outer world produces within the self. A being who has attained “I-hood” must be able to take in the outer world and recreate it within the self.

If we possessed only a brain without a spinal cord, we would still reproduce within ourselves pictures of the outer world and be aware of them, but only as a mirror image. It is quite different when we are able to build up anew what is repeated within ourselves; for then what we thus build up is no longer merely pictures of the outer world; it is the “I.” A being who possesses brain and spinal cord will not only mirror the outer world, as does a being with only the sympathetic nervous system, but will also experience the mirrored picture as inner life. A being who in addition possesses blood will experience inner life within the self. The blood, assisted by oxygen taken from the outer world, builds up the individual body according to the inner pictures. This is experienced as perception of the “I”.

The “I” turns its vision inwards into a person's being, and its will outwards to the world. This twofold direction manifests itself in the blood, which directs its forces inwards, building up a person's being, and outwards towards the oxygen. When humans fall asleep they sink into unconsciousness because of what the consciousness experiences within the blood, whereas when they, by means of sense organs and brain, form mental pictures of the outer world, then the blood absorbs these pictures into its formative forces. Thus, the blood exists midway between an inner picture-world and an outer world of concrete forms. This becomes clearer if we look at two phenomena. One is that of genealogy, that is, the way conscious beings are related to ancestors, the other is the way we experience external events.

We are related to ancestors through the blood. We are born within a specific configuration, within a certain race, a certain family and from a certain line of ancestors. Everything inherited comes to expression in our blood. Likewise, all the results from an individual's physical past accumulates in the blood, just as within it there is prepared a prototype of that person's future. Consequently, when the individual's normal consciousness is suppressed, for example under hypnosis or in cases of somnambulism or atavistic clairvoyance, a much deeper consciousness becomes submerged. Then, in a dreamlike fashion, the great cosmic laws are perceived. Yet this perception is nevertheless clearer than that of ordinary dreams even when lucid. In such conditions all brain activity is suppressed, and in deep somnambulism even that of the spinal cord. In this condition what the person experiences is conveyed by the sympathetic nervous system; the individual has a dull, hazy awareness of the whole cosmos. The blood no longer conveys mental pictures produced by the inner life through the brain; it only conveys what the outer world has built including everything inherited from ancestors. Just as the shape of a person's nose stems from his or her ancestors, so does the whole bodily form. In this state of consciousness a person senses his ancestors in the same manner that waking consciousness senses mental pictures of the outer world. A person's blood is haunted by his ancestors; he dimly participates in their existence.

Everything in the world evolves, also human consciousness. If we go back to the time when our remote ancestors lived, we find that they possessed a different type of consciousness. Today, during waking life we perceive external objects through the senses, and transform them into mental pictures that act an our blood. Everything a person experiences through the senses is working in not only his blood but also in his memory. By contrast, a person remains unconscious of everything bestowed by ancestors. We know nothing about the shape of our inner organs. In the past all this was different; at that time the blood conveyed not only what it received from outside through the senses, but also what existed in the bodily form, and as this was inherited, we could sense our ancestors within our own being.

If you imagine such a consciousness enhanced, you will get an idea of the kind of memory that corresponded to it. When our experiences are confined to what can be perceived through the senses, then only such sense perceptible experiences are remembered. A person's consciousness comprises only his experiences since childhood.

In the past this was different, because the inner life contained all that was brought over through heredity. A human's mental life depicted ancestors' experiences as if they were his own. A person could remember not only his own childhood, but his ancestors' lives, because they were contained in the pictures absorbed by his blood. Incredible as it may seem to the modern materialistic outlook, there was a time when human consciousness was such that an individual regarded both his and his forefathers' physical experiences as his own. When someone said: “I have experienced... ,” he referred not only to personally known events but also to events experienced by his ancestors. It was a dim and hazy consciousness compared with modern human waking consciousness, more like a vivid dream. However, it was much more encompassing, as it included not only his own life but the lives of ancestors. A son would feel at one with his father and grandfather, as if they were sharing the same “I.” This was also the reason he did not give himself a personal name but one that included past generations, designating what they had in common with one and the same name. Each person felt strongly that he was simply a link in a long line of generations.

The question is how this form of consciousness came to be transformed into a different one. It happened through an event well-known to spiritual historical research. You will find that every nation the world over describes a significant moment in history when a new phase of its culture began—the moment when the old traditions begin to lose their influence, and the ancient wisdom that had flowed down the generations via the blood begins to wane, although the wisdom still finds expression in myths and sagas.

A tribe used to be an enclosed unit; its members married among themselves. You will find this to be the case in all races and peoples. It was a significant moment in the history of mankind when this custom ceased to be upheld—the moment when a mingling of blood took place through the fact that marriage between close relations was replaced by marriage between strangers. Marriage within a tribe ensured that the same blood flowed through its members down the generations; marriage between strangers allowed new blood to be introduced into a people.

The tribal law of intermarriage will be broken sooner or later among all peoples. It heralds the birth of the intellect, which means ability to understand the external world, to understand what is foreign.

The important fact to bear in mind is that in ancient times a dim clairvoyance existed out of which arose sagas and legends, and that the clairvoyant consciousness is based on unmixed blood, whereas our awakened consciousness depends on mixed blood. Surprising as it may seem, marriage between strangers has resulted in logical, intellectual thoughts. This is a fact that will increasingly be confirmed by external research, which has already made a beginning in that direction. The mingling of blood extinguishes the former clairvoyance and enables humanity to reach a higher stage of evolution. When a person today goes through esoteric training and causes clairvoyance to reappear, that person transforms it to a higher consciousness, whereas today's waking consciousness has evolved out of the ancient dim clairvoyance.

In our time, a person's whole surrounding world in which he acted came to expression in the blood; consequently, this surrounding world formed the inner in accordance with the outer. In ancient times it was more a person's inner bodily life that came to expression in the blood. A person inherited, along with the memory of his ancestors' experiences, also their good or bad inclinations; these could be traced in his blood. This ancestral bond was severed when blood became mingled through outside marriages. The individual began to live his own personal life; he learned to govern his moral inclinations according to his own experiences. Thus, ancestral power holds sway in unmixed blood; that of personal experience in mixed blood.

Myths and legends told of these things: “That which has power over thy blood has power over thee.” Ancestral power over a folk came to an end when the blood, through being mingled with foreign blood, ceased to be receptive to its influence. This held good in all circumstances.

Whatever power wishes to subjugate a person will have to exert an influence that imprints itself in his blood. Thus, if an evil power wishes dominance over an individual, it must gain dominance over his or her blood. That is the profound meaning of the quotation from Faust, and the reason the representative of evil says: “Sign your name to the pact in blood; once I possess your name written in your blood, I shall have caught you by the one thing that will hold man. I shall then be able to pull you over to my side.” That which possesses a person's blood possesses that person, and possesses the human “I. ”

When two groups of human beings confront one another, as used to be the case in colonization, then only if there is true insight into evolutionary laws is there any possibility of foreseeing if the foreign culture can be assimilated. Take the case of a people that is very much at one with its environment, a people into whose blood the environment has as it were inserted itself. No attempt to graft upon it a foreign culture will succeed. It is simply impossible, and is also the reason why in certain regions the original inhabitants became extinct when colonized. One must approach such problems with insight and realize that anything and everything cannot be forced upon a people. It is useless to demand of blood more than it is able to endure.

Modern science has discovered recently that if blood from one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the two types of blood prove fatal to one another. This is something that has been known to spiritual knowledge for a long time. Just as unrelated types of blood if mixed cause death, so is the old clairvoyance killed in primitive humanity when blood from different lines of descent are mingled. Our modern intellectual life is entirely the outcome of the mingling of blood. Once this approach is adopted it will be possible to study what effect the mingling of blood has had on the various people in the course of history.

Thus, when the blood of animals from different evolutionary stages is mixed the result is death, whereas that is not the case when the species are related. The human organism survives when, through marriage, blood is mingled with strange blood; here the result is the extinction of the original animal kind of clairvoyance, and the birth in evolution of a new consciousness. In other words, something happens in humans, but on a higher level, that is similar to what happens in the animal kingdom where strange blood kills strange blood. In the human kingdom strange blood kills the hazy clairvoyance that is based on kindred blood.

Therefore, it is a destructive process that gave rise to the modern human wakeful day-consciousness. The kind of spiritual life that resulted from intermarriage has been destroyed in the course of evolution; while the very thing that destroyed it, that is, marriage between strangers, gave birth to the intellect and today's lucid consciousness.

What is able to live in a person's blood lives in that person's “I.” Just as the physical principle comes to expression in the physical body, the ether body comes to expression in the system of living fluids, and the astral body in the system of nerves, so does the “I” come to expression in the blood. Physical principle, ether body and astral body are the “above” blood; the “I” forms the center; and physical body, living fluids and nervous system are the “below.” Therefore, whatever power wishes to dominate humans must take possession of their blood.

These are things that must be taken into account if progress is to be achieved in practical life. For example, just because the “I” comes to expression in the blood, a people's racial character can be destroyed through colonization, when more is demanded than the blood can endure.

Not till Beauty and Truth become part of a person's blood does he truly possess them. Mephistopheles wants power over Faust's “I”; that is why he seizes Faust's blood. So you see that the quotation, which is the Leitmotiv of this lecture, arose out of profound knowledge. Blood is indeed a very special fluid.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, novelist, and playwright.
• 2. Jacob Minor (1855–1912) was professor of philology.
• 3. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a German biologist who supported Darwin's theory of evolution and his theory of ontogeny or the development of an individual organism.
• 4. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1744–1799) was a physicist and satirical writer.
• 5. Jean Paul (Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763–1825), German author.
• 6. Georges Leopold Chretien Couvier (1769–1832) was a French comparative anatomist and the founder of paleontology.

Someone who takes a popular or scientific book to search some instructions about the relation of the human mind and soul to the outer body can mostly find a sort of the following simile. The sensory impressions that the human being receives from the outside are as it were telegraphic news that is led to the central station of the nervous system, to the brain, via the nerves like wires and is sent out from there again into the organism to evoke the will impulses and so on. Even if for some people such a simile seems to be very likeable, one can say that such a simile should only hide the helplessness compared with the big riddle of mind and soul which one can enclose in the words which should characterise the object of the today's consideration: mind, soul and body of the human being.

Now I have already indicated in the preceding talks that the today's considerations in this area suffer from a basic lack. Just if you position yourself with such a consideration on the ground of the so successful scientific approach in other areas, you cannot get over the prejudice that throws together the soul life with the effectiveness of the real spiritual life in the human being. Today soul and mind or spirit are confused almost everywhere in scientific, in philosophical, and in popular approaches.

That is why the investigations often remain infertile today—apart from the fact that they are infertile of many other reasons—because one does not want to renounce from the prejudice that the human being can be considered without envisaging his structure of three members: body, soul and mind. I have also already indicated in a former talk that spiritual science has to build a bridge from the soul to the mind, as natural sciences have to build a bridge from the soul life to the body. It is soul experience, in the broader sense, undoubtedly—even if the soul experience is based in this case also on the body—if the human being feels hunger, thirst, saturation, respiratory need and the like.

However, even if you develop these sensations ever so much if you try ever so much to increase or decrease the hunger to observe it internally emotionally, or if you compare the sensation of hunger to the saturation and the like, it is impossible to find out for yourself by this mere inner observation of the soul, which bodily bases are the conditions of this soul experience. One has to build the bridge by the known scientific methods in such a way that one goes over from the mere soul experience to that which happens meanwhile in the bodily organisation.

However, it is also impossible to get to any fertile view of the human being as a spiritual being if one only wants to stop with that what the human being experiences internally-emotionally in his thinking, feeling and willing. Mental pictures, feelings, will impulses are the contents of the soul. They surge up and down in the everyday wake day life. One tries to deepen them now and again by going over to a kind of mystic contemplation. However, as far as one is able to go with such a mystic contemplation, one cannot get to any knowledge of the spirit by such mysticism. However, you have to build the bridge from the mere soul experience to the spiritual one if you strive for the knowledge of the spirit, as in the area of the natural sciences the bridge is built from the soul experience to the bodily processes which form the basis of the sensations of hunger, saturation, of the respiratory need and the like. However, you cannot consider the spiritual life of the human being in same way as one goes over from the soul life to the consideration of the bodily organisation. Other methods are necessary there. I have pointed to these methods already in a fundamental way. You find the details in my books How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, Occult Science. An Outline, The Riddle of Man, and in The Riddles of the Soul, et cetera. However, I would like to bring some noteworthy qualities of those methods forward introductorily which can build the bridge from the usual soul life to the spiritual nature of the human being.

There it concerns above all that just many psychologists of the present believe that certain things are simply impossible which spiritual science must absolutely intend. How often psychologists say today that the real soul life cannot be observed. One points to the fact that, for example, you cannot observe tender feelings because they escape from you if you want to observe them. One points out rightly that we feel disturbed, for example, if we have memorised something, recite it, and want to observe ourselves. This is shown in such a way, as if it were a special peculiarity of the soul life. However, just this is necessary to understand that that which is shown there like an impossibility must be intended as spiritual-scientific method. What the biologist what the physiologist does for the body, the spiritual researcher does for the mind, while he is anxious to ascend from the mere everyday introspection and from the mere mystic introspection to that true soul observation whose impossibility should be asserted with the mentioned tip that we cannot observe ourselves while reciting a poem because we are bothered about it. It is not necessary that you get in such exterior things, as reciting a memorised material, to a possibility of introspection, although for someone who wants to become a spiritual researcher it is also necessary.

However, it is inevitable that the spiritual researcher and psychologist attains real introspection while he faces the course of mental pictures and thoughts, also the course of will impulses, of feelings really so that he is present like his own spectator and learns to observe himself really, so that the observer and the observed completely disintegrate. Some people consider this possibility often as something very easy and believe, while natural sciences use strict methods, spiritual science is something that one can easily attain. However, to real spiritual research methodically strict, patient, vigorous progress is necessary in a way, not only as it happens in the outer scientific area, but in such a way that someone who knows both must say that compared with the often many years' pursuit which is necessary to get to serious spiritual-scientific results one can appropriate the methods of natural sciences easier.

For this true introspection, one creates a basis while one tries quite methodically to lead the will into the mental pictures. Thereby you come to meditation in the true sense of the word, not in a dark, mystic sense. In our usual consciousness we are not accustomed to such a meditative life at all, there the thoughts completely follow the course of the outer world with its impressions. Based on his experience of life or also of his worldly wisdom he regulates his inner life, his train of thought, so that he gets around to arranging his thoughts from the inside. However, all that can be at most a preparation of that which I mean here. This you have to attain in slow, patient, vigorous work. You attain it while you bring such regularity and still such arbitrariness into your thoughts that you are sure: in that, which one practices in such a way nothing works of memory, nothing of that can ascend from some more or less forgotten mental pictures, experiences of life and the like. Hence, it is necessary that someone who wants to get to spiritual research settles in such a pursuit of mental pictures which he arranges to himself in clear way, or receives from there or there in clear way so that he can really say at the moment in which he dedicates himself to this course of mental pictures, I survey how I string the one mental picture and the other how I influence the course of mental pictures by my will.

All that is nothing but a preparation of that which should happen, actually, for the mental and spiritual life. Since, indeed, this must be prepared carefully, but it appears in a certain point of development as something objective, as a reality coming from the spiritual outer world.

Only someone who dedicates himself carefully to such inner exercises for a while brings about gradually if he has led arbitrariness into the course of mental pictures and has overcome it again to discover something internally which strings one mental picture, one thought and the other together from the spiritual area, and causes a soul life, controlled by spiritual reality. As the outer observation regulates the mental pictures and thereby brings in necessity, so that they become mediators of the outer reality, the imagining life gradually becomes a mediator of a spiritual reality. You have to regard only just that which I mean here in the same sense as something seriously scientific as natural sciences are. You must not give yourself up to the prejudice that you get thereby into any speculative fiction because you get, indeed, in inner arbitrariness and realise that you can grasp something spiritually real that approaches your imagination from the other side than the side is which corresponds to the outer physical reality. It is for someone who has not dealt much with such things at first hard to imagine what I mean with these things, actually. Only these things that should form the basis of spiritual science are, like the scientific performances in the laboratory et cetera, nothing but subtler developed activities occurring in the outside world. These inner activities of the spiritual researcher are nothing but the continuation of that what also, otherwise, the soul life accomplishes to produce the relationship between the soul life and the spiritual life which is there always but which becomes conscious by these exercises.

I would like to take the starting point from something that can be more comprehensible to characterise what I mean, actually. Someone who deals with human or other living conditions is able to find differences between the representations of the one writer and the other if he gradually appropriates a sensation for it. He will find with the one author that he can be right with that what he says, that he can rather strictly use his method that he is, however, far away from the nature of the things by the way how he says the things. Against it, one can often say with another author, he is simply by how he speaks about the things a person who is close to the inner nature of the things. It provides something that brings you surely to the things. An example of it:

You can have a lot against such an art appreciation as the author Herman Grimm (18128-1901, art historian) practised it, but you have to admit if you have a sensation of it, even if you often do not agree with his explanations even if you find him dilettantish: in his explanations is something by which you are acquainted with the pieces of art, with the artists, even with their personal characters.

This atmosphere in his writings immediately leads to the being of that about which he speaks. You can put the question to yourself: how does such an author get around to differing just in such typical way from others? For someone who is not used to talking about such things in the abstract just the following can arise. You find some sentences, for example, at a place where he speaks in a very nice article about Raphael, which may probably sound irritating to pedantic, sober scholars. There he says what you would feel according to his opinion if you met Raphael today, and how you would feel quite different if you met Michelangelo today.—Speaking such stuff in a scientific treatise is for some people daydreaming from the start, isn't that so? Of course, one can absolutely understand such a judgement. You find such weird remarks with Herman Grimm at numerous places. One would like to say, he dedicates himself to certain connections of mental pictures from the start about which he knows of course that they cannot become immediate reality, and wants to say nothing special about the outer reality with such remarks. However, someone who has dedicated himself repeatedly to such lines of thought would realise—indeed, now not in this area, because in this area such lines of thought lead to nothing at all—probably in other areas that his soul forces were set in motion so that he can behold deeper into the things and can express them more accurately than others do who despise to do such “unnecessary” lines of thought.

That matters, and I would like to emphasise it. If you do lines of thought in your inside to produce these lines of thought only, to put your thinking in motion, so that it has a possible relationship with reality, and if you refrain from wanting something else with these lines of thought than to bring your thinking in a certain current of development, then your thinking, your soul faculties become nimbler at first. Then the fruit of it appears in quite different areas of consideration. You have to separate both strictly. Someone who is not able to do this gets to pipe dreams, to all kinds of hypotheses. However, to someone who has the self-control to know exactly that such activation of the thinking has only subjective meaning at first who puts the power from such activity of the thinking in motion in the soul, the fruits of it appear at another time. Taking this as starting point Herman Grimm could make historical remarks in his treatises about Macaulay (Thomas Babington M., 1800-1859, British historian, poet and politician), Frederick the Great (1712-1786, Prussian king since 1740) and others which remind of that what spiritual science has to say about the life of the soul and the mind. I do not want to say with it that Herman Grimm was already a spiritual researcher; he just rejects this. I also do not want to say with it that that what I have characterised with him is more than something that can already take place in the usual consciousness. While you develop such a thing and practise it on and on, you lead the will into the imagining and you grasp the spiritual necessity in the imagining.

However, one has to add something else. I have already pointed to the fact that it is important in the development of the spiritual researcher that he can dedicate himself to the so-called limiting points of cognition. Du Bois-Reymond (Emil D. B.-R., 1818-1896, German physician and physiologist) speaks of seven world riddles as limiting points beyond which the human cognition cannot get. Two points form just the starting point of spiritual-scientific investigations. The one is that you feel in the inner life at first what is said with such a border issue, actually. I like to point with pleasure to persons on such occasion who really strive for knowledge. As an example, I cite Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887, German aesthetician). When this treated the important subject of human dream fantasies, he came to such a border issue. He said to himself, if I look at the relation of the soul life to the body life, it is most certain that the soul cannot be in the body, but it is as certain that the soul cannot be somewhere beyond the body. Someone who develops such a thinking which does not strive for knowledge according to common methods, but according to inner necessary currents of the soul life, has often to say to himself, you are at a point where all mental pictures which are due to the sensory observations, to the whole conscious life do not get you anywhere. Now you can stop at such limiting points and say, well, there is just a border, beyond which the human being cannot come. You are mistaken, while you say this. However, about that I do not want to speak.

The point is that you try just in such limiting points to penetrate with your complete soul life that you try to settle in a real contradiction that shows the spiritual-mental reality as an outer inconsistent reality appears if a plant once shows a green leaf, some other time a yellow petal. In reality, the contradictions also come into being. If you experience them instead of approaching them with your usual logical thinking if you approach them with the full living inner soul being if you let a contradiction live out in the soul and do not approach it with the prejudice of life and want to dissolve it, you notice how it increases, how something really appears there that you can compare to the following, as I have done in my book The Riddles of the Soul.

If a lower living being has no sense of touch at first, but only an inner surging life, and gradually stumbles against the outside world, that what was before only inner surging life changes into the sense of touch. That is a usual scientific idea. Then the sense of touch differentiates again, so that as it were by the collision of the inner life with the outside world the latter becomes inner experience. You can apply this picture of the sense of touch to that mental-spiritual experience which the spiritual researcher has to go through. He lets such limiting points of cognition live out in his soul. Then it is in such a way, as if the inner life is not confronted with a physical outside world, but with a spiritual world and a spiritual sense of touch, which then differentiates further and wants to become what one can call spiritual eyes, spiritual ears figuratively. However, it is far from any preoccupation with such border issues of cognition up to that what I have called beholding consciousness in my book The Riddle of Man. However, one can develop this beholding consciousness.

One has to consider this one thing. The other is that you find out just with such an inner spiritual-mental activity that you cannot penetrate into the spiritual world with the faculty of judgement that you have gained in the sensory world, not even in the negative sense that one says that the human cognition cannot get beyond itself at this point. You have rather to refrain from penetrating into the spiritual world, before you have prepared yourself by these and similar exercises to penetrate really into the spiritual world. For a certain resignation, a certain renunciation belongs to it. While as a rule the human being is used to putting up hypotheses and all kinds of logical conclusions about that what could be or not be beyond the physical experience, the spiritual researcher has not only to get to an inner conviction, but to an inner intellectual virtue not to use for the characteristic of the spiritual world what comes only from the physical-sensory reality. You have to appropriate this renunciation first; it must become a habitual soul quality. Then you bring yourself to the knowledge that the soul has to make itself ripe for it first to penetrate into the spiritual world. This virtue also supports the introduction of the will into the imagining life as I have described it. This brings you to the point where you can practise that introspection of which I have spoken just now, with which you can really be your own spectator, while the thoughts, feelings, and will impulses are proceeding.

Only by such true introspection, the human being develops a spiritual activity about which he knows by experience that it is performed not with the help of the body because the human being with his true ego is now beyond the body. This mental picture is quite unusual admittedly. Since everything of the other worldviews tends to deny the possibility that the human being can develop a soul life which is independent of the body. If in this way the results of the introspection are stated, one criticises them with that which one has gained in the outer. One cannot cope with it. One creates misunderstandings about misunderstandings simply because any spiritual research is based on something opposite that forms the basis of the scientific way of thinking. There the thinking and the methodical development of thinking is so organised in experiments et cetera that the human being applies the scientific methods that are developed with the faculty of judgement and the reason to learn nature's secrets. This is quite natural on the ground of the scientific way of thinking. One uses the same power of thinking and imagining to develop all kinds of scientific methods in spiritual science to prepare the soul first, so that it can observe the results of spiritual science.

This serves to prepare the soul, so that it can observe the phenomena of the soul life in a way that is free from the body. The human being can thereby advance from the soul to the spirit as he advances from the soul to the body with scientific methods. So that you can say, already the whole way of the proving and judging thinking must become different in spiritual science. It must not be absent, but what one reaches with it is the ability of observing because one has applied the methods of the outer science to the development of the soul first.

Thus in the beginning the spiritual researcher prepares himself with the same means with which science gets, otherwise, to its results, to be able to observe spiritually. Thereby that originates what I reluctantly call clairvoyant beholding of the spiritual world, reluctantly because even today one points often to older unusual soul conditions and confuses the strict serious method of spiritual science intentionally or accidentally with all kinds of pathological and dilettantish methods if one speaks of the clairvoyant beholding of the outer world. About such things, I will speak in detail in the talk on the Revelations of the Unconscious.

Now one can observe the soul life in such a way that the observation does not stop only at the soul experience, but points to the spirit. I would like to mention two quintessential points at first. While the human being gets to true introspection which is carried out beyond the body and thereby faces the spirit, he attains a view not only of the relationship of the usual wake state to the usual sleep as an immediate result of observation but above all of that what the phenomena of awakening and falling asleep are. It is still the destiny of spiritual science today that it speaks not only of unknown things, but that it has to speak in quite different way about that what is involved in the consciousness of every human being.

One has to add to this that spiritual science must use words that are coined for the usual life. This causes some difficulties because spiritual science must use the same words now and again already in another direction. It has to go back to known phenomena of life to be able to illuminate the spiritual realm starting from them. The human being knows the alternating conditions of sleeping and waking if one speaks from the point of consciousness at first, on one side as the time in which the consciousness exists from awakening up to falling asleep, and on the other side the time in which the consciousness has disappeared in darkness, in the sleeping consciousness. The spiritual researcher knows that it is so weak that one normally speaks of the absence of the consciousness in sleep. Now, these both alternating conditions are suitable to move some way into the riddle of the human being already by a realistic consideration. From the start, it must strike everybody that the real human being cannot begin with falling asleep and awakening anew. The mental-spiritual being of the human being which lives, otherwise, while awake as a consciousness must also exist in sleep. However, for the usual consciousness the thing is in such a way that the human being cannot consider himself in sleep that he cannot compare, hence, the waking state to the sleeping state internally spiritually. Externally scientifically, it is another matter. Now it concerns that one gets closer to these things if one really ascends from the usual sensory observation to the spiritual observation in such a way that one envisages thinking, feeling, and willing.

We turn our attention upon the imagining and thinking at first. The human being considers it as a rule in such a way that he knows: I am awake from awakening to falling asleep. My thoughts position themselves in my usual awake life. The usual consciousness cannot get to another judgement. It is different if the soul life has prepared itself with such exercises to a spiritual observation. Then one can observe this inner expansion world, the awake consciousness generally from awakening to falling asleep. It is strange, that here serious naturalists meet with that what spiritual science brings to light from another side. However, natural sciences can only build a bridge to the soul life going out from the investigation of the body. They refuse even today to speak about that about which I speak here. Hence, the naturalists speak another language than the spiritual researcher does. However, the things are to be found. Thus interesting investigations have appeared, for example, recently in scientific area by the researcher Julius Pikler (1864-1952, Hungarian physician, politician) who envisages the awake consciousness quite unlike one was used in biology up to now. Of course, he does not examine such a thing spiritual-scientifically. Hence, he takes something as basis that is not more than a word. Pikler speaks of a “drive of waking” which keeps the human being alert up to falling asleep, which is there, even if no special thoughts and mental pictures are there which is said to appear as such in particular in boredom. I wanted to point to it only to show that also from the other side one works on it.

Spiritual science cannot simply take any term or any hypothetical force as basis where a phenomenon exists but has to observe it. Indeed, it observes what the human soul experiences while awake. It observes the steady flow of the conscious day life from awakening up to falling asleep. It finds the way in particular if it observes the intrusion of thoughts and mental pictures in this simple waking state with its methods of observation. There arises for the spiritual researcher that the usual waking state is interrupted by a partial falling asleep in the experience of thoughts. We wake in such a way that we perpetually lower the waking state to partial sleeping, while we move the mental pictures into the waking state. We get to know the relation of the soul to the imagining life only because we can observe how the usually intensive waking state is not diminished as strongly as in the dreamless sleep and the thought which may be evoked by a perception falls into this decrease every time. We do not experience the usual waking state in a steady intensity, but it is diminished perpetually if we grasp thoughts. What exists, otherwise, more or less dulled in sleep continues into the awake life. Thereby you become able to differentiate what you usually have as a coloured succession of mental pictures while awake. What one knows, otherwise, as waking and sleeping of equal intensity, you have to learn to imagine with different degrees of intensity. You must be able to observe the complete waking state, the weakened waking state, the complete sleeping state, the weakened sleeping state and so on.

Thus, you get to know gradually what one does not consider, otherwise, in the consciousness. Thereby one can also envisage the waking state independently by observation to which the spiritual eye must be created first. Then you need no proofs of what you see, but you just behold it. There you become able to regard a view as right, as given by experience about which the present psychology speaks exceptionally seldom. However, once a psychologist spoke very nicely, whom one appreciates too little.

Here you are at one of those points, which are so interesting for the development of spiritual research. This is not something new, but something that should be built up only in a systematic roundup for which the beginnings have already appeared with those who struggled with knowledge. Fortlage (Karl F., 1806-1881, German philosopher) speaks about it once, and Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906, philosopher) reproves him, that, actually, the usual consciousness is dying perpetually. It is a weird, courageous assertion, which is to be confirmed scientifically, although natural sciences interpret the concerning facts wrongly; read, for example, the investigations of Kassowitz (Max K., 1842-1913, Austrian paediatrician).

Fortlage realises that that by which consciousness originates is not only based on the growing life, but that just if the conscious life appears in the soul this life must die in the human organism, so that we carry death through our whole conscious life partially in ourselves. While we form mental pictures, something is destroyed in our nervous system that, however, immediately regenerates again. Development follows destruction again. The conscious soul life is based on destructive processes. Fortlage says, if the partial death that always appears in a part of the body, in the brain, while forming the consciousness, seized the whole body each time as the physical death does it, the human being would have to die perpetually. As to Fortlage the physical death only expresses itself as a whole once what the consciousness is perpetually based on.

Hence, Fortlage can hypothetically conclude because he does not yet have the spiritual beholding that we deal with a partial death each time, if our usual consciousness appears, that the general death is the merging of a consciousness into other conditions, which the human being develops for the spiritual world after death. There appears like a silver lining in no uncertain manner what spiritual science develops more and more exactly. Science shows that the whole nature of the human being that is considered rightly from the viewpoint of evolution today must not only considered from this viewpoint. Now I do not expand this consideration beyond the human being; we shall thoroughly speak later about nature where we can enter into such questions.

If one stops at the human being, one has to consider him in such a way that one knows that a development of growing life takes place, but perpetually also a destructive process, a retrograde development. The organs of this destructive process are mainly in the nervous system. The mental consciousness intervenes in the human being while it lets the processes of growing alternate with destructive processes. The whole awake life from the awakening up to falling asleep is based on the fact that with the awakening the mental-spiritual that has separated with falling asleep from the body immerses in the body and that what is progressive development from falling asleep up to awakening changes into retrograde development in the nervous system.

While the human being is thinking, he has to destroy, he must cause death processes in his nerves to make way for the work of the spiritual-mental. Natural sciences will confirm this more and more from the other side. The spiritual researcher advances from the spiritual-mental to the bodily and shows that, while with the awakening the spiritual-mental flows into the bodily, destruction takes place, until the destruction has advanced so far that the progressive development must appear with the beginning of sleep again. The evenly progressive waking state is based on the fact that by the mental-spiritual in the human body repeatedly a proper, a legitimate destructive process takes place, contrary to that current which lives in the usual waking which is active in the forces which let us as children grow and thrive. If we put the imagining, the thinking in the usual waking state, we work the other way again.

There we bring parts of development, partial states of sleep into the destructive process from the bodily development, so that we can say: it is weakened by processes which represent quite weakly what exists in the growth, that state which extends about the usual awake life because it is destroyed. The spiritual researcher realises now that this destruction, this continuously progressing process from the awakening up to falling asleep is the effect of the spirit in the human being. Spirit destroys, and within this destruction, those activities of imagining and thinking assert themselves in which the soul uses the constructive processes to put them in the spiritual destructive processes. Here we see mind, soul, and body intertwining. The spiritual researcher does not want to speak about the spiritual-mental in a dilettantish way and to disregard that what happens in the body, just because he himself observes that the spirit does not work in such a way that it expresses the processes of growth, of development, which are wholly physical processes, but these contrary processes. While the spiritual researcher gets to know that what the mind accomplishes on the body, he also gets to know again how the soul uses the bodily processes to diminish the spiritual processes, while it moves the mental pictures into the destructive process that the mind performs.

As well as the spiritual researcher on one side recognises in the mental pictures which are involved in the usual waking state a partial falling asleep, he learns to recognise on the other side that every time a will impulse positions itself in the soul life, this appears like an increase of the waking state. Thinking, imagining is like a reduction of the waking state, the will impulse is like an awakening of that state which prevails from the awakening up to falling asleep in relation to the will life that is so vague that one can call it a sleeping life even if one is waking. What does the human being know, while he carries out any will impulse, what proceeds in his arm? It is like an awakening every time a will impulse emerges.

With it, I have indicated how the real observer who has ascended to the true introspection can understand the work of the human soul forces and mental powers in the spiritual. While he advances with his methods further, he can get to know that ego that he experiences in this introspection with which he just does the introspection. This ego does not reveal itself to philosophical speculations; one can only experience it. If it is experienced, one gets to know by immediate view what I have now characterised sketchily. The human being with his usual consciousness cannot help believing, envisaging the forces of growing only, that gradually from the bodily developmental processes that develops which is expressed in the mental as ego. Someone who gets to know the ego by true introspection realises that this is a fallacy—but it is a necessary fallacy for the usual consciousness.

There you learn to recognise that that what happens in the body in the ongoing developmental processes relates to the true ego as the lung to the air. As little the lung produces the air, as little the human body creates the ego anyhow. Only as long as one does not know the real spiritual-mental, one commits the necessary fallacy that this ego has anything to do with the body.

However, the spiritual researcher leaves the body with his methods while investigating the ego, as well as that who wants to look at the air has to leave the lung. Thus, the spiritual researcher recognises by real observation that this self, this spiritual-mental of the human being, enters the physical body at birth, at conception respectively that he gets from the line of heredity. He recognises that this ego, which descends from the spiritual world, receives the body that the body inhales this ego, and the human being exhales it again if he dies. This is a pictorial expression how the spiritual-mental that descends from the spiritual world is connected with the physical-bodily.

Just then, however, an essential differentiation of the spiritual and the mental arises for the spiritual researcher also with the transition of the human being to the mental-spiritual surroundings in which he lives with that part of his being that goes through birth and death which is the everlasting, immortal in the human being compared with the transient body. This difference of the mental and the spiritual arises because we learn to recognise something in the mental which breaks away from the human being that is as it were only a died away keynote of that which you experience, otherwise, as thinking, feeling and willing. I would like to express myself as follows: we take a chanted song. We can regard the words of the song as a poem at first and can continue this consideration in listening the chanted song. However, we can also refrain from the contents of the words while singing and can pay attention to the music only. You can grasp the whole experience of the human being in thinking, feeling, and willing in such a way that you can also grasp an undercurrent there if you do not go into the contents of thinking, feeling, and willing.

To express myself even more clearly, I would like to characterise the matter still from another side. You all know that certain Asian people ascend to the spiritual-mental by methods about which I have said in my talks and books repeatedly that they are not applicable to our western cultural development in the same way that here we have to apply other methods to the conscious spiritual research. However, I may adduce something as comparison. You know that the Asian human beings get to a certain cognition of the soul because they recite mantras over and over again. One laughs in the West at the repetitions in the speeches of Buddha and does not know that for the Eastern human beings this repetition of certain sentences is a necessity because thereby just a certain undercurrent is attained in the inner absorption of the matter, disregarding the immediate contents. One hears music living in the soul with these mantras. The soul puts itself in such a thing. In my books, you can find that we do that in the Western spiritual development in a more spiritual-mental way that we do not resort to such a repeated singing or speaking of mantras. However, what is attained there in other way can be explained by the fact that one points out that one witnesses an undercurrent in thinking, feeling, and willing.

If one resorts to the full introspection, maintaining the contents of thinking, feeling and willing, as you have it in the usual awake consciousness, you discover the work of the spirit the easiest. Against it the mental is something more intimate, it often escapes from you. You have to do quite difficult and lengthy exercises if you want to find out it. While you can find out relatively easily that the spirit is destructive in the ongoing waking state, you have to apply subtler, more intimate exercises to observe that the emerging mental pictures are partial sleeping states. However, if you get to this more intimate experience in the soul, you also get from the mere subjective soul life to the objective soul life. Then you do not pursue the spiritual-mental only in that spiritual realm in which the human being lives between death and a new birth, now in a wholly spiritual experience, but you can pursue the mental in its state before birth and in its postmortal state. As strange as it still sounds to the modern human being, one can find out these things. Due to this experience which the Oriental develops just in a way which is so close to the intimate soul life he realised sooner than the Westerner did that the whole human soul life takes place in repeated lives on earth that the repeated lives on earth really result from observation.

It is an observation result of the mental experience. To experience the imperishable that goes through births and deaths in its spirituality is something else than this mental experience as it appears in the repeated lives on earth. It is like a specialisation of the spiritual experience.

As one sees the imagining being involved in the single human being as partial sleeping, one can observe in the outer world how in that spiritual realm, which one discovers as a scene of the everlasting spiritual in the human being, the mental is involved, while it specifies the general-everlasting spiritual life in repeated lives on earth. Those have begun once and will end once. I speak about that in the next talk.

You attain that by the real development of the mental abilities that not everybody needs to appropriate. However, every human being has the sense for truth. Unless prejudices cloud your sense for truth, you can agree with that which the spiritual researcher has to say, also before you yourself have become a spiritual researcher. Since the seer differs from other people as someone differs who watches the watchmaker from that who sees the clock only. He who sees the clock knows that it has originated from the intellectual activity of the watchmaker; he does not need watching the watchmaker. While the spiritual researcher describes from his research by visionary observation how that comes about what is in the everyday life, someone who observes this immediately will find the said confirmed everywhere, even if he himself is no spiritual researcher.

Even if this appears as something paradox in the general cultural development how the spiritual researcher has to think about body, soul and mind of the human being, that will also arise to spiritual research in the course of time—while natural sciences work from the other side on that what spiritual research has to say—what has arisen for natural sciences slowly and gradually. Consider only that there was a time when certain prejudices prevented the emergence of modern physiology and biology. In a similar way one has a prejudice to build the bridge from the human soul life to that what proceeds in the human body, while the soul life takes place. The study of anatomy became also only possible in the course of the Middle Ages. Before a prejudice was an obstacle to add that what happens there in the body to that what the soul can experience inwardly. Today spiritual science is in the same position. Even if one does not believe it, the today's prejudices are of the same value and come from the same causes. As in the Middle Ages one did not want to permit that bodies were dissected to recognise that what happens in them as a condition of the soul life, the most serious scientists are reluctant even today to investigate the spirit with spiritual-scientific methods. As the Middle Ages got around gradually to releasing the scientific investigation of the human body, the cultural development will also involve that the investigation of the spirit which is not identical with the soul is released to spiritual science.

Whether one goes to scientifically minded human beings, whether one goes to other psychologists and comes with spiritual-scientific results, one experiences the same, only in another field, what the biography of Galilei tells.

Up to Galilei's times the prejudice prevailed which continued by an ambiguous conception of Aristotle during the whole Middle Ages that the nerves arise from the heart. Galilei said to a friend that this were a prejudice. The friend was a strictly religious follower of Aristotle. He said, what I can read in Aristotle is true, and there you can read that the nerves arise from the heart. Then Galilei showed him at a corpse that the nerves arise from the brain, not from the heart that Aristotle had not recognised this because such anatomical studies were not yet usual. However, the follower of Aristotle remained unbelieving. Although he realised that the nerves arise from the brain, he said, indeed, the appearance militates for you, but Aristotle says something different, and if a contradiction is between Aristotle and nature, I do not trust nature but Aristotle. This happened really.

Still today, it is this way. Go to those who want to found psychic research in the old sense from a philosophical viewpoint, go to those who want to found psychic research scientifically, they state that one has anyhow to explain that from the psychic only which forms the basis of the soul phenomena coming from the mind or the body. If one points ever so much to facts of spiritual observation, one answers out of the same spirit, if a contradiction exists between that which Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, philosopher, physiologist, psychologist) or Paulsen (Friedrich P., 1846-1908, German philosopher and educator) or any authority say and that which spiritual science shows by spiritual observation, then we do not trust spiritual observation but that which one can read in the books to which we are accustomed in this time without authority. Since today one does no longer believe in authorities, but—indeed, in such a way that one does not notice it—in that which is officially labelled anyhow. Spiritual science will struggle through as well as natural sciences struggled through concerning the investigation of the body.

Naturalists like Du Bois-Reymond and others state that where the supersensible begins science must stop. I have already pointed in a former talk to the fallacy that happens there. Where from did it originate? Indeed, one felt—and Du Bois-Reymond felt rather clearly—that the human being is rooted in something spiritual. However, one must recognise this spiritual only by development of spiritual-scientific methods as the ground from which the mental of the human being originates. Modern science wants to make the things clear, while it envisages that what one can perceive with the senses; since the roots in the spiritual ground escape from it. Science does it like somebody who digs out a tree to face it clearly. Then he faces it clearly but the tree withers. Thus, modern science has dug out the tree of knowledge. However, just as the tree dug out from its ground dries up, knowledge also dries up which one digs out of the spiritual ground. Such a sentence like that of Du Bois-Reymond that science stops where the supersensible begins will be linked up to the contrary conviction in future. One will recognise, if one does not want to recognise the supersensible down to the natural phenomena, one removes the tree of knowledge from its topsoil and makes knowledge dry up. One does not say in future where the supersensible begins, science stops, but one experiences if one wants to found knowledge in the way that one takes out it from the spiritual ground that where in the human spiritual life the supersensible stops science cannot prosper that there a real science cannot originate beyond the supersensible, but that where the supersensible stops a dead science will only be.